Side Trip

By Times wires
Published August 12, 2007

Florida as movie set

The Creature from the Black Lagoon is just one of more than 80 movies filmed in Florida. Take the boat ride at Wakulla Springs State Park south of Tallahassee and you'll see the spot where the creature rose from the depths.

In the new book Florida on Film: The Essential Guide to Sunshine State Cinema & Locations (University Press of Florida; $19.95), the films made in Florida are summarized, dissected and reviewed in terms that cinema buffs on vacation can applaud. Each extensively profiled film is followed by a guide to its Florida locales. When paired in this way, the movies and their locations create a full map of the Sunshine State, from city to swamp, that would take months to travel.

This book is also aimed at the armchair traveler who wants to go on location not only in Florida, but in film history, with the likes of Key Largo, Cape Fear and Scarface.

Philly's favorite haunts

If Betsy Ross is too tame for you, then the Spirits of '76 Ghost Tour featuring terrifying tales from haunted Philadelphia may be more to your liking.

The Omni Hotel at Independence Park, in association with the Constitutional Walking Tour and Haunted Express, is offering the tour at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday through Sept. 29, with an extended schedule in October.

More than 15 of Philly's frights and sights are highlighted on the 75-minute walking tour.

Tickets are $17.50 per adult and $12.50 per child ages 3 through 12. For more information, call (215) 525-1776 or go to www.spiritsof76.com.

Hot spots in Europe

The top European attractions, according to traveler popularity and TripAdvisor editors:

1 London Eye, London

2 Tower of London, London

3 Eiffel Tower, Paris

4 Musee du Louvre, Paris

5 Colosseum, Rome

6 Anne Frank House, Amsterdam

7 Musee d'Orsay, Paris

8 State Hermitage Museum and Winter Palace, St. Petersburg, Russia

9 Tivoli Gardens, Copenhagen

10 The Alhambra, Granada, Spain

New raft ride at Dollywood

Dolly Parton's Dollywood theme park is adding a $5-million raft ride equipped with water guns to soak targets, other riders and bystanders.

Scheduled to open in 2008, the River Battle will send eight passengers on rafts down a 500-foot channel lined with more than 100 targets.

The targets include large-scale talking animals such as beavers, skunks, otters and bears, some of which shoot water back at the riders.

Riders also can aim at others on their raft or at park guests along the edge of the ride.

The Great Smoky Mountains venue will also build a new walkway between two areas of the park. The project is the park's largest earthworks project since a train track bed was completed in 1960.

[Last modified August 9, 2007, 15:01:20]