Travel Briefs

On Rapa Nui, aka Easter Island, the Tapati festival will take place Feb. 1-15, 2014. The festival has competitions based on ancient sports, which include a triathlon and horse racing. In one competition, called Haka Pei, participants slide down Easter Island’s steepest hill on banana tree trunks. There also are parades, music and dancing.

Contact the Chilean tourism board (phone 56 2 731 8336, www.chile.travel). Flights to the island are limited, so book early.

In South Korea in April, two central inland region tour trains of Korail began providing access to the mountain areas of Chungcheongbuk-do, Gangwon-do and Gyeongsangbuk-do, formerly accessible only by twisting, sometimes unpaved roads. Purchase tickets on site or at www.korail.com/en.

The O train runs a 159-mile, circular, 4-hour 50-minute route, departing Seoul four times a day and stopping at 13 stations, including Jecheon, Yeongju and Taebaek. It carries 205 passengers and has an observation car and a café. Round-trip tickets cost KRW62,900 (near $57). Partial-route tickets are...

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In Barbados, visitors to the Mount Gay Rum distillery (Spring Garden Highway, Bridgetown; phone 246 425 8757) may take a 45-minute tour of the facility that includes a tasting session. 

Available 9 a.m.-3:45 p.m. Mon.-Fri. Admission costs $10 (includes tour) or, (advance booking required) including lunch and transport from Bridgetown hotels, $50.

Discovered in 1835 in Kent, England, the Shell Grotto (Grotto Hill, Margate, Kent, CT9 2BU, U.K.; phone 08143 220008) is a 70-foot-long subterranean passageway whose walls and ceiling are covered with mosaics made of seashells, at least 4.6 million of them. When was it created? By whom? And why? It remains a mystery.

Five minutes’ walk from Margate’s seafront (20 minutes from Margate Station), the grotto is open 10-5 daily from Good Friday to Halloween and 11-4 weekends only from Nov. 1 to Palm Sunday. Closed Dec. 25 & Jan. 1. £3 (near $5) adult, £2.50 senior or student, £8...

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The home of a 19th-century cartoonist and his family has reopened in London after a 3-year renovation. A middle-class townhouse of the period, Linley Sambourne House was the home of the Punch magazine illustrator Edward Linley Sambourne from 1875.

The home is crammed full of period artifacts, including porcelain, etchings and statuettes. Visitors are taken around the house by a costumed actor who plays the part of Mrs. Sambourne, their son or the domestic maid.

The house is located behind the stores of Kensington High Street, a 2-minute walk from the Commonwealth Institute,...

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Four people were killed when a 98-foot section of a departure lounge roof collapsed in Terminal 2E at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport on May 23 at about 7 a.m.

Concrete dust had been seen coming from the concrete, steel and glass roof about a half hour beforehand, and police were in the process of closing the area.

The new Air France terminal, completed less than a year before in June, was evacuated, and French authorities are contemplating tearing it down. The terminal handled about 60 flights a day.

The central bank of Myanmar and several private banks have begun installing ATMs in preparation for a nationwide network. Currently, the ATMs work only with accounts from Myanmar member-union banks, but the government is negotiating with Visa and MasterCard to bring international banking by mid 2013.

One day into a week-long Mexican Riviera cruise, an engine room fire on Nov. 8 left Carnival Cruise Lines’ Splendor dead in the water. 3,299 passengers and 1,167 crew were left without electricity and, hence, no air-conditioning, hot water or hot food. Toilets backed up. While food was airlifted in, tugboats towed the ship 200 miles to San Diego within three days.

Passengers were offered a full refund and a free future cruise. Anyone booked on any of the nine additional Splendor cruises that were canceled will be refunded and get a 25% discount on a cruise.

Carnival plans to...

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