Travel briefs
The European Travel Commission is inviting travelers to unleash their inner Fassbinder, Fellini and Truffaut.
The ETC is sponsoring a "You and Europe'' contest for anyone who comes back from Europe with video footage and a story to tell. Upload your film at www.visiteurope.com, where it will be seen by the public and by the contest's judges. Videos can be submitted through Sept. 30, after which the judges will pick one filmmaker to win a trip to Europe for two.
Yankee magazine's new 2008 Special Travel Guide includes a feature on New England's five best diners. The list includes the Modern Diner, 364 East Ave., Pawtucket, R.I., (401) 726-8390, housed in a 1941 stainless steel railcar-style building. It was the first diner named to the National Register of Historic Places. The other four diners on Yankee's list are Kelly's Diner, 674 Broadway, Somerville, Mass., (617) 623-8102; Capitol Diner, 431 Union St., Lynn, Mass., (781) 595-9314; Libby's Blue Line Diner, Route 7, Colchester, Vt., (802) 655-0343; A1 Diner, 3 Bridge St., Gardiner, Maine, (207) 582-4804. For more classic New England diners, visit http://YankeeMagazine.com/10Things.
A new hotel in New York and a new resort in Florida have big celebrity names behind them.
In the Tribeca section of Manhattan, the Greenwich Hotel -- owned by actor-director Robert DeNiro and three partners -- opened last month at 377 Greenwich St. The eight-story luxury hotel has 88 rooms, with no two alike; 13 suites; a spa, restaurant and 2,500-square-foot penthouse.
Singer Gloria Estefan is opening the Costa d'Este Beach Resort in June in Vero Beach, Fla. The oceanside resort has 94 rooms, a spa and restaurant. Estefan and her husband own four other restaurants.
The Nantucket Shipwreck & Lifesaving Museum is scheduled to reopen in July after a $3 million renovation. The museum will offer new exhibits, stories of disasters and rescues at sea and various artifacts.
More than 1,200 boats a day once traveled Nantucket's shipping lanes -- without benefit of today's technology. The area was known as the "graveyard of the Atlantic'' because more than 700 shipwrecks took place in the surrounding waters.
The museum was formerly known as the Nantucket Life-Saving Museum. It will be open July 1 to Columbus Day. Details at www.nantucketshipwreck.org.
A new Civil War tour of Washington includes a visit to the newly restored Lincoln Cottage, Abe Lincoln's summer retreat on the campus of the U.S. Armed Forces Retirement Home.
The three-hour tour, "Civil War Washington: Soldiers and Citizens," will be introduced on Memorial Day weekend. It's sponsored by Washington Walks and Cultural Tourism DC. The tour will be offered at 9:30 a.m. on six Saturdays: May 24 and 31, and June 7, 14, 21 and 28 at a cost of $42 a person. Other stops on the tour include the Peterson House, where Lincoln was taken after being shot.
Other Washington Walks tours include "Before Harlem, There Was U Street," "Capital Hauntings," "Capitol Hill," "Embassy Row," "Georgetown," "Memorials by Moonlight," "Moveable Feast: A Taste of DC," and "Duke Ellington's DC."
Details at www.washingtonwalks.com.
