Understanding wine

Understanding wine

Discover Les Caves du Louvre in Central Paris, France, an immersive new wine museum created by author and sommelier Olivier Magny and Nicolas Paradis of O’Chateau, the city’s largest wine bar. Visitors explore the A to Z of wine through an interactive experience set in an 18th-century vaulted hotel particulier (a listed monument with cellars that predate the private mansion by several centuries). The structure underwent an extensive overhaul to create a clever visual play on volume, light, texture and scent that enriches a mobile app and guides guests through a sensorial tour covering about 600 square metres of rehabilitated underground space. The app is available in 10 languages. Find out more at Facebook.com/lescavesduparadis.

 

KFC in thin air

The Tibetans will soon be taking their first bite of Kentucky Fried Chicken, as the popular fast food chain opens in a Lhasa shopping mall this month. The two-storey restaurant will serve American-style fried chicken and is expected to appeal to tourists in the city, which is growing as a world-renowned destination. – China Daily/ANN

 

People behaving badly

Tourists who behave badly and threaten security at Beijing Capital International Airport will be placed on record, which could affect their future travel plans. The Beijing Commission of Tourism Development signed a deal with the airport’s security company recently, allowing the blacklist to be set up for those who violate regulations. The deal aims to improve tourist behaviour, enhance safety awareness and help with customs clearance procedures. A tourist surnamed Zhou was the first to be placed on this list for pulling open an emergency hatch on a flight from Kunming to Beijing last January. His bad behaviour record will be kept for two years. – China Daily/ANN

 

More Chinese to visit Nepal

Nepal is expecting more tourists from China following the waiver of visa fees for the country’s nationals. The hassle-free visa deal aims to improve and develop the tourism industry. The Chinese government reciprocated the Nepali gesture by lifting the travel restriction on their citizens to Nepal with immediate effect. In a bid to lure more tourists from China, two Nepali carriers, Nepal Airlines and Himalaya Airlines, are set to join four Chinese airlines already in operation on Nepal-China routes. Himalaya Airlines plans to operate Kathmandu-Lhasa flights, while Nepal Airlines plans to operate Kathmandu-Guangzhou flights by the first quarter of 2016. – The Kathmandu Post/ANN

 

More room at the inns

Italy is planning to convert dozens of red-ochre government buildings dotting scenic countryside roads into rustic hostels for tourists. They will offer stops for so-called slow-tourism travellers starting this year. Painted in dark Pompeii red, the first lodges were instituted in 1830, before the unification of Italy, to provide accommodation for road maintenance workers, but out of the current total of 1,244, about half have fallen into disuse. Highways agency ANAS has selected a first batch of 30, located along scenic routes such as the Franciscan Trail in Tuscany, near ski resorts in the Alps and by Lake Como, and is scouting for proposals on how to turn them into more productive use.

 

In the bowels of the Earth

Tunnels built by the Nazis under Ksiaz Castle in Lower Silesia in Poland will soon be open to tourists, the Polish tourism office says. The castle, a baroque palace on a long-fortified rock, is located about 70 kilometres from Wroclaw. Until now the tunnels have been used by the Institute of Geophysics of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IGF) as an earthquake measuring site, but worldwide interest in legends about a Nazi gold train underground in Poland have made tourists eager to explore. Some 3,200 square metres of the tunnel system, which runs 15 to 50 metres below the castle, will be made accessible as a tourist route. An exhibition about the tunnels’ origins is also planned. – DPA