Departures
Issue: September/October 2010
Chocolate Check-Ins
Sweet dreams await at Merida’s Rosas & Xocolate
On the Yucatán Peninsula, where the Mayan civilization discovered cocoa and considered it a godly treat, the intimate Rosas & Xocolate hotel pays homage to the sweet stuff. The inn occupies two colonial mansions on the Paseo de Montejo—a grand boulevard near museums, galleries and boutiques. The retreat’s pink-hued walls enclose 17 luxurious guest rooms along with lush water gardens and terraces, a swimming pool, restaurant, tequila bar and a spa specializing in chocolate treatments. Save room in your suitcase for ambrosial souvenirs made by master chocolatier Matthieu Brees, available in the onsite chocolate boutique. www.rosasandxocolate.com
Our World in Numbers
6,000Approximate depth, in feet, of the Grand Canyon at its deepest point, from the edge of the North Rim to the surface of the Colorado River.
8,000Approximate depth, in feet, of Hells Canyon, from He Devil Peak down to the Snake River, making it the deepest river gorge in North America.
19Number of wineries located in Woodinville, Wash., in 2004.
70Approximate number of wineries and winery tasting rooms located in Woodinville today.
19.8Approximate size, in acres, of the San Alfonso del Mar seawater pool in Algarrobo, Chile, the world’s largest swimming pool, according to Guinness World Records.
259Approximate surface area, in acres, of Seattle’s Green Lake. Scientists say the lake’s bed was formed by the Vashon Glacier some 50,000 years ago.
Play It Again
The Bored Son rolls out the games of yesteryear
ven in the current era of PlayStation and Xbox, the passion for old-fashioned board games burns bright at The Bored Son in downtown Colfax, Wash. Owner Mark Bordsen, who amassed a collection of nearly 3,000 of those boxed sets of foldout cardboard, metal tokens, dice and spinning wheels at garage sales over the years, opened his storefront game room in 2009. For $2 an hour, visitors can compete against each other—or against Bordsen—in such classics as Pollyanna, All-Star Baseball and Star Reporter. Clue, Criss-Cross, Chute-5, Connect Four, Chop Suey and The Generals are among the 300 titles on hand, and Bordsen, a 68-year-old retired Whitman County planning director, has hundreds more stowed at home. His personal favorites include chess (he competes in regional tournaments) and darts (also available at the store). “This is a labor of love,” he says. “It’s nice to have a place where people can gather and really enjoy themselves. This business provides that.” (509) 999-4908, www.boredson.com.
Cliffside Sleepovers
A yurt village offers a new way to stay at Cave B Inn
Yurts are said to date back to the nomdic tribes of early Mongolia, but it’s their modern incarnations that are providing more reasons to wander over to the Cave B Inn at SageCliffe in Quincy. The resort’s Chiwana Village, named after the Wanapum name for the Columbia River, consists of 25 of the sturdy, domed tents. Each comes with a king-sized bed, a private bathroom and shower, a refrigerator, an iPod dock and other comforts (rates begin at $175 per night). Historically speaking, yurts were made by affixing lattices to collapsible frames that made them easy to move during migrations. At Cave B, where the amenities include a posh inn, winery, restaurant and spa overlooking the Columbia River, the yurts are made with polyester and polyester/cotton panels attached to Douglas fir. Clearly, these aren’t your great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather’s portable dwelling units. (888) 785-2283, www.sagecliffe.com.
Get Fresh
The Oxbow Public Market showcases Napa Valley’s bounty
The winning tandem of fresh produce and gourmet food has made venues such as Seattle’s Pike Place Market and the San Francisco Ferry Building wildly popular over the years. The latest addition to the market scene: Oxbow Public Market in Napa, Calif. Situated in a new 40,000-square-foot barnlike structure along the Napa River, Oxbow features indoor stalls that house purveyors of diverse edibles—everything from charcuterie to ice cream—to enjoy onsite or load in your picnic basket. Most of the vendors come from within a 100-mile radius. Among them: C Casa taqueria, Hog Island Oyster Company, Three Twins Organic Ice Cream and the Oxbow Cheese Merchant, which stocks handmade local cheeses alongside other domestic and imported selections. (707) 226-6529, www.oxbowpublicmarket.com.
Kidding Around
The KiDiMu on Bainbridge offers discoveries for all ages
Just a short walk from the ferry dock on Bainbridge Island, the Kids Discovery Museum offers an imagination-fueled adventure for all ages. The facility’s new LEED-certified structure features a vegetation-covered roof, while the treasures inside include a towering pirate treehouse for agile climbers and a foam-toy refuge for toddlers. At the Our Town exhibit (right), kids shop in a grocery store, play banker and drive a ferry or an electric car. Adults often can’t be torn away from the physics-smart Motion Madness exhibit upstairs. Yeah, the kids will have fun, but so will you. (206) 855-4650, www.kidimu.org.
Travel Smarts: Protect Your Data (when you travel with your laptop)
You don’t have to be on a business trip to travel with your laptop computer, but you do have to protect your sensitive data. Here’s how we keep our personal information private.
- We make backup copies of all our data and store it on an external hard drive at home. We also back up our data with Carbonite, an Internet-based backup program, so we can restore data on the road if we need to. We always use strong passwords (i.e., at least nine random characters long, incorporating symbols, letters and numbers).
- We take an encrypted flash drive with scans of all our valuable papers, including credit cards, passports and airline tickets. With IronKey drives, files can’t be accessed without a password. We also encrypt our laptop files using R10Cipher.
- We use a program called Banana VPN (virtual private network) to access any sensitive online sites, such as our bank or PayPal. This encrypted VPN remains hidden from potential hackers at Internet cafés and the airport. We never conduct online banking on a public Internet hot spot or via our hotel’s Internet service provider without the program.
- We keep track of our laptop and thumb drive at all times and keep them in the hotel safe when we go out. We’ve noticed that a growing number of people travel with only a smartphone, but many of us have to have our laptops. We’ve heard too many anecdotes from fellow travelers about hacked credit card numbers and lost data, so even though these precautions are time-consuming, they are clearly worthwhile.
