World's highest hotel opens in Hong Kong 

HONG KONG (AFP) - The world's highest hotel opened its doors in Hong Kong on Tuesday, housed in the city's tallest skyscraper and offering unrivalled panoramic views of the world famous Victoria Harbour.

Towering some 490 metres (1,600 feet) above the bustling, chaotic streets of the Southern Chinese city, the Ritz-Carlton Hotel is making a grand comeback after temporarily closing in 2008.

Visitors peered out of the floor-to-ceiling windows of the 118th floor of the International Commerce Centre, which houses the hotel, for a 360 degree view of the glitzy financial hub and the South China Sea.

"We're opening an iconic hotel which took us about 10 years to build," president and chief operations officer Herve Humler told reporters. "We are taking luxury to new heights in every sense," he added.

The Ritz-Carlton however will likely lose the world's highest hotel title in 2014, according to media reports, when the J-Hotel opens near the top of the over 600-metre Shanghai Tower in mainland China.

The Ritz-Carlton Hong Kong also will be one of the most expensive places to stay in a city already packed with luxury hotels, with the rack rate starting at HK$ 6,000 (US$770) a night for a deluxe room. The presidential suite is going for HK$100,000. 

With 312 guest rooms, the hotel also has one of the largest ballrooms in the city at 930 square metres.

Read Full Article at Yahoo!News/AFP.

Photo Tour: USA Today.

A SENSE OF TRAVEL . . . With Georgia Hesse

Most widely-traveled citizens of these United States enjoy a first-hand familiarity with the classic cultures of Greece and Rome, and many others can converse competently about the sites to be seen and antiquities admired in Egypt, China, India, Thailand, Cambodia. They may know their Minoans, prattle about Persia or muse upon the splendors of the Mughals. But to these enlightened wanderers the world of the Olmecs of Mesoamerica may be as dark as the inside of a stone.

The origins of Olmec civilization stretch back into the shadows of rain forests and swampy lowlands that buried the Mexican states of Vera Cruz and Tabasco. Although widely recognized now as the "mother culture" of Mesoamerica, until only the day before yesterday the Olmecs slept in obscurity, overshone by the eidos of the Mayas, the Aztecs, and even other tribal groups such as the Zapotecs and Toltecs. (The name "Mexico" is derived from the Mexica>Aztec peoples.)

What would our founding fathers have thought had they known they were sharing their New World with contemporaries of Egypt's Queens Hatshepsut and Nefertiti; those who were building traditions when the volcano on Thera (a.k.a. Santorini) destroyed the near-mythical Atlantis and the Phoenicians gave birth to the color purple?

Jefferson, for one, would have burst the pearl buttons off his red waistcoat.

Accomplished travelers always research their destinations in advance, and this month the best place in the world to take a close look at the Olmecs is in the de Young Museum of San Francisco.

Art, it is not only fair but also accurate to say, is our truest introduction to the earliest accomplishments of man. In France's Ardèche region we find the cave paintings of 32,000 years ago (give or take) at Chauvet, discovered as recently as 1994. (But you and I must be content with those at Lescaux, aged only 17,000 years or so; Chauvet is not yet open to the public.)

On the little island of Malta, we may step into the world's only prehistoric temple (so far as is yet known, anyway): the Hypogeum of Ħal-Saflieni, carved underground from the living rock (a mysterious and sensuous phrase) perhaps as long ago as 4000-2500 B.C.E.

But back to the American future. The people known as Olmec flourished from about 1500 to about 400 B.C.E. Earlier cultures had dwelt on this coast (our Bay of Mexico), planting corn as early as 2250 B.C.E. The lowlands, punched up into low hills, ridges, and volcanoes, rose into the Tuxtlas Mountains to the north, where Olmecs constructed their city-temple complexes along a river basin: San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán, then La Venta, Tres Zapotes, and Laguna de los Cerros.

Remnants of an Olmec ballcourt in El Tajin.

Whence came the name Olmec? Nobody knows what they called themselves. Olmec means "rubber people" in Nahuatl, the tongue of the Aztecs, because of an ancient practice of extracting latex from a rubber tree native to the area. Mixed with the juice of a local vine, it metamorphosed into pre-Goodyear rubber as early as 1600 B.C.E.

Ceramic figurine of baby Olmec holding a rubber ball, 1200-800 B.C.E.

But it was their artistry, of course, that first and later distinguished the Olmec civilization and that which causes us to wend our ways to the de Young in Golden Gate Park today. In a region almost entirely devoid of stone but blessed by an efficient river system along the Coatzacoalcos, huge basalt boulders could be rafted from the Tuxtlas to "workshops" at San Lorenzo or La Venta. (This reminds us of the similar usage of the fabled Nile.) 

Hallmarks of the Olmec tradition include, most predominantly, the colossal heads, some weighing as much as 55 tons, plus anthropomorphic creatures of clay, jade, basalt or greenstone, as well as masks, figurines, and rock art.  

Archaeologists on site in La Venta examining a colossal head.

One day in 1869 in a cornfield near Tres Zapotes,"...a worker found the smooth, rounded surface of what he believed to be an iron cauldron. He reported the find to the hacienda owner, who commanded him to dig out the cauldron and bring it to him. Imagine the worker's surprise when he uncovered the colossal visage instead of the rim of the vessel he had expected!" (These words were written by Christopher A. Pool in the de Young catalogue.)

Wow! Zounds! It's reminiscent of that November day in 1922 when English Egyptologist Howard Carter at last breached an underground chamber of the fabled tomb of King Tutankhamun. His patron, Lord Carnarvon, stood by and after a few moments inquired, "Can you see anything?" Struck dumb by amazement at the golden treasure before him, Carter croaked out the words, "Yes, wonderful things." It was the greatest collection of Egyptian antiquities ever discovered.  

Stela from La Venta, an Olmec female more than 8 feet tall, wearing a pleated skirt from about 900-400 B.C.E.

The de Young's exhibition includes two colossal heads, a stela featuring a woman more than eight feet tall, two great monuments, a large-scale throne, precious small-scale figures, adornments, and masks. Among my favorites is group of 16 figures engaged in a ceremonial scene, unearthed in 1955. They are so supple I suspect they dance about the museum at night. Who knows?

Should a traveler want to trek to the homeland of these marvels, he should consider a trip to Huimanguillo; even better, Villahermosa and its Parque La Venta (check out the Best Western Maya Tabasco or handsome Hyatt Villahermosa), or Veracruz, Mexico's third largest city (pop. around seven million; try the Fiesta Inn Boca del Rio).

Meanwhile, introduce yourself to the Olmecs at the de Young.  They'll be moving on after May 8th.