Archive RSS Feed: CBS News Travel Guru

Invitation to Golf's Most Exclusive Club

One final story about Scotland for this week, and this speaks to my heartfelt belief that it is almost always better to travel alone or in small groups than to arrive at a place in a big tour bus and enjoy only the company of your fellow travelers.

Pass The Cheese Sommelier

(AP) Look, I like cheese as well as the next mouse. On a cruise that I took through Burgundy last year, I ate three different cheeses every lunch and dinner for a week, and still had room left over for large, fluffy desserts. I am thrilled to see a cart roll up to the table laden with fine cheeses, and my usual response to the question, "Which ones would you like?" is "All of them, please."

Calling All Snow-Bikers

Hey, you skiers and snowboarders, has anyone out there ever tried snow-biking? I just heard about it on a trip to Canada, and now I"m dying to get to a mountain and try it.

Arizona Artist Colony

(Tracy Taft)The next time that you"re in southern Arizona and have a couple of hours to kill, get in the car, make sure the air-conditioning is working, and drive across the desert to little Ajo, Arizona, between Yuma and Tucson and not far from the Mexican border. There you"ll find the Curley School, a redeveloped school complex that is now an artist colony and is one of the coolest renovation projects I"ve ever seen.

Avoiding Street Scams

Ten years after the fact, I"m still embarrassed by how I got scammed by a street urchin in Jamaica. He approached our car as a photographer and I were stalled in traffic in Montego Bay and said, "Hey, you"re going the wrong way. It"s me, from the hotel." He talked his way into the car, chattering about how he worked at the hotel where we were staying and had seen us there, showed us how to get out of the traffic jam, but then led us into a seedy neighborhood, grabbed a bag of drugs from a guy who ran up to the car, tried to sell it to us, got kicked out of the car, and demanded payment for his expert tour guidance.

The Hawaii Golf Marathon

In earlier columns about golf, I"ve profiled Sten "The Slammin" Swede" Olsen, who is perhaps the most avid golfer in history, and heckled all of you golfers who would rather play in shorts and polo shirts in Florida right about now than don earmuffs and parkas and knock the ball around Scottish links that are the birthplace of the game.

The Slammin' Swede In Bandon

Be careful, all of you golfers headed to the Oregon coast this holiday weekend to try out the magnificent Bandon Dunes golf complex. My old golfing partner Sten "The Slammin" Swede" Olsen and his sidekick, Nete "The Danish Destroyer" Leith are going to be camped out down there for four days, and they don"t cotton to slowpokes or anyone who wants to play through.

A Word To Mr. Claus

What do you want for Christmas? For me, it"s travel, always travel, and here are a few suggestions of things to get me (Santa, are you listening? Do you read blogs? Why not?) Drop us a line in the comment section and list a few things you"d like to see under the tree this year.

Lazy Skiers, Take Note

(AP)Find your ski goggles! Rummage through the closet for the boots and poles! Update your health insurance! The ski season is upon us. The Whistler-Blackcomb ski area in Canada"s British Columbia opened last weekend and the webcams are already showing lots of bundled-up people gliding down snowy, groomed runs. Ski areas throughout the West are following suit, and this weekend it"s supposed to drop a ton of snow on the mountains.

Hawaiian Superferry Update

(AP Photo/Marco Garcia)If you"ve been keeping score over the last few months, the Hawaiians have been steadily winning the battle against the Hawaii Superferry, a new service that is attempting to run passenger and car ferries between Oahu, Kauai and Maui. But now it"s the bottom of the seventh and it looks like Superferry has managed to at least tie the score, if not creep ahead in the game, which has been going for the better part of this year.