United States

In this travel video tour of Portland, Oregon, I travel to Portland, one of the most unique cities in the United States. I started my trip off by hopping off a plane and then immediately hopping onto a bus. But not just any bus, a bus operated by Brewvana Brewery Tours, the mostly women-run craft beer brewery tour company. Portland, or know as Beervana to some, is home to 55 breweries within its borders, and is truly a beer-lover's paradise. On my tour we made stops at Rogue Ales & Spirits, Laurelwood Pubic House & Brewery, Widmer Brothers Brewery and Sidecar Bar, where I had the chance to sit down over a pint with the founder and owner of Brewvana, Ashley Rose Salvitti. While in Portland, I stayed at the Tiny House Hotel, a hotel made up of, you guessed it, tiny houses. In the next portion of my video guide I give a tour of my "crib" to show what it's like to live and stay in a tiny house. Then, in an effort to get a chance to experience the famed brunch scene in Portland, I stopped in at The Tin Shed Garden Cafe, located down the street from where I was staying in the New Alberta Arts District. In the interest of learning more about food, I headed to the downtown location of the Portland Farmers Market, located in a beautiful stretch of downtown Portland. Here, I got a tour of the grounds with Mona Johnson, then had the opportunity to meet up with some of the vendors, including Matt Choi of Choi's Kimchi Company, and famed chef and artisanal pickle impresario, David Barber of Picklopolis and Bingo! Sandwiches. In need of a little peace and serenity, I then visited the Lan Su Chinese Garden, a peaceful and beautiful oasis in an otherwise busy and hectic part of downtown. When visiting Portland, there's no reason to spend all your time in the city, especially with so much to do outside the city limits. The next day I took a road trip with local Matthew Domingo to explore the Columbia River Gorge and the numerous trails and waterfalls just off the road you can check out. Then, to wrap things up, we stopped in at Hood River Organic near the riverside town of Hood River, an organic orchard and farm run by East Coast ex-pat Dan Thall, who gave us a tour of his land. Once the day ended we then headed out to happy hour at Solera Brewery in the imposing shadow of Mount Hood and then into town for a dinner featuring mushroom pizza with mushrooms Dan had grown and recently delivered to the restaurant.

• published: 25 Jun 2014
• views: 3252

Megan McCormick ventures into the countries on the Arabian Gulf – Kuwait, United Arab Emirates and Oman – an area of ancient of kingdoms that’s synonymous with oil but still one of the most misunderstood areas of the entire world. Megan’s journey begins in the oil fields of Kuwait where she witnesses the devastation caused by the Iraqi invasion of 1990. As the army retreated under the Allied bombardment, Desert Storm, it set alight to dozens of oil fields causing an environmental catastrophe. Visiting its capital, Kuwait City, she finds that the superficial scars of the war have healed; in the city’s souks traditional Arab life continues. However, a meeting with a Kuwaiti prisoner of war on the festive Liberation Day (26 February) reveals that there are still hundreds of Kuwaitis who have never been released by the Iraqi regime. Megan visits the Bergen oil field, half an hour south of the city, to view the production of the world’s most important, yet most vexed, commodity. Her gaze turns from the international to the local when she accepts an invite to stay with a Kuwaiti family in a Bedouin camp in the desert. This is a spring tradition that many Kuwaitis hold dear – although nowadays their tents come with all the mod-cons like electricity and bathrooms! With a half-hour flight across the deserts of Saudi Arabia, Megan finds herself moving rapidly into the future in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. She checks into the world’s only seven star hotel, the Burj Al Arab, which dominates the city’s skyline with its dhow sail-like shape. From here she explores the high-tech excitement Dubai has to offer: the Wild Waddy water park and the Palm Sails project – a palm-shaped man-made island offering premier residential and resort living. For a taste of the traditional among the jet-set ambience of this city she visits one of its 34 malls where she tries on the ‘abayya’ veil worn by Muslim women. Two hours along the coast Megan arrives in Abu Dhabi, the country’s capital and the business centre of the Gulf. She visits Women She Zone mall, the world’s first female-only shopping centre, where women can be themselves in this male-dominated society. With 95 per cent of UAE desert, the inhabitants have found novel ways of incorporating into their lives. Megan tries her hand at golf in the sand but finds that she’s far better-off driving across it in a 4-wheel drive with Offroad Emirates. The company offers tours around the magnificent dunes of the Liwa Oasis on the edge of the aptly named ‘Empty Quarter’ – just a million square miles of sand. To find out just how rich this country is, Megan goes to meet the nephew of its president, Sheikh Hamed. This flamboyant sheik’s car collection includes a giant custom-made Dodge pickup truck and probably the world’s biggest motor home; each tyre is three metres high, is made of 1.5 tonnes of rubber and costs $16,000! She travels across the border into Oman and discovers one of the hidden jewels of the Gulf, a country far more immersed in its heritage than its neighbours. She visits the port city Muscat, home to the most authentic souk in the whole of Arabia. Here she wanders through a living embodiment of traditional Islamic life where you can buy abbayas, silver, gold, spices, flowers and much more. A trip to the Sultan Kabuz Grand Mosque leaves Megan higher than a flying carpet; this monumental building is made of graceful white marble and houses the largest chandelier and carpet in the world. Leaving the city behind her, Megan tries her hand at cattle shopping in Nizwa before getting out into Oman’s beautiful natural surroundings. She treks down a mountain called Wadi Bani Khalid in the Hajar mountains, an area that sees water year-round – a precious commodity in this desert country – with a guide from Nomadic Explorer. For a further dose of tradition, Megan travels to Sur on the easternmost point of Arabia to watch the dhow ships being built. The builders don’t use plans, instead they do it all by eye and it works! People come here from all over the Gulf to buy a ship. Then it’s back for a stop at the luxurious Al-Bustan Palace in Muscat for a night of rest before Megan embarks on the final leg of her journey to the south of the country. She flies to the town of Salah, near the Yemeni border, home to the biblical perfume Frankincense. Megan strikes a great bargain in a perfume souk for the divine incense before going to the only place in the world where trees produce this scent. She meets Musalem, one of the lucky few allowed to harvest this precious commodity that has brought wealth to Oman for centuries. The next day Megan visits Job’s tomb, a local man whose story is revered by Jews, Christians and Muslims alike, before setting off into the desert for a last night with a Bedouin guide.

• published: 27 Jun 2014
• views: 43

Arches National Park has only one entrance which is located about 4 miles north of Moab Along the US191, there is a deviation, and the road begins to climb with a series of switchbacks up to the Visitor Center. Arches National Park is a 'protected area of the United States that preserves over 2,000 natural sandstone arches, including the world-famous Delicate Arch. The first viewpoint you meet after the Visitor Center is to Park Avenue. From here you can observe very high red rocks that resemble the skyscrapers of New York, hence the name of Park Avenue. We move to the next viewpoint, the La Sal Mountain Viewpoint. From here we begin to understand how big the park. Also you can see other rock characteristics conformations We reach now, one of the most famous attractions of the park, once again it will not be an arc but a curiously shaped rock that seems about to fall off a spike, we are at Balanced Rock. The total height of Balanced Rock is about 39 meters of which only the rock that rests on the base measures approximately 17 meters. By walking around you can see how the perspective and the effect "fall" changes depending on the angle in which you look. A few years ago, Balanced Rock had a companion, a lot like rock, but much smaller, unfortunately fell during the winter 1975/1976. Immediately after the Balanced Rock is the Windows Section where you can see up close the first string. We head to the North and the South Window and then to Turret Arch. From the parking lot we see the Double Arch. From the Fiery Furnace viewpoint we observe this magnificent natural labyrinth between the rocks. The visit to this site is limited and it takes a ranger as a guide. As a last stop in Arches National Park we go to the Delicate Arch Viewpoint Delicate Arch is the symbol of the state of Utah. We would have preferred to get as close as possible to the arc, instead we observe it from a mile away, seeing him so from a broader perspective and equally spectacular

• published: 29 Jun 2016
• views: 13978