Topdeck Travel Blog

25. Surf in the Pacific Ocean

Whether you’re a keen surfer or not, you may know that some of the best surfing locations in the world can be found somewhere along a Pacific Ocean shoreline. Put your surfboard under your arm and skateboard to Australia, the United States, Indonesia, Peru, El Salvador, or any of the Pacific Islands and you’ll be sure to find those gnarly, far out heavies that will make you want to hang ten all day, everyday.

Covering one third of the total surface area of Earth, the Pacific Ocean is big. It’s so big that even if all the continents of the world were put together, it would still cover more surface area. Nice try, continents!

The Ocean was originally named ‘Mar del Sur’, or ‘Southern Sea’, by Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa however it was Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan who sailed into the apparent ‘calm waters’, naming it ‘’Mar Pacífico’, or ‘Pacific Ocean’. Whether Balboa or Magellan had time to wax their boards and go for a paddle, we will never know.

In Australia, surfing hot spots can be found up and down the East Coast of the country with Sydney, Byron Bay and the Gold Coast being amongst the most popular locations. The United States are lucky to have the Californian coast and Hawaii - the home of surfing, to attract surf-lovers from around the world. The Pacific Islands and South America also host some amazing surf spots and are popular locations for many dudes and dudettes. This year the ASP World Championship is hosting surfing competitions at a variety of Pacific Ocean locations including the Gold Coast (Australia), Tavarua & Namotu (Fiji), Bali (Indonesia), California and Hawaii (USA). If you’re looking for the best surfing spots, just follow these guys!

Whether or not surfing is on your personal bucket list, the Pacific Ocean coastlines boast some of the world’s best beaches and are definitely worth seeing.

Topdeck Top Tip: If you’re a beginner, don’t forget to lay on the sunscreen. You might feel cool and refreshed by being in the water but the sun still packs a punch! It might also be worth getting to know your surf spot, including any possible dangers, before jumping into the water.

Kelly Slater and co. riding some tubes at a surf competition in Fiji: www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFTOrFvnm8s

Can’t make it to the beach? Here’s 4 hours of surf waves to make you feel like you’re there: www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRrsgqY1IAw

Get soaked by Niagara Falls

Not sure about the hype surrounding Niagara Falls? Treat yourself to a little taster. Next time you turn your kitchen sink tap, turn it as far as it can possibly go until the water is pouring out exceedingly fast. Put on a hooded raincoat, get yourself as close to the running water as possible so water is splashing your face, hold for 10 seconds, stop, realise what you’re doing is absolutely ridiculous and take off your raincoat.

Perhaps one of the poorest comparisons ever made to the experience you’ll have at Niagara Falls, the above might be as close as you’ll come to experiencing the excitement in your own home.

In order of size, the Niagara Falls are made up of three waterfalls: the Horseshoe Falls, the American Falls and the Bridal Veil Falls which lie on the international border of the United States and Canada. Unlike the above comparison, the three falls combined are quite impressive, and they have the numbers to prove it.

· Approx. 168,000 cubic metres flow from the Falls every minute.

· This per-minute flow is enough water to fill over 50 Olympic sized swimming pools.

· The largest of the three, the Horseshoe Fall, is roughly 57 metres in height and 670 metres wide.

· The fastest rapids at the Fall have been recorded to reach 68mph or 109 kph.

OK, enough with the numbers, we know why you’re here. You want to know if anyone has ridden down the falls in a barrel! What’s the point of a waterfall if nobody goes down it in a barrel, right? Well, wouldn’t you know it, there are a group of daredevils, stuntmen and women who have at one point taken the life threatening plunge. In 1960, a 7 year old child was involved in a boating accident and was swept over the falls. Amazingly, he survived with minor injuries and was the first person to survive after going over without any protection. Barrels aside, walking across the Falls on a tightrope is also an exciting prospect for stuntmen. See the video at the end of this!

The future of the Falls is a concerning issue as each year the Falls erode by an estimated 1 foot or 30 centimetres per year. At this current rate of erosion it’s possible that in 50,000 years the Falls will be transformed into a less thunderous flowing river. Nevertheless, for now the Falls are incredibly thunderous and an experience that must be had when on any North American tour.

The best way to see the Falls is to take a ‘Maid of the Mist’ tour, an inclusion on all Topdeck North American tours visiting Niagara Falls. The Maid of the Mist tour is North America’s oldest tourist attraction and has transported millions of passengers to get up close and personal to the waterfall since 1846. Getting soaked will never have felt so exciting, and it will make you look back to the time you had your face next to your kitchen tap and wonder what on earth you were thinking…

Tightrope Walker Nik Wallenda: www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpDquK_2Rqg

Maid of the Mist boat tour: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ij7ggJsg4vc

23. Kiss the Blarney stone

Ever dreamed of puckering up and kissing Winston Churchill on the lips? Hopefully not, but hey, whatever floats your boat! Without grave digging (and really, who still does that in 2013?), the closest you could come to your fantasy is kissing the Blarney stone. At the same time you’d be kissing the same spot which millions of people have placed their lips on - all with the goal of obtaining the famous Irish ‘gift-of-the-gab’.

The origins of this magical stone are murky. The best (and therefore most true) story is that Cormac McCarthy, the 12^th century King of Munster, saved a witch from drowning so she awarded him the powerful stone, which he kept in his stronghold of Blarney Castle - where it remains today. After the witch empowered the stone, she (obviously) gathered the local leprechauns and requested they tell all the good people of County Cork that anyone who had the courage to kiss her ‘Stone of Eloquence’ would be rewarded with "the eternal gift of gab.”

Eight centuries later, around 300,000 people each year make the trip for a quick smooch with the rock, which is located in the beautiful grounds of Blarney Castle in the south of Ireland. Cormac McCarthy did not make getting to his prized stone an easy task. Firstly, you have to climb up a narrow and spiralling rock staircase to get to the top of his tower. Secondly, the stone is wedged deep underneath a battlement. In days gone by, people were held upside-down by their heels in order to reach the stone. With dozens of them falling to their deaths, the clever people at Blarney Castle have developed a much safer method! You approach the stone, lie on your back, slide backwards and pucker up. And not to worry, a little Irish man will be holding your legs tightly.

No one knows the full amount of articulate and eloquent politicians, actors, literary giants, and business and religious leaders, who owe some, or perhaps all, of their success to the magic of the Blarney stone. Just think, this year you could be kissing the stone, and next year you could be collecting the Nobel Prize for Literature. It’s more or less guaranteed*.

(*not a guarantee).

You can snog the Blarney stone on Topdeck’s Britain & Ireland, Celtic Trail, and Winter Britain & Ireland trips, where we enjoy a ‘Totally Topdeck’ included trip to Blarney Castle.

22. Watch a show on Broadway

Mamma Mia! If you’re in Chicago you’re in the wrong city and if you’re surrounded by Jersey Boys you’re in the wrong borough. Guys and Dolls, get yourself to New York and come to the Cabaret!

As if there isn’t enough to do in New York already, it’s also home to one of the most electrifying entertainment centres in the world – the theatres of Broadway. Broadway is actually a 24km long street running through the entirety of Manhattan and The Bronx, but the name is almost universally associated with the theatre district - encompassing 40 theatres, only four of which are actually located on the street of Broadway.

The 1940s ushered in the golden era of the Broadway musical when Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein combined their skills to create dozens of smash shows. With Rodgers composing the music and Hammerstein writing the lyrics, they created shows such as Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I and The Sound of Music. West Side Story followed not long after, and musicals quickly became big business in the Big Apple.

As the famous line from Cabaret goes: "Money makes the world go round”, but that’s not to say that any musical showing on Broadway is guaranteed to rake in the big bucks. It’s a cutthroat industry, and during the past 50 years, 75% of Broadway musicals have failed to make a return.

Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber, another famous musical writing team, combined to create Jesus Christ Superstar in 1970, one of the first examples of a rock opera. Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera opened on Broadway in 1988 and you can still see it today, over ten and a half thousand performances later!

Current hot tickets on Broadway include Kinky Boots, Wicked, the Book of Mormon, and Avenue Q, but with 40 theatres and fierce competition between shows, it’s a safe bet that you’ll have a memorable evening whatever you see. That’s showbiz, kids!

Topdeck Top Tip: You can bag a discount between 25 to 50% on Broadway tickets by lining up for same-day tickets at the two TKTS kiosks in Manhattan. One is in Times Square at 47^th Street and Broadway, and the other is in the Financial District at the corner of Front and John Streets. The most popular shows are unlikely to be available, but tickets may be released several times a day, so it's still possible to grab great seats by stopping by at 6 or 7pm when queues are shortest.

21. Touch the Berlin Wall

It’s April 1945 and Berlin is a long way from the “utopian” capital of the world Adolf Hitler had planned. Hundreds of thousands of Russian troops surround the bombed-out city preparing for a final attack on the Nazis, which has only women, children, pensioners, and a handful of soldiers left to defend it. Hitler and his wife Eva Braun leave their bunker rarely, but when they do they close the curtains in their Mercedes-Benz to avoid seeing the reality of their shattered city. That same month, Hitler and Braun commit suicide and Berlin falls to the Russians. The Second World War is over - 60 million people have died, and Berlin is left devastated.

Two months later, three of the most important men in the world meet to discuss the future of Europe - British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, US President Harry Truman and Soviet leader Josef Stalin. Over a couple of cigars, they agree to slice Germany into four quarters, each giving themselves (along with France) a piece of a very lucrative pie.

Crucially this story (pay attention here!), Berlin, as well as Germany, was split into four zones. The location of the city is bang in the middle of Soviet-controlled East Germany. This means that the French, American, and British sectors of Berlin were tiny islands of capitalism surrounded by a sea of communism. Check out where Berlin is in the diagram below -

The incredible events which followed are best explained in a timeline:

1948 – Conflict begins between the Soviets and the Allies regarding reconstruction and a new German currency. In response, the Soviets block off West Berlin, trapping its two million residents in their own city. The only way in and out of West Berlin is by air, and the Allies airlift in thousands of tonnes of food and fuel.

1950 – Tensions between the Soviets and Allies worsen – the name “The Cold War” is coined to describe the frosty relationship. West Berlin is prospering under capitalism, while life under communism in the East is grim. Thousands of residents begin moving to the West in search of more money and a better life.

1955 – By this time millions had defected to the West - mainly skilled workers and intellectuals (a so-called ‘brain drain’). In response, restrictions of movement between the two sides of the city increase.

1961 – On the 13^th August a barbed-wire barrier was erected overnight between East and West Berlin. The following morning, families wake up separated, mothers split from their children, and workers cut off from their jobs. A few days later, a 91 mile concrete block wall is built. Residents of East were no longer allowed to enter the West - the "Iron Curtain" had fallen.

1963 – American President John F. Kennedy visits West Berlin and declares “"Ich bin ein Berliner" – a much needed morale boost to the residents. The Americans pump millions of dollars in aid into West Berlin. Attempts to flee into the West increase and the Russian guards at the wall are ordered to “shoot to kill”. It is estimated that approximately 5,000 people successfully made it to the West, however, up to 75,000 others were caught and imprisoned, and around 1,000 killed (the last person was shot in 1989).

1987 – Nearly fifteen years have passed since the wall was built when US President Ronald Reagan delivers a famous speech in front of the Brandenburg Gate. 25,000 Berliners cheered as he said: "General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalisation - come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall."

1989 - An announcement from the East German government that they’d start granting exit visas to anyone who wanted to go to the West was misinterpreted as meaning the border was now open. News spread rapidly and, within hours, thousands of Germans ran to the wall and starting smashing sections down with tools. East German border guards were unable to stop the rush of people to the wall. Thousands of families and friends are reunited after nearly three decades apart.

After the devastation of the Second World War and the segregation of the Cold War, Berlin has reinvented itself beyond belief since the fall of the wall. It’s now one of the most liberal, tolerant, safe, and hedonistic cities in the world, and one of the best travel destinations in the world. As you walk around this modern, thriving city, there are constant reminders of its unenviable recent history – a sprawling Holocaust memorial, the headquarters of the dreaded S.S. (now a fascinating free museum), and surviving sections of the hated Berlin Wall.