Travel Briefs

Thousands enjoy Dickens Festival

HOLLY, Mich. -- Thousands are getting into the holiday spirit by taking in the street theater at the Olde Fashioned Dickens Festival here.

Sophia and Maria Raphael of Holly like Santa Claus, but every December the sisters look forward to his opposite at the festival, which features performances by characters from Charles Dickens' holiday classic, "A Christmas Carol."

"I like Scrooge," says Maria, 11. "He really gets into his character."

Sophia, 9, agreed: "He's really friendly. He talks to everyone all the time."

The festival in this community about 17 miles south of Flint is in its 28th year. This season's run began Nov. 29 and continues on weekends through Christmas.

"It's old-time Christmas entertainment," says Robert Matheny of Adrian, who has operated his roasted almonds and kettle popcorn business at the festival for the past 15 years. "The people are really jolly."

Salley's Chitlin Strut may be nearing an end

SALLEY, S.C. -- After 37 years of holding a festival for chitlins, town officials are finally having second thoughts about hosting an annual celebration of pigs' innards.

What began nearly four decades ago as a way for a small town to pay for Christmas decorations has turned into a burden.

With no volunteers or sponsors, the town foots the bill for the festival and it has lost money in recent years. Lackluster crowds and economics are to blame.

In this year's sluggish economy, organizers say there's just too much time and money going into the festival and not enough cash coming out.

There hasn't yet been an official decision to cancel the festival, said Mayor Bob Salley.

"We're having serious thoughts about the future of it," he said. "There are a lot of different options that we are going to have to sit down and explore."

It's expensive for a town to strut its chitlins. The chitlins -- also known as chitterlings -- cost $8,000. Fireworks, portable toilets, a band, stage and sound system cost the town an additional $13,000.

Of the estimated 50,000 people who attended last year, only about 7,000 paid the $2 admission fee to get into the festival, Salley said.

Many people just buy chitlins but don't enter the fenced-in carnival and food area where the crafts and vendors are.

Albania demolishes illegal buildings

TIRANA, Albania -- Albania's government has dispatched bulldozers to seaside resorts along the Adriatic and Ionian seas to tear down 700 hotels, restaurants and coffee bars built illegally in the past decade.

As dozens of police stood guard Dec. 3, the bulldozers demolished tin-sided kiosks and shops in the seaport city of Durres, 25 miles west of the capital, Tirana.

The government move to crack down on illegal construction comes after villas, hotels and restaurants sprang up along the waterfront in the years after communism's fall.

-- From wire reports