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Park City, Utah and the Sundance Film Festival

If you live in Park City, you're used to the Sundance Film Festival taking over your town for ten days in mid-January. You've adjusted to the tsunami of movie stars and executives who fly in from LA and New York during the first weekend. You know you can't get a room for an out of town friend. The bumper-to-bumper rush hour is as bad as downtown LA. If you want a table at Zoom, the Blind Dog Grill, Riverhorse Cafe, Grappa, or even the Eating Establishment, you'd have to make a reservation months in advance. In Park City every table will be taken by a movie star, writer, director, studio executive, agent, or a manager who's tryin g to grab a quick bite to eat before rushing off to their next meeting or movie. And if all the tables aren't reserved by individuals, then the whole restaurant will be booked for a private party. After its premiere every film has a party. The smaller films have modest get-togethers, while the better funded movies throw big, n...

Boot Camp at HALL Wines in Napa, California

Many states in the U.S. have developed premium grape growing areas: the Ohio River Valley, Oregon's Willamette and Columbia Valleys, Washington State's Walla Walla and Yakim Valleys, the Hudson River Valley, and Napa Valley in California, to name but a few. If you love wine, there is no greater pleasure than taking a trip to a winery and sampling the wine where it is made. At a few wineries you can do more than just have a glass of wine. You can go behind the scenes and learn how wine is made. In California , Wine Bo ot Camp has 1-day workshops in Napa , Sonoma , and Paso Robles. Grape Camp offers a Sonoma Wine Country experience that follows the grapes "from the vineyard to the bottle." In New York's Niagara-on-the-Lake, Pel ler Estates hosts weekend boot camps that also teach wine-food pairings. For wine lovers with ample resources, Beautiful Places can provide a more private setting where you can stay in a villa in the middle of a Napa Valley vineyar...

A Trifecta Win at London's Heathrow Aiport

Re cently I had the opportunity to experience the unique partnership between British Airways , Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport, and Sofitel's new London-Heathrow Hotel. When I flew to Heathrow from Los Angeles. I booked an overnight flight. British Airways offers its Club World (business class) passengers a reclining seat with a privacy partition. After a full-course meal, I turned the seat into a bed, enjoyed a night-cap, turned off the light, and went to sleep. When we landed at Heathrow, I was refreshed by a good night's sleep and a proper English breakfast of a sausage roll and tea. British Airways is the exclusive tenant of Heathrow's Terminal 5. In designing the te rminal, BA wanted to create a flagship experience that would highlight the English tradition of service and comfort. The opening of the terminal complimented upgrades in the long-haul British Airways fleet. Terminal 5's opening in March, 2008 was marred by numerous, widely publicized problems . Desig...