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At last year’s Clare Tourism Conference in Ennis, Ireland Stephanie met a man who was on a committee that commemorates “Margaret of New Orleans”. Margaret was a real person, born in 1813 in south County Leitrim. Today officials in the county are creating a tourism center around this fact highlighting the area’s connection to both Margaret and the city of New Orleans.
County Leitrim is comprised of mainly rugged countryside with rolling green hills. Margaret left during a time of great hardship. She immigrated to Baltimore, Maryland with her family but her parents died of yellow fever and she and her siblings were orphaned. She later married and moved to New Orleans with her husband but he fell ill and returned home to Ireland to die. She also lost their one year old daughter to sickness.
Having dealt with much personal tragedy, Margaret became interested in New Orleans orphanages. She teamed up with the Sisters of Charity and started to work with the people in the community. She became renowned for her dedication to helping people. Margaret opened several orphanages and started a dairy factory and sold milk throughout the city. She later invested in a bakery. It became the first steam driven bakery in America and grew to be very famous in the South as “Margaret’s Bakery of New Orleans”.
Martin Kenny, a councilor in County Leitrim describes Margaret as a “woman of great substance”. She embodies the story of the human spirit and is a great source of pride in for the Irish. She passed away in her 70’s and received a message from the Pope on her deathbed. She is still remembered by many in America and Ireland today. Those in County Leitrim are anxious to share her story with the world and to highlight her roots in the county.
The Margaret of New Orleans Committee was set up in March of 2008. Members built a replica thatch cottage of her birthplace in Carrigallen, County Leitrim. There is a continued effort to grow the area by using her story as a basis for tourism. Leitrim is not as well developed as Cork and Kerry and has more qualities of old Ireland. It is continually growing and has natural beauty that is also a draw for tourists. Carrigallen recently received visitors from New Orleans through a Daniel Flaherty tour. The tour group was the second to visit the area through the Margaret of New Orleans Tour itinerary.
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CheapOAir.com consistently offers great airfare to destinations worldwide. Currently available is a rate from Dublin to New York for $534 USD. This is a roundtrip fare and includes all taxes. Flights originate out of New York. Flights out of Montreal are $834 USD including all taxes. Washington D.C. to Belfast is $701 USD including all the taxes. Montreal to Belfast is $936 USD. To Aruba there are fares for $418 USD including taxes. New York to Budapest is $641 USD including all the taxes. East coast fares are out of JFK or Newark depending on the airline. LA to Sydney is $804 and Huston to Dubai is under $1000 USD including all the taxes. Houston to New Orleans is $106 dollars including taxes. New York to New Orleans is $250 USD plus taxes. Fares from Washington D.C. to New Orleans are in the same range.
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Weekly prizes are available on travelers411.com. Contestants first have to be a registered user of the site. Scroll down and click on “Contests” forum.
Recent winner Jordan Green from western Massachusetts won a stay in San Francisco.
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The Windsor Court Hotel is located three blocks from the French quarter of New Orleans. It is centrally located especially for those traveling between Houston, Texas and Jacksonville, Florida. It is a quick easy getaway destination in a city with a lot of great things going on.
The hotel is near the Harrahs casino in the middle of the central business district. It is also near the aquarium and the Canal Place shopping district. Guests drive up into a walled courtyard. There is a fountain in the center with the patron Saint George. This is the first hint of the British influenced design of the hotel. The lobby is sleek and modern with fantastic furnishing and a great use of marble throughout. The center of the lobby has a table with the hotel’s signature rose bouquet. Staff will welcome you by name and escort you to your room.
Of the 320 guestrooms 265 are suites that average 800 square feet. There is ample space to spread out in one’s room and many things to do throughout the hotel. The Windsor has a resort like quality in a city setting with world class dining offered on site in the renowned Mobil Four-Star and AAA Four Diamond “Grill Room” restaurant and Polo Lounge. The Polo’s bartender worked at Studio 54 and is famously cited as a “sazerac man”. The Windsor’s Le Salon is a true English tea room and offers afternoon tea.
All linens are 300 count Frette linens. Rooms have either a king sized bed or two doubles. Guestrooms have beautiful views of the Mississippi River with each suite containing a balcony. Guests can sit outside and watch the ships go by with their morning coffee or so do with a cocktail in the lounge later in the evening. The living and bedroom space in each guestroom are separated by beautiful French doors. Each guestroom also has an expansive bathroom.
The Windsor opened in 1984 with the World’s Fair. It was originally built as an extended stay hotel so there are small kitchenettes in each of the rooms with large refrigerators separate from the mini-bar. The hotel is pet friendly. It is preferable that the pet be less than 30 pounds but the staff makes exceptions especially with their many repeat guests. There are no fees for bringing a pet but the hotel does require that you do not leave your pet in the room untended. Pet services are offered including room service and pet sitting.
Art is found throughout the Windsor and guided tours are offered. The hotel has museum quality tapestries, prints, painting and furnishings. The earliest piece is from 1750 but there is range of contemporary artwork as well. The artwork is mostly British including the original Windsor Castle statue. The city has endless activities. There is fantastic jazz in the nearby French quarter, museums throughout the downtown, and the famous St. Louis Cathedral in Jackson Square, shopping in Canal Place and golf, history and many tour operations.
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For more information visit http://www.windsorcourthotel.com
Fun Facts:
Saint George is the patron saint of England but also Aragon, Catalonia, Ethiopia, Georgia, Greece, Lithuania, Palestine, Portugal, Russia, and several cities. He is also the patron saint of many different professions, organizations, and disease sufferers.
Guests Include:
Martin Kenn, County Leitrim Councillor, Leitrim, Ireland.
http://www.leitrimcoco.ie
Martin Reilly, Committee Member, Margaret of New Orleans, County Leitrim, Ireland.
http://www.travelers411.com/forums/member.php?u=543
Sanjay Hathiramani, Vice President, Supplier Relations, CheapOAir.com.
www.cheapoair.com
www.cheapostay.com
David Teich, General Manager, Windsor Court Hotel, New Orleans, Louisiana.
www.windsorcourthotel.com
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Stephanie is a proud member of the Boston chapter of SKAL an international organization comprised of leaders in the travel industry. SKAL works as a friendship organization aimed at making the experience of the traveler the best it can possibly be. It also acts as a global network invested in the travel industry. Hulya Aslantas, the World President for SKAL, is from Istanbul, Turkey and has been a member of the group for thirty three years. She joins “Travel with Stephanie Abrams!” to discuss Swine Flu and the travel industry’s responsibility to promote awareness of health-related issues.
The travel community first learned about swine flu approximately seven months ago. It has since become apparent that both the northern and southern hemispheres are still at risk and there is the possibility that a second wave could develop autumn 2009. It is at this time classified as a pandemic by world health organizations.
Aslantas emphasizes the importance of being proactive. She and other SKAL members are working to educate travelers. SKAL International is working alongside Johnson Diversey, “A leading global provider of commercial cleaning and hygiene solutions”. They have developed a website designed for members of SKAL and the tourism Industry to learn about the latest information related to influenza. The website is www.skalagainstinfluenza.com. It is available in 14 languages and provides useful information about preventative measures that can be taken against influenza. There is a hygiene checklist consisting of important bullet listed headlines. Aslantas states that it is important to be prepared and take precautions.
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For more information visit http://www.skal.org and http://www.skalagainstinfluenza.com
Joe Daniels, President of the National 9/11 Memorial in New York City, joins “Travelers411” to discuss the construction of the memorial at ground zero. Daniels was in the city at the time of the attacks. He was at the North Tower just after Flight 11 had crashed into it and minutes before the second tower was hit. Daniels lives with the memory of watching the towers collapse and he jumped at a chance to participate in a project that would commemorate the events. Many New Yorkers witnessed the attacks in person and even those who watched it happen on television remain shaken today. Daniels says what keeps the project going is remembering how the country and the world came together in the tragedy’s aftermath.
The memorial is on the footprints of where the towers stood. It is on half of the 16 acres of the World Trade Center site. There is now a fixed date for the memorial’s opening, September 11, 2011. The site has been a topic of much controversy but people are now rallying behind the plans for the exhibition. Two large reflecting pools, each the size of the twin towers’ bases, will be placed on the site. These will have the largest manmade waterfalls in the country and the names of the 2,982 victims will be displayed around the pools. The victims are not just those who died at the towers but also on Flight 93 and at the Pentagon. People from 92 different countries lost their lives on September 11, 2001.
A preview site opened September 5, 2009. This includes an exhibition that projects what the memorial will look like when it opens in 2011. People are invited to come to the preview site at ground zero and record a personal story about where they were when 911 happened and what they experienced. Recordings will be mixed with others from around the world and will become a part of the permanent exhibition.
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For more information visit http://www.national911memorial.org
Stephanie says there is a joy in learning and as a parent you engage in many remarkable educational experiences with your child. She says this is even more remarkable when children are responsible for the specific educational exhibition or event. The Paper Clip Project, a Holocaust memorial at the Whitwell Middle School in Whitwell, Tennessee, is an example of this.
Linda Hooper, Principal of the Whitwell Middle School, joins “Travelers411” to discuss the memorial. Whitwell is located just east of Chattanooga, Tennessee and two hours west of Nashville, Tennessee. The project started within the community with the Whitwell Middle School’s committee members. The school district was looking at areas where they needed improvement in 1998 and decided to expand diversity studies. The School Improvement Council at Whitwell decided to focus on the study of the Holocaust.
As the children were doing research in association with the lesson plan one of them discovered that a Jewish man was credited with the invention of the paper clip. He was Norwegian and the children learned that Norwegian Jews wore paperclips on their lapel as a silent protest against Nazism. The class decided to collect six million paperclips in remembrance of the six million Jews who were killed during the Holocaust. It seemed like an overwhelming project at the time. The children began a campaign of letter writing and registered their project with the National Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. A ninety year old Holocaust survivor discovered the project and became committed to helping them reach their goal of obtaining the six million paper clips. The project grew to have input from people around the world.
The exhibition’s show piece is an authentic German transport car. Around this car are eleven million paper clips. There are also memorial exhibits held in the same space. These include Holocaust artifacts, a collection of over three hundred emails received from people on all seven continents, a collection of Holocaust literature, an antique Torah and all sorts of art and sculpture work. People have said that it is an overwhelming experience. Unlike most museum settings visitors are permitted to touch everything.
There is a documentary associated with the project called Paper Clips. The Paper Clip film is currently available on Netflix. Stephanie says that it is serious in its focus but that it is also a joyous film as it illustrates how much impact a group of kids in a small community can have on the rest of the world.
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For more information visit http://www.marionschools.org and http://69.8.250.59
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Fun Facts:
SKAL International has admitted female members since the 1960’s but chapter memberships in the US have only been open to women since the early nineties.
Guests Include:
Hulya Aslantas, President, SKAL International.
www.skalagainstinfluenza.com
www.skal.org
Joe Daniels, President, National 9/11 Memorial, Financial District, NYC.
www.national911memorial.org
Linda M. Hooper, Principal, Whitwell Middle School, Whitwell, TN.
www.marionschools.org
