The Flight Deal is an awesome resource. Head over to their post on this for all the details. I’ve just confirmed as of this writing that the deal is still working. You won’t find it using the ITA Matrix, but search Kayak or Google Flights, purchase on sites like Priceline. (Orbitz may show a higher […]
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When Nellie and Con Miller arrived in Fairbanks, Alaska, in 1949, they didn't have anything with them except for their two children and $1.40. Con became a merchant and fur buyer in the area, but he would also put on an old red Santa suit and entertain the village children; he would do anything to carve out a living for himself in this new frontier and the kids couldn't have been happier to see their first St. Nick.
Only a few years later, the Millers had cobbled together enough money to built a trading post just outside of Fairbanks. They named it the North Pole, but when a young visitor recognized Con and asked if Santa was building a new house, they changed the name of the outpost to the Santa Claus House and decorated as they thought one of St. Nick's home might look.
The Santa Claus House received international recognition and, after newspapers and magazines all over the world wrote about the new trading post, letters from kids started to pour in. The Millers, for decades now, have been returning as many of those letters as they could, sending mail to boys and girls all over the world who think they're corresponding with Santa Claus himself. Over the span of 60 years or so, the Millers sent more than two million personalized letters.
The town of North Pole, Alaska, which has grown up around the Santa Claus House, has the slogan "Where the Spirit of Christmas Lives Year Round." And the Santa Claus House is just one of the ways that spirit lives on. Visitors to the town will be greeted by not just it, but also a 42-foot-tall Fiberglas Santa Claus statue that stands on Richardson Highway. Other Christmas items decorate the town all year-round.
Massive ice sculptures loom over visitors bundled up against the -15 degree Celsius weather, paired with giant snow carvings a few miles away looking down on the festivities of the Harbin International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival.
An annual event, the Festival is one of the world's four largest ice and snow festival, holding the 2007 Guinness Record for largest snow sculpture: a two part piece of Niagra Falls and a Crossing of the Bering Strait (a migration of the First Nations, the population residing in Canada prior to European colonization) that totaled 250 meters long, 8.5 meters high, and composed of over 13,000 cubic meters of snow.
First organized in 1963, the Festival was often interrupted over the years due to the Cultural Revolution. It picked up again, this time as an annual event, in 1985. The official starting date is January 5th, lasting until February 15th, though weather permitting, the exhibitions often open a week earlier and run until March.
Each year has a different 'theme,' past themes including the Beijing Olympics, Chinese tourist sites, 'Prosperous China and High-Flying Longjiang', and 'Friendship between China and Russia.' The Great Wall (doubling as an ice slide), pyramids, sphinxes, terra cotta warriors, a Disney castle, towering pagodas, enormous Buddhas, and gardens are only a handful of the creative sculptures and carvings to have been a part of the Harbin Festival.
It is a competitive event, with teams coming from all over the world-the United States, Russia, Japan, Canada, South Africa, France etc. During the nights of the month-long festival, lights from inside and outside of the sculptures brilliantly illuminate a variety of architectural styles, fanciful castles, mythological and historical figures, ice lanterns and slides.
Fireworks light up the sky on various evenings while the dazzling multicolored ice sculptures light up the entire ground. The ice is procured from the surface of the frozen Songhua River, then intricately carved, many of the sculptures receiving a douse of deionized water to produce an entirely transparent look. Swimming in the Songua River, Yabuli alpine skiing, an ice-lantern exhibition, ice golf, and ice archery are just some of the featured activities popular of the Festival.
Reader Michael A. asks, I know you have an interest in decent food and that you come through LAX a lot. LAX is getting much better restaurants, and it makes me wonder: Do the airlines have a say in what restaurants come to their terminals? LAX is maybe a bit unusual in having the different […]
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Zip-lining Santas and atypical, potentially blasphemous art-mangers. That is Woodland Hills come Christmas time.
Since 1952, these eight square blocks of houses have come into friendly, informal competition with one another over who can create the most extravagant or outlandish Christmas or Hanukkah display. Animatronics, Danish nisse, and giant roof-mounted St. Nick busts are not uncommon sights on these streets.
I don't usually buy duty free items onboard, though I'm a complete sucker for airline related teddy bears. For example, a while back I picked up a Cathay Pacific pilot teddy bear, which was ridiculously adorable.
However, I think Gulf Air takes the cake for the cutest airline teddy bear I've ever seen. Check out this adorable Gulf Air flight attendant teddy bear I picked up on my London to Bahrain flight today.
My only complaint is that they only had one for sale, or else I would have picked up more...
The post My Christmas Gift: I Pick Up The Cutest Flight Attendant Ever appeared first on One Mile at a Time.
More great links from around the web: The CIA’s Guide to Dealing With Immigration Screening. More from The Economist. American ended its frequent flyer partnership with El Al November 1. And yet they’re now expanding codesharing between Europe and Tel Aviv. Passenger suing United after she was jailed for attempting to change seats. Self-upgrading has […]
The post How to Outsmart Immigration Screening and Sneak Into Europe, Go to Jail for Changing Seats, and an easyJet Christmas appeared first on View from the Wing.
Here's a simple but cute idea. Through January 6, 2015, LOT Polish is hanging a mistletoe on each of their airplanes.
Here's the press release:
"LOT Polish Airlines has kicked off the Christmas holidays with KISSaLOT. Mistletoe twigs have been hung in each of LOT's aircraft--the highest place in the world--through Jan. 6, 2015. It's the airline's way of bringing people together."
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