Travel briefs

In-room fitness

NEW YORK - It's easy to fall out of exercise routines when you're traveling. After a long day of meetings or sightseeing, by the time you get to your room, you may not feel like going to the hotel gym.

But now some hotels will bring the gym to you, delivering equipment or even personal trainers to individual rooms, just like they would send up a meal or an extra pillow.

At certain Hilton hotels, beginning Feb. 1, guests can book a trainer to come to their room. The hourlong sessions average about $68; the trainers are supplied by Bally Total Fitness health clubs. (To find out if the Hilton you are headed for is part of the program, call 800-445-8667 or visit www.hilton.com.)

Hilton also offers in-room fitness kits available upon request from the front desk. The mini-gyms include a yoga mat, elastic bands and resistance tubes, hand-weights and a training guide. The kits are complimentary but must be returned before checkout.

Health clubs at many Marriotts are already open 24 hours a day, but guests who prefer to work out in privacy can order one of three new fitness options to their rooms beginning in late January, at no cost. BodyRev, a portable exercise device and video routine, provides a full-body aerobic workout in 15 minutes. A "Traveling Trainer" kit includes resistance tubes and an instruction guide. The BodyWedge21 program has 21 exercises printed on a large foam wedge to work muscles from abs to triceps.

At Holiday Inn's Wall Street hotel, guests can have stationary bikes or stair-climbing machines delivered to their rooms upon request.

Westin Hotels & Resorts has added new equipment to many of their fitness centers, but they offer an in-room program as well, in partnership with Reebok. Guests can tune into a workout on Westin's custom TV channel that includes yoga as well as Pilates exercises, which strengthen muscles and improve flexibility. No equipment is necessary; the Westin routine is designed to be done in bed.

By March, Westin is also planning to have two guest rooms in each hotel outfitted with fitness gear. Westin's sister hotel chain, Sheraton, also plans to test special fitness rooms at some of its hotels in the near future.

Adventure planner

NEW YORK - What's the best month to climb Mount Fuji? When is Antarctica accessible? Where can you go skiing in the summer?

For the answers to these and many other questions as you plan your journeys for 2005, consult the February issue of Men's Journal. The magazine features an adventure travel planner, organized by month.

In February, you can watch migrating whales in Baja. March is a good time to catch bonefish in the Bahamas. Go whitewater rafting in April from Asheville, N.C., on the Nolichucky River. In May, take a tour of a Madagascar rain forest to glimpse lemurs.

Go skiing at Whistler in British Columbia in June, and in New Zealand in August. In July, climb Mount Fuji. September is a good time to mountain-bike the trails around the Nebraska National Forest. October is truffle season in Italy; in November the snow starts falling at some resorts in Colorado, and December is prime kite-surfing weather in the Dominican Republic - as well as the window of opportunity for those intent on visiting Antarctica.

And if you're planning ahead to 2006 already, next January would be a good time to do some climbing in Red Rock Canyon, Nev.

Winter events

NEW YORK - Here are some events and activities from around the country to help you enjoy the snow.

-Maine's annual International Snowmobile Festival will be held from Feb. 4-6 between the communities of Madawaska in northern Maine and Edmundston, New Brunswick. The event draws thousands of snowmobilers annually from throughout Canada and the United States. For $35, snowmobilers get a pass that allows them to ride on both sides of the border for three days. For details, visit www.isfm.com or call (207) 728-7000.

-In New Hampshire's Mount Washington Valley, guided skiing and snowshoeing nature tours are held every Friday and Saturday at 10 a.m. throughout winter at the Bear Notch Center in Bartlett (603-374-2277). Also Friday mornings at 10 am., snow rangers from the White Mountain National Forest lead a trip down a ski trail (603-466-3326).

-The Adirondacks Regional Tourism Council in upstate New York is promoting snowshoeing safety as well as local snowshoeing adventures. For example, it's important to bring water on winter hikes in an insulated container so it doesn't freeze. If you're going on a long hike, bring a nylon cord and extra binding material in case an emergency snowshoe repair is needed, advises Rick Kovacs, a licensed guide with Packbasket Adventures in Wanakena, N.Y. (www.PackbasketAdventures.com).

Places to snowshoe in the Adirondacks include the Friends Lake Inn Snowshoe Center in Chestertown (www.FriendsLake.com); the Verizon Sports Complex in Lake Placid (www.orda.org); Garnet Hill Cross-Country Ski Center in North River (www.Garnet-Hill.com); Lapland Lake Cross-Country Ski Center in Northville (www.LaplandLake.com); Robert Moses State Park in Massena (315-769-8663); and Point Au Roche Park in Beekmantown (518-563-0369).

-Colorado will host a sled-dog competition, Feb. 5-6 in Kremmling (877-453-5579); a winter carnival Feb. 9 to 13 in Steamboat Springs (www.sswsc.org); a snowshoe competition with races for all skill levels, including children, in Beaver Creek on Feb. 20 (970-845-9090); an ice-carving festival, Feb. 11 to 20 (970-689-9795); an ice-fishing derby, Feb. 12 and 13, in Leadville on Twin Lakes (719-486-3929); and a festival to observe the migration of snow geese, Feb. 25 to 26, in Lamar, www.lamarchamber.com.

-A new edition of Claire Walter's "Snowshoeing in Colorado" (Fulcrum Publishing, $18.95) includes recommendations on the latest gear; describes 182 easy-access snowshoeing trails near Front Range communities and popular mountain resort towns, and lists guided snowshoe tours, races and even dog-friendly trails.

-In Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley, a new Snowboard School and three new snow-tubing slides have opened at Blue Mountain Ski Area, which also has ski trails for both black-diamond and beginning skiers. Bear Creek Ski & Recreation Area also offers 14 trails of skiing, snowboarding and snow-tubing. The area is just 45 miles north of Philadelphia and 90 miles west of New York City. The local Convention & Visitors Bureau is offering Ski & Stay packages ranging in price from $55 to $109 a person, including breakfast and lift tickets at Blue Mountain or Bear Creek. Call (800) 747-0561 for details.

Powwows

VENTURA, Calif. - If you're interested in American Indian culture, consider attending a powwow or tribal cultural festival this year.

MotorHome magazine's February issue lists 14 of them around the country, including the Circle of Hope Ozark Regional Intertribal Pow Wow in West Plains, Mo., planned for Feb. 25 to 26; the Chambers Farm Spring Pow Wow in Fort McCoy, Fla., scheduled for April 1 to 3; the Gathering of Nations Pow Wow, in Albuquerque, N.M., April 28 to 30; and the Red Earth Native American Cultural Festival, June 3 to 5, in Oklahoma City.

To find a festival near you, the magazine also recommends searching several Web sites that list hundreds of other gatherings showcasing Indian culture. They are www.powwow-power.com; www.whisperingwind.com; www.gatheringofnations.com and www.indiancountry.com.

Snow report

BOULDER, Colo. - If you need to know about the snow, there's a new free service that will get you the latest on where the best powder is around North America.

The reports are provided as text messages delivered to cell phones. To register, log on to www.skimag.com or www.skiingmag.com. Options for customizing your reports include new snow alerts, weekend forecasts, type of snow, base inches, and percentage of snowmaking at any given resort.

Over 475 resorts in North America are participating in the service, which is a partnership between Mountain Sports Media, publisher of Ski and Skiing magazines and other snow sports information, and RubberSNOW.com, which distributes ski and snow reports to mobile phone users.

Fish and chips

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - You don't have to go to England to get great fish and chips.

Coastal Living's January-February issue recommends five restaurants around the United States where a dish of french fries and battered fish is served up just right.

They are Seagrove Village Market Cafe, 3004 South Highway 395, in Seagrove Beach, Fla.; Chinook's at Salmon Bay, 1900 W. Nickerson St., in Seattle; A Salt & Battery, at 112 Greenwich Ave., and also 80 Second Ave. in New York; The Lucia Lodge, 62400 Highway 1, Big Sur, Calif.; and Alexander's Fish, Chicken & Chips, with two locations in Maui, Hawaii, at 1913 South Kihei Road, Kihei, and 840 Wainee St., Lahaina Square, Lahaina.

Paris tourism

PARIS - Tourism to Paris jumped by about 2 percent in 2004, thanks in part to a rebound in visitors from the United States, according to the French capital's Tourism Office.

About 25 million people visited the City of Light in 2004, about 500,000 more than in 2003, which was a tough year for European tourism, the office said.

The numbers of visitors to Europe plunged after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Travel remained low throughout 2002 and part of 2003 because of the Iraq war and outbreaks of the deadly SARS virus. In addition, France received some negative publicity in the United States because of its opposition to U.S. military involvement in Iraq.

But 2004 looks like it was a transition to better times, said Paul Rolls, the Tourism Office's general director.

Americans were the most represented tourists in Paris, with 1.23 million visitors, up 10.7 percent from the year earlier, the tourism board said.

The British were next, with slightly fewer than 1.2 million visitors, up about 2 percent from 2003. Italians came third, with 649,000 visitors, an increase of about 12 percent.

Travel class

CHESAPEAKE, Va. - The walls in Donald Gresham's classroom are plastered with posters of exotic locales, including Aruba, Vienna and Maui. Eight clocks set for different time zones surround a giant world map. Baggage-claim tags are used as bathroom passes, and desks bear airplane seat numbers - including "window seat" designations.

The two-year course on travel and tourism - now taught at four of Chesapeake's six high schools - teaches Deep Creek High School students the basics of the travel industry, from income flow to airport name abbreviations. Students also learn business skills, such as personnel issues, customer relations and job-interviewing techniques.

The course is one of several career-oriented classes the school now offers to help students learn real-life skills.

Schools on the peninsula and in northern Virginia are also offering travel and tourism classes.

The course, now in its sixth year, reinforces writing, math and geography. Gresham said he interviewed travel experts who begged him to include geography in the curriculum. The lessons appear to be working - after the recent tsunami in Asia and Africa, Gresham's students easily found Sri Lanka on a map.

Last week, a second-year class learned airline definitions such as "baggage allowance" and "cash-refund notice." The students were then assigned to set up a two-day trip for two people, flying out of Norfolk to anywhere in the United States and back, arranging flight and hotel accommodations. The students worked in pairs and used the Internet to find prices, accommodations and activities.

"It's a fun class," senior Sarah Kennedy said.