Kohler is awash in history, but that's not the best part

KOHLER, Wis. — If the words "company town" bring to mind mean-spirited, penny-pinching bosses bereft of benevolence, then it's unfair to use that term to describe Kohler. Regardless of the label, though, this is clearly a town that the Kohler family built and for decades ran, though with a velvet glove instead of an iron fist.

Kohler Co. now is a diversified multinational business. Yet many still associate the firm with its white porcelain sinks and toilets once emblazoned with branding that read, simply, Kohler of Kohler.

Indeed, Kohler, just west of Sheboygan, is home not only to the company's sprawling factories but also to streets lined with homes built for workers and, most notably, a former dormitory. Constructed in 1918 to house newly arrived immigrants, The American Club is now the crown jewel of a five-diamond resort. Since 1981, the resort has been a place where guests are surrounded not only by the family history but also by some of their most amazing wares — from showers for which the temperature and sprays are programmable to a toilet that keeps guys from committing the cardinal sin of forgetting to put down the seat.

Such modern marvels of plumbing come from a company that began making farm implements in the 1870s. The transition to bathroom necessities began in 1883, when founder John Michael Kohler sprinkled some enamel onto a cast-iron hog trough and added legs, thereby creating his first bathtub. It was an instant success.

"It was a three-shift operation. They made about 17 bathtubs a day," Shirley Seefeldt said of the first foundry. "We still produce them (cast-iron tubs) to this day."

Seefeldt comes from a family of Kohler employees. Her late husband spent 35 years with the company, and both her sons work in plants just across Highland Drive from the Kohler Design Center, the museum/showroom where she is a tour guide.

Much of her time is spent on the Design Center's lower level, where exhibits share the intertwined stories of the Kohler family and company. Prominent among the displays is one of those early bathtubs. The story of the early days of The American Club also is told through displays replicating the dorm's barbershop and four-lane bowling alley.

Upstairs, modern Kohler products stretch across the entire first floor. One wall is adorned with dozens of toilets from various periods of the company's existence. The colorful display is dubbed Kohler's great wall of china.

On the mezzanine, famous designers such as Clodagh and Amy Lau show off their talents, integrating their styles with the latest plumbing fixtures.

Famed potter Jonathan Adler also is represented.

"We just take his personality and pair him with a collection of Kohler products," explained Kohler's senior interior designer, Diana Schrage. "Much of Jonathan's pottery is a matte-white finish, so he just played off some of his pieces and has the entire room dramatically (lit) with an LED floor."

In the same building, some of Kohler's most soothing products are put to good use at the Kohler Waters Spa.

"Kohler Co. has been in the water business for over 135 years, so it's very natural … for the focus to be about water and hydrotherapy and the therapeutic benefits of water," noted Linda Machtig, a spa spokeswoman.

The spa's centerpiece is a large soaking pool with a soothing waterfall. The surrounding treatment rooms feature custom Vichy showers that allow therapists to preprogram temperature and water flow so their hands never leave a client's body. There also are oversized tubs featuring built-in soothing lights and stress-relieving sound systems.

For guests in one very special room at the adjacent American Club, many of Kohler's finest hydrotherapy products can be experienced without ever leaving the inner sanctum.

With rates starting at $1,000 a night, the Eau de Vie (Water of Life) Suite is by no means cheap, but luxury comes with a price. A centerpiece of the spacious, open-plan suite is an 8-foot-long tub that fills from a faucet in the ceiling. A high-tech shower provides what designers describe as a "choreographed showering experience."

The suite soon will be equipped with what probably is the company's most talked-about invention in recent years: the Numi toilet. Already for sale, the squat, boxlike wonder also is on display at the Design Center.

"Think of a smartphone. This is a smart toilet," communications director Todd Weber pointed out. "As you approach it, the cover will raise. If you're a gentleman and you wave your foot to the side … it will raise the seat. If you do that again, the seat will go down."

The toilet also is equipped with a foot warmer and a night light. But it's the seat-lowering feature that women in particular may appreciate.

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A peaceful interlude at the Mojave National Preserve

Reporting from Mojave National Preserve, Calif.—

For a nation in perpetual motion, to cross the lands that make up the Mojave National Preserve has long meant only one thing: You are very nearly somewhere else.

For westward-bound travelers, whether they came through open wilderness, along the now-overgrown Mojave Road or later by the legendary lanes of Route 66, this most American of deserts was little more than an obstacle to more promising lands. Long before them, Native Americans traded regularly across these harsh miles, as enamored as everyone else with speed. Tribal legend has it that top runners needed only a few days to reach the coast.

Today, the Mojave is ringed by the circuitry of a restless nation. Interstate 15, the preserve's northern border, is more parking lot than road, a blinking artery of brake lights shimmering late into the desert evenings. To the south, great fleets of trucks sail day and night along Interstate 40 in the shadow of Route 66, the mythic furrow through American consciousness once known as the Mother Road.

Enormous freight trains also rumble at all hours across the Mojave's vastness. And above, the skies are grooved by the high-desert contrails that Joni Mitchell sang about, descending through the blue toward Los Angeles.

Amid all this is the Mojave National Preserve: beautiful, empty and — unless you're within earshot of the railroad — as quiet as the ages. To feel so far off the path while so close to some of the country's best-beaten ones is both a miracle of conservation and an accident of politics. In 1994, after years of wrangling, three new desert designations were formalized: Joshua Tree and Death Valley became national parks, but Mojave was granted only preserve status.

It's an inferior category of protection; hunting, for example, is permitted. But a happy irony of Mojave's lesser designation is that the preserve, unlike its A-list siblings, barely registers on tourists' radar. Even seasoned Southwest travelers may not realize what they're missing: 1.5 million acres of solitude draped across vast forests of Joshua trees, snow-dusted peaks and measureless desert horizons. If the national park was America's best idea, the national preserve — and this one in particular — may be our best-kept secret.

Despite those many acres — Mojave is the third-largest National Park Service parcel in the lower 48 — it's easy to make or break a journey here. Heading east from Los Angeles, a good first port of call is Barstow, home to the preserve's visitors center and the inaugural miles of I-40. There's a regularly stolen sign at the interstate's start, pointing out the 2,554 miles between here and the North Carolina coast. The next Starbucks isn't quite that far, but consider some preventive caffeination in Barstow.

As soon as you get on 40, jump off it again at Exit 7 for a quick look at Daggett. Visit the Desert Market (35596 Santa Fe Ave., Daggett, Calif.; [760] 254-2774) for drinks, a chat and the chance to marvel at the remnants of the next-door Stone Hotel, where John Muir once stayed. Just east on Route 66, take the turnoff for the Daggett Pioneer Cemetery, where you and some central casting-caliber tumbleweed can wander among wind-swept graves.

From here head east — quickly on the interstate or slowly on what's left of the Mother Road, which bumpily parallels its multilaned successor. You'll pass Newberry Springs, where cult classic "Bagdad Cafe" was filmed.

Next is Ludlow, where the American roadside diner finds perhaps its purest, most deeply fried incarnation at the Ludlow Cafe (25635 Crucero Road, Ludlow, Calif.; [760] 733-4501). For those with heavy eyelids, there's also the Ludlow Motel (make reservations and check in at the Chevron station across from the motel and cafe, [760] 733-4338). It won't win any thread-count awards, but it's inexpensive, clean and, in road-trip terms, as pitch-perfect as the diner next door.

About half an hour east on 40, Kelbaker Road brings you into the preserve itself. Sixteen miles in is the turnoff for Kelso Dunes, 50 square miles of sand and little else. Some dunes are more than 600 feet high — worth singing about, and so they do, rather spookily, when the mood strikes them or a hiker kick-starts a cascade of sand. Wind-carved and yellow, these are the dunes of movies. It's easy to imagine C-3PO staggering over a crest, and several European hikers I met here half-joked that this was the only corner of the Southwest that looked like "real" desert.

Hiking on dunes is tiring, even — or perhaps especially — when they're singing to you. So it's time for lunch. Seven miles past the dune turnoff is Kelso Depot, a 1924 outpost where trains stopped for water and passengers to dine. After the frenetic World War ll years — iron for Liberty ships passed through here — the depot entered a long decline. Reopened in 2005, after a meticulous restoration, this Spanish Revival structure is now a charming and genteel counterpoint to the endless surrounding miles of Mojave wilderness.

After a root beer float ($3.50) at the vintage lunch counter, take time to explore the well-curated exhibits that fill the depot's sepia-tinged rooms. Then wander along the colonnade that fronts the railway, where signs forlornly announce long-forgotten passenger services even as ponderously laden freight trains roll past. The freight trains are noisy reminders of the fact that Kelso was built only to make other journeys possible. Now, in retirement, this palm-shaded intersection of history, geography and railway is at last a destination itself.

Heading north from Kelso, it's time to work off that third root beer float. My favorite Mojave hike is the Teutonia Peak Trail. Author J. Smeaton Chase, despite earning a decent living chronicling California's natural splendor, couldn't manage a kind word about the Joshua tree: a "weird, menacing object, more like some conception of Poe's." Those who disagree will be at home climbing through the world's largest and densest Joshua tree forest (eat your heart out, a certain nearby national park). The last rocky scramble on this four-mile round trip pays off, I promise, with a stunning view over Cima Dome, the vast volcanic uplift that now lies beneath you.

For a selection of other easy-to-moderate hikes, head to the Hole-in-the-Wall Information Center by way of the unpaved Mojave Road, or directly from I-40 and Essex Road. Start with the aptly named Rings Loop Trail, which involves climbing out of a canyon with the help of some judiciously placed metal rings. There's also the Barber Peak Loop Trail, a well-marked mile-mile walk that includes the canyon scramble and much more. The visitor center staffers are smiling and helpful, happy to chat about the recent snow, and why they came here, and — if it's getting late — where to rest your head.

They and most anyone else will tell you that there's no better place to spend a Mojave night than in Nipton, Calif. Hollywood native Gerald Freeman bought this entire ghost town — "population, one hobo" — for less than the cost of a Manhattan parking space. Slowly, it's being renovated and restored. The town's adobe centerpiece is the Hotel Nipton, with front-row views on a desert garden, the railway and the impossibly vast Ivanpah Valley stretching out under the red glow of distant peaks.

Everyone loves the sound of a train in the distance — the operative word being "distance." In Nipton, the bedrooms and the rail line are separated by about 20 yards. But somehow, I've rarely slept as well, a common report from guests. Maybe it's the warm welcome, the cold beer or the thought of bighorn sheep dozing on the starlit mountainsides. Or perhaps even an earth-shakingly close train, like the planes above and the pinprick automobile lights on the interstate, crystal clear through 20 miles of bone-dry desert night, makes you appreciate what you've just found: in a restless country, a place to rest.

travel@latimes.com

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What's new in Italy? Doors closing, doors opening

What doesn't change about Italy is that it's always changing. In 2012 some long-closed doors are opening again. Historic sights, newly scrubbed and restored, are coming out from behind scaffolding. A few more monuments are still under wraps, but getting closer to completion. Italy is revealing itself anew (or molting).

In Rome, the Colosseum is being cleaned from top to bottom and given permanent lighting. For the first time, tours are being offered to previously restricted areas -- underground passageways and the third-floor parapet. This behind-the-scenes tour is available only by booking a 90-minute tour at least a day in advance with Pierrici, a private company (www.pierreci.it).

At Rome's Palatine Hill, you can now tour the House of Livia, the home of the wife of Emperor Augustus. Guided visits, which are included with admission, take 20 people in every half-hour to tour the site and its newly restored frescoes. As surviving Roman wall paintings are rare (these date back to the first century B.C.), it's worth the trouble.

A few doors are better left closed: Rome's Mamertine Prison is no longer worth a visit. Until recently, it was a charming and historic sight. Today its artifacts have been removed, and a commercial tour-bus company is charging 10 euros for a cheesy "multimedia" walk-through. Don't go in. And avoid getting sucked in by the clever advertising for the Time Elevator Roma or the hype surrounding the new, inconveniently located MAXXI modern-art museum, which to me comes off like a second-rate Pompidou Center.

At St. Peter's Basilica, you won't have to descend into the crypt to find the tomb of the late, beloved Pope John Paul II. After he was beatified on May 1 (bringing him a step closer to sainthood), his remains were moved to the Chapel of San Sebastian on the main floor on the basilica (midway between Michelangelo's Pieta and the main altar).

In Venice, as renovations continue at the Accademia -- showcasing the city's top collection of Venetian paintings -- some major canvases are out of view and some rooms are closed entirely. There's still scaffolding around the base of the Campanile, the dramatic bell tower on St. Mark's Square, but a three-year restoration of the lovely little Bridge of Sighs -- popular with romantics who kiss as they glide under it on a gondola -- is now complete.

In Florence the big news for visitors is the energetic young mayor's passion for traffic-free zones. Once brutal for pedestrians, the city's core is now a delight on foot. That means it's also more bike-friendly, and you'll find appealing city bike tours and bike rental services readily available.

Florence also now offers a new sightseeing pass called the Florence Card (50 euros). Though it's unlikely to save you much money, it saves you the hassle of making reservations for the top sights (Uffizi and Accademia galleries), and -- most important -- allows you to bypass the long lines. The card is valid for 72 hours, includes most sights, and covers free use of city buses. Especially if you'll be seeing five or six major sights within three days, the pass is worth it for the convenience and the time saved.

At Florence's Duomo Museum, the restoration of the original panels of Ghiberti's Gates of Paradise is wrapping up. The famous panels are being reinserted in their door frames and should be back on display for a formal inauguration on June 24, 2012, the feast day of Florence's patron saint, John the Baptist. And Florence's Galileo Science Museum, which was in a jumble of restoration for years, is now all fixed up and ready for prime time.

Sadly, the biggest change in Italy for 2012 is the result of a natural disaster. When I was in the magical towns of the Cinque Terre in May 2011, I never could have imagined that, just a few months later, the streets I walked on would be under more than six feet of mud and rocks, devastated by a horrific flash flood.

Of the five towns of the Cinque Terre, the two most popular towns for tourists -- Vernazza and Monterosso -- were hit hard. Monterosso plans to be ready for business in the spring of 2012, but Vernazza's road to recovery will take longer. At www.ricksteves.com we're host a landing page with updates, travel information, and hotlinks to organizations accepting donations to aid the town's recovery.

In spite of the damage and disruption, I'm already making plans to visit the Cinque Terre in 2012 and expect to have a wonderful Riviera experience. The strong spirit of its people and the love of its many honorary citizens -- the legions of visitors, like me, who have left a piece of their hearts there -- will ensure that the Cinque Terre will rebuild.

(Rick Steves (www.ricksteves.com) writes European travel guidebooks and hosts travel shows on public television and public radio. Email him at rick@ricksteves.com and follow his blog on Facebook.)

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At this Fort Worth 'factory,' they're in the money

Reporting from Fort Worth—

With the holiday shopping season behind us — and slim pickings in our wallets and checking accounts — most of us lament the truth of one particular adage: Money doesn't grow on trees.

Unless the prospect of a lengthy term in prison sounds attractive, we're probably not going to sneak off to the basement or the garage to print some extra green. As much as we might like it, that's a job we have to leave to the Money Factory.

Year in and year out, there's never a shortage of moola here, where about 58% of America's money is made. By the time this new year of 2012 is over, the place will have produced $139 billion of crisp, new notes. That would be enough to give a post-holiday gift of $445 bucks to every person in the country, if distributing the wealth were that simple, which, of course, it isn't.

---

FOR THE RECORD:
Currency: In the Jan. 1 Travel section, a caption said that a photo showed the Western Currency Facility in Texas. It was a photo of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Washington, D.C. —

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As people learn during a tour of the Money Factory — formally known as the Bureau of Engraving and Printing's Western Currency Facility — nearly all that cash being printed on the shop floor here and in Washington, D.C., is destined to replace worn-out bills that are withdrawn from circulation.

Getting into the sprawling Texas plant is similar to going through security at an airport, although visitors must leave most of their personal belongings — cameras and cellphones included — in their cars. They then go to the Transfer Station, where, under the watchful eye of members of the facility's own police force, guests pass through metal detectors before boarding buses for the short ride to the factory.

One-hour tours begin in a theater where a film called "The Buck Starts Here" explains how money is made. Guests then pass through a vault-like door into a quarter-mile of corridors filled with thick glass windows overlooking the production floor.

"The average production equals $386 million a day," tour guide Kim Hein said before jokingly adding: "Those folks down there can say they make $16 million an hour."

To thwart those who might seriously contemplate making money of their own, sophisticated machinery is used in the four-month process of making a bill. (There also are several drying periods along the way.)

"You start off with the offset," said Charlene Williams, the facility's director. "That's where your color is incorporated into the note. Then the intaglio printing is like the fine line, very deep engraving. If you run your finger across the engraving, you'll feel the raised image on the note."

Later, serial numbers and official seals are added using letter presses.

"Bricks" of 400 new notes — with values ranging from $4,000 for a wad of one-dollar bills to $400,000 for hundreds — are stacked on pallets before being moved to the factory's large vault.

A single pallet of hundreds, Hein said, is valued at $64 million. (Visitors often sigh wistfully at that amount.)

Only a select group of people knows just how much money is stored in the Fort Worth vault. The guide, however, noted that it's designed to hold 1.4 billion bills.

Guests should allow time to visit the two floors of exhibits in the Visitor Center. The tours explain the history of the U.S. Treasury's moneymaking, which began in 1862, and are full of trivia. For example, the cotton-and-linen bills are made to withstand 4,000 creases along the same line before tearing.

Not unexpectedly, Williams and her staff are frequently asked, "Do you have any samples?"

Although the answer is, technically, "no," Williams has a quick comeback.

"I tell people I do have a sample. It's a shredded one," she said with a laugh. Spoiled notes, she noted, are shredded and sold in clear plastic bags in the gift shop.

"If you can place 51% of any one note back together, send it in and redeem it," she said. "Good luck in gluing."

travel@latimes.com

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XL passengers invade my economy-class seat -- and airlines let them

When Elisabeth Haas took her window seat on an American Airlines flight from Orlando to Dallas earlier this year, she discovered a problem -- a very big problem.

"A morbidly obese seatmate encroached into my personal space," she says. "He required a seat-belt extender and that the armrest divider be raised to accommodate his girth during the entire flight, including takeoff and landing. He also had to walk down the aisle oriented sideways and moved quite slowly."

The problem of XL passengers on planes is hardly new, but their interactions with other passengers are creating a lot more friction lately. I know because over the American Thanksgiving holiday week, I reported about a man who says he had to stand on a flight between Anchorage and Philadelphia, and it became the talk of the town for about half a news cycle.

I heard from lots of passengers who said they, too, have tussled with oversized seatmates.

Haas, who was returning from a trip to see her dying grandmother in Florida, says she couldn't comfortably fit in her seat or stow her luggage under her seat because of the encroachment. She only had access to about one-third of her economy-class seat for the duration of the flight.

"Do you understand the horrific discomfort of feeling someone's massive, unrelenting, hot and sweaty flesh pressed into your body from shoulder to ankle?" she asks.

The American Airlines flight attendants were compassionate, and because it was a sold-out flight, they allowed her to sit in their jump seats. But when she wrote a polite letter suggesting that American Airlines change its rules to prevent this kind of thing from happening again, the best it could manage was to reply with a form letter.

"We are sorry for your discomfort on your recent flight with us to Dallas/Fort Worth," it wrote to her. "Our airport personnel must walk a fine line in order to satisfy the needs and rights of all of our customers. I am disappointed to hear that we were not more successful on this occasion, and I am genuinely sorry that the enjoyment of your flight was diminished as a result."

American Airlines didn't address any of her safety concerns, nor did it pledge to change its rules.

Airline policies on XL passengers are at best, amorphous. Only Southwest Airlines has a clearly defined and well-publicized policy -- it calls them "customers of size" -- but the other major airlines tend to dance around the issue. It's hard to find their policies online and they seem to be unevenly enforced.

When airlines do talk about their weighted customers, they do so as in gentle tones, as if at any moment, these big passengers could shatter into a thousand pieces because someone called them fat. (Come to think of it, isn't that how society deals with the problem of obesity?)

But the focus is on the wrong person. It isn't the morbidly obese who are in need of special protection, but the folks seated next to them. When the armrest is up, it can mean serious trouble for the other guy.

Norman Chance was the other guy on a recent flight between Anchorage and Chicago. Like Haas, he had a window seat in economy class, but found himself next to two "very large" people in the seats next to him.

"I had to sit sideways for the entire flight, in agony and pain," says Chance, who owns an aviation company in Indianapolis. "They both fell asleep and would not move despite my requests. I ended up injuring my back, which was only resolved after visits to a chiropractor."

He's angry that airlines can allow two XL passengers to fly in economy-class seats that are obviously too small, and he and Haas are upset that there isn't a law to prevent a situation like this from repeating itself.

"This type of incident happens far too often," he says.

And that's the thing. There are no rules about passengers having to fit into the economy-class seats. The closest the Federal Aviation Administration comes to addressing this issue is when it issues its guidance on passengers with disabilities, but it doesn't specifically classify a passenger's weight or size as a disability that is in need of protection. If it did, airlines would probably have to give every tall guy like me a first-class seat, which, now that I think about it, wouldn't be so bad.

But I think we'd all settle for a rule that says passengers are entitled to a minimum amount of legroom and personal space, whether they're on American Airlines or any other airline. The Transportation Department already has those requirements in place for animals that fly, but curiously, not for humans seated in economy class.

Such a rule would prevent a bulk of these XL passenger incidents from happening, and make flying a far more humane experience -- for all of us.

(Christopher Elliott is the author of "Scammed: How to Save Your Money and Find Better Service in a World of Schemes, Swindles, and Shady Deals" (Wiley). He's also the ombudsman for National Geographic Traveler magazine and the co-founder of the Consumer Travel Alliance, a nonprofit organization that advocates for travelers. Read more tips on his blog, elliott.org or e-mail him at chris@elliott.org. Christopher Elliott receives a great deal of reader mail, and though he answers them as quickly as possible, your story may not be published for several months because of a backlog of cases.)

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New York's great tourism leap

Reporting from New York—

OK, quickly name America's top tourist destination.

Orlando, Fla.? Las Vegas? The Grand Canyon?

Try New York.

By New Year's Eve, New York expected to have made history by snaring more than 50 million tourists in one year, considerably surpassing a deadline that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg set early in his administration for 2015 and then moved up to the end of 2012.

When it became clear that the city would come in a year ahead of schedule, Bloomberg staged a media event just before Christmas in Times Square with balloons and billboards and a couple of smiling Brits.

But if Bloomberg wanted unstaged testimony for this New York success story, he could have turned to Brian and Mellie Jenkins and their two teenage daughters, who were bundled up against the cold one day as they ate trendy sandwiches on a park bench in the East Village.

"The girls think we're so cool for taking them to Tompkins Square Park," said Brian, 56, a lawyer and closet foodie from Illinois who brings his family to New York annually for the week between Christmas and New Year's, the city's busiest tourist season.

Jaded East Villagers, wearing black scarves and smirks, couldn't help but stare at the tall, blond family in heavy parkas tucking into what might be considered only-in-New York sandwiches. Brian and Mellie had chicken liver, bacon and onions packed between two pieces of challah, which they were clearly embarrassed to admit appeared on the take-out menu as "The Conflicted Jew," while their daughters tried to get their hands around the "The Almighty Brisket" — with cheddar cheese, horseradish and mayo on a Brioche bun.

Daphne, 17, and Lily, 15, were hungry and a tad grumpy after waiting three hours in line for Dad's favorite view on top of the Empire State Building. But they were also eager for the next stop — Brooklyn's hip Williamsburg neighborhood, where they hoped to shop for vintage clothes.

Brian said he didn't get the "vintage clothes thing," but he was game to go anywhere in New York.

"Really, the whole city feels more and more tourist-friendly every year," he said.

Bloomberg couldn't have said it better himself. Not that he hasn't tried — relentlessly, in fact, since getting elected in 2002.

At $47 billion a year, tourism has grown to be New York's fifth-largest industry and the fastest-growing sector of its economy, which the mayor has said softened the effects of the Great Recession on the city. Tourism dropped 3% in 2009, but picked right up again and now is responsible for 320,000 jobs.

It helped that dozens of new hotels sprouted in all five boroughs, many in Manhattan's old Garment District, so that the city now has 90,000 rooms with another 7,000 in the pipeline. The average hotel stay costs $314 a night.

Statistics from 2010, the last full year for which numbers are available, stand out. Not only was New York America's most popular destination, outpacing Orlando in domestic travelers, but the city also accounted for 33% of all overseas travel to the United States.

Together, Los Angeles and Miami — the second and third most popular destinations — got fewer foreign visitors in 2010 than New York did.

Although international travelers accounted for only a fourth of the tourists who came to New York that year, on average they spent $1,700 and stayed 7.3 days. Domestic travelers spent an average $432 and stayed 2.7 days.

Chris McGinnis, a travel correspondent and consultant based in San Francisco, said many factors went into New York's heightened popularity.

"There's the weak dollar and the influx of lower-priced hotels, which make New York more accessible to American tourists," he said. "So they can stay in a Best Western or Holiday Inn and have the whole Manhattan experience. In the past you'd have to stay far out in the boroughs to get a hotel within the ballpark of someone who is not on business."

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Sack out at the airport

A few years back, I booked an itinerary that involved a 14-hour flight from my home airport to a hub in Asia, leaving mid-afternoon and arriving at about 9 p.m. local time, with an overnight wait of 10 hours before my ongoing morning connection. After being awake for almost 24 hours, I wanted nothing more than a comfortable bed, but where? I decided to book the hotel closest to the airport, but with baggage, waiting for the shuttles, and re-entering security, I was lucky to get about five hours of sack time. Although better than slumping all night in a seat in the terminal -- an alternative approach many of my plane-mates took -- it was far from ideal. My final take: "There's gotta be a better way."

Turns out, there is a better way: A few big airports around the world are adding short-term and overnight private mini-rooms with stretch-out beds airside of security. You can rent by the hour for quick naps or overnight for longer stretches:

-- Minute Suites (www.minutesuites.com) operates installations at Atlanta and Philadelphia airports, presumably with plans for additional locations. Each suite includes a "daybed sofa," bedding, TV, desk and chair, and airport Wi-Fi or direct computer connection. The main difference between one of these suites and a conventional mini-hotel room is that the suite provides no plumbing -- you have to use the airport's facilities. Minute Suites are expensive: $30 for the first hour, then $7.50 for each additional 15 minutes, with 15 percent discounts for stays of four hours or more and 25 percent off stays of eight hours or more. That adds up to around $200 for an overnight, which is more than you might pay for a full-featured hotel room outside the airport, but you can't beat the location for a quick stop. You can book online thorough the website.

-- Yotel (www.yotel.com) operates more full-featured "cabins" at Amsterdam Schiphol airport. Even the smallest include sink and shower, as well as the expected bed, desk, TV, and computer hookups. The cost is actually lower than the cost of Minute Suites, starting at 40 euros (about $52) for a four-hour minimum. Yotel also operates at Heathrow and Gatwick, but outside security -- a lot less useful.

-- Napcabs (www.napcabs.net) operates really small cubicles at Munich airport, including just bed and counter but no plumbing, with rates of 15 euros per hour during the day and 10 euros per hour overnight. And Sam's Snooze provides similar accommodations at the Delhi airport for $10 an hour (see details through www.newdelhiairport.in).

If you just feel gritty after a long trip and don't need a lie-down bed, some big airlines operate premium facilities airside at their most important hubs that include shower facilities, clothes pressing, and other welcome services. Unfortunately, as far as I know, they're limited to business and first-class passengers. Many years back, I tried United Airlines' facility at Heathrow (after using a frequent flyer upgrade) and found it the best way I know to start recovering from an overnight flight. Unfortunately, those facilities aren't available to the folks in economy class who really need them the most.

If you're willing to exit an airport's security areas, you have lots more options. Quite a few big airports have onsite hotels that are connected directly to a terminal by either a walkway or the airport's internal people-mover system. Many of these hotels rent rooms by the hour during the day for naps, showers, or just relaxation. And some airport-area hotels that aren't directly connected do the same. But having to leave and re-enter security can be a real deal-breaker, and I know of no inside-security facilities other than the ones described.

Airside sleeping accommodations -- even if minimal -- can be a real benefit when you have a really early flight and want to be at the airport the night before, when you arrive really late and prefer to crash quickly, and especially if you have an extended connecting time. I'm surprised that such accommodations haven't caught on more quickly. Maybe you'll see more in the next few years -- let's hope.

(Send e-mail to Ed Perkins at eperkins(at)mind.net. Perkins' new book for small business and independent professionals, "Business Travel When It's Your Money," is now available through www.mybusinesstravel.com or www.amazon.com)

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First U.S. museum dedicated to Greek culture, opens in Chicago

CHICAGO (AP) — Dolls a Greek woman made during World War II. Ice cream bowls and wooden spoons from a 1940s Greek candy store. Thousands of record albums filled with Greek music.

These items and many other beloved objects and family heirlooms have found their way from around the country to the National Hellenic Museum in Chicago, which has a new place to store and exhibit them all, in a four-story 40,000-square-foot environmentally friendly building of limestone and glass that opened in early December.

The $20 million project in the city's Greektown neighborhood, which includes temporary and permanent exhibition space, classrooms, oral history archives, a library and roof patio overlooking downtown, replaces the museum's previous space a few blocks away on one floor of a four-story building.

"This museum became by default the repository for artifacts from the Greek American experience because there was no other place people felt secure donating their items," said Stephanie Vlahakis, the museum's executive director.

Outside the museum, the street bustles with diners at Greek restaurants like The Parthenon, Athena or Santorini. A group of men speak Greek during an animated game of backgammon at the Panhellenic Pastry Shop with mounds of powdered sugar almond cookies and baklava piled in the glass cases behind the counter.

"We are telling the story of Greek America," Vlahakis said. "We just start from the beginning, from ancient times and bring it to the modern times."

The museum is a work in progress, with a skeleton version of the permanent exhibit on the second floor. Curators have scribbled design concepts in colored marker on the walls, like "absolutely want mosaic work" or "look into etching on glass?" The hope is to raise enough money to fill the displays out in a year.

But there is still plenty to see: shelves filled with items from a Greek family in New York, a wall of black and white pictures that chronicles the story of Greek immigrants in America and an area to learn the Greek alphabet. Visitors can watch a short introductory video narrated by, who else, George Stephanopoulos.

Museum curator Bethany Fleming hopes to travel to Greece and make casts of columns, gates and parts of temples to bring back to Chicago.

Downstairs the temporary exhibit space is home to "Gods, Myths and Mortals: Discover Ancient Greece," an exhibit on loan from the Children's Museum of Manhattan until August. It's a child's view of the daily life of ancient Greece and its legends and heroes, like Aristotle, Odysseus and Cyclops.

"What we want to do with all our exhibits is create a place where all generations of visitors can connect," Fleming said.

There's a kid-sized recreated Greek temple, and children can dress up in togas in front of a mirror or crawl into a jungle-gym Trojan horse. Interspersed are nearly three dozen Greek artifacts, including coins, pottery and figurines. One Macedonian drachma coin dates to 336-323 B.C. and is about the size of a dime.

The museum building itself is inspired by nature, containing elements of earth, air, fire and water. Inside a large, sky-lit stairway leads visitors from east to west, symbolizing the travel of Greek immigrants from Europe to America. Everything, Vlahakis says, was done deliberately to parallel the Greek American experience.

"So much of our world is inspired by the ancient," she said.

___

If You Go...

NATIONAL HELLENIC MUSEUM: 333 S. Halsted St., Chicago; http://www.nationalhellenicmuseum.org or 312-655-1234. Tuesday-Friday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. (until 8 p.m. on Tuesdays); Saturday-Sunday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Adults, $10; seniors and students, $8; children 3-12, $7.

GETTING THERE: The museum is within walking distance of the Chicago Transit Authority's No. 8 bus and Blue Line's UIC-Halsted stop in the West Loop neighborhood. Street parking and pay parking are available.

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Do airlines give their best fares to the search engines?

Airfare monitor Airfarewatchdog (www.airfarewatchdog.com) recently posted a report showing that search sites promising to find the "lowest fares" often don't make good on this promise. The specific instance involved a search for a New York-Bermuda trip where Priceline found a fare that was $20 lower than the best deal Kayak found. A reader wanted to know what might be going on and what it means to consumers.

Basically, what happened here is that JetBlue had the lowest fare; Priceline's search included JetBlue, but Kayak's did not. It wasn't a case that JetBlue selectively withheld some fares from Kayak; instead, Kayak didn't (and doesn't) include JetBlue in its search at all.

This is by no means the only situation where a site's claim that it can "search once for all the fares" really doesn't work. For a variety of reasons, the big third-party search engines don't cover all the feasible options:

-- In some cases, this omission may be due to an argument over the fees between an airline and an individual search engine. For a while, for example, American was feuding with Orbitz over some fee issues.

-- In other cases, an airline actively doesn't want search engines to include its fares. The most visible case is Southwest, which runs ads highlighting that the only way to find its fares online is through its own website.

Other lines that the big search engines usually skip include Allegiant and Direct Air, as well as some smaller foreign lines. I'm not sure whether these omissions are due to fees or policies.

As far as I can tell, gaps in search engine coverage are a part of a larger and ongoing fight between airlines and third-party agencies over who "owns" you, the consumer. Certainly, both airlines and third-party agencies want to be your "go to" source for air tickets -- and, they hope, for associated hotel accommodations, rental cars, travel insurance, and anything else you buy as part of a trip. The airlines want to keep you because they want to be your first choice for air travel, plus they want to gain additional revenue from selling the rest of the travel you buy. Third-party agents, on the other hand, obviously want to get their hands on the same revenue streams.

The current fight isn't limited to airfare searches. Currently, American and Southwest are separately fighting with several sites, such as AwardWallet, MileWise, GoMiles and UsingMiles, which help you manage your frequent flyer mileage and accounts and help you decide whether to buy a ticket or use miles for a trip you're considering. The lines cite a number of flimsy excuses for their opposition to these sites, but the real reasons have to do with control. And in exercising control, the airlines fall back on a technicality that many frequent flyers don't even realize exists: You don't really own your miles; the airlines do. That's an absurd position, on the face of it -- after all, they keep pushing you to "buy" more miles, and, at least to me, "buy" implies ownership. That situation cries out for legal or regulatory relief, but don't hold your breath until you get any relief. Meanwhile, the airlines hold all the cards.

For you as a consumer, however, knowing the reason for something, even if that something is a gouge or a deception, doesn't really help overcome it. What you need to do is figure a way around an obstacle, and here the way around it is obvious: Never accept the claim that any one online agency will really search all feasible alternatives. Instead, you have to be a wary consumer:

-- You have to know which airlines the search sites omit. And if any of these lines is of interest to you, you have to check that line separately.

-- Even when a search engine includes all the airlines of interest, always check with that line's individual sites to verify that the search engine found the best deal.

Send e-mail to Ed Perkins at eperkins@mind.net. Perkins' new book for small business and independent professionals, "Business Travel When It's Your Money," is now available through www.mybusinesstravel.com or www.amazon.com

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