Of course, the new ship is never intended to make it to the ocean, because the building site is more than 700 miles away from the nearest water. It will serve as some kind of amusement park in Chengdu, Sichuan Province. That’s 850 miles from Hong Kong and 940 from Beijing. The finished project is expected to welcome its first visitors in about a year.

With this kind of tragic historic remembrance, would there be plans elsewhere to do similar disaster reproductions? There’s already a replica of Noah’s Ark in Kentucky. How about Napoleon’s Retreat From Moscow, Custer’s Last Stand, the L.A. Dodgers in the 2017 World Series and Hillary’s Presidential Campaign? For more info, go to  www.cnn.com/travel/article/china-titanic-sichuan

In almost all situations when in a big foreign city, once you’ve checked into your hotel, you can then start roaming the streets without your passport. Be sure to lock it and other important legal documents in your hotel room safe or at the front desk safe, and leave it there until you check out. The number one way to ruin any travel experience is to lose your passport. You don’t need it on the street, and no one will steal nor pickpocket it from the hotel safe.

The tallest hotel west of the Mississippi River reaches up 1,100 feet, with 73 stories. The structure contains business, conference and retail for the first 30 stories, with guest rooms and suites from the 31st to the penthouse 70th floor.

Inside are five restaurants and Spire 73, the tallest 360-view sky bar in all of the Americas. Located at 9oo Wilshire Boulevard in the city’s financial district, rooms at the InterContinental are priced from about $220 a night. www.intercontinental.com/LosAngeles/OfficialSite

As the internet and smartphones get more sophisticated, so do greedy and needy advertisers use more ways to lure customers. For example, when you see so-called customer reviews that are very favorable, they’re most likely written by ad agencies, employees or freelance writers who get paid to post them. Remember old-time carnival barkers peddling their phony wares? 

Before taking a cruise, booking a hotel or planning to dine at a posh café, first you may opt to look up online ads and alleged customer praises. Take the info with a grain of salt, and then talk or email with friends and family who have actually experienced the destination.