JOTTINGS IN A JOURNAL : MEDITERRANEAN CRUISE LINES DISCOUNT PRICES.

Byline: - Staff and Wire Services

Mediterranean cruise business took a beating during the fighting in Kosovo, but now cruise lines are fighting back by offering discounted prices and two-for-one deals to encourage passenger bookings.

Travel Weekly, a publication aimed at travel agents and tour operators, reports that:

Royal Olympic Cruises, which earlier canceled 13 Greek island sailings because of weak demand, is offering free air fare and 30 percent off brochure rates on seven-night sailings from Piraeus.

Crystal Cruises is offering up to 61 percent off a promotional fare on three sailings in September.

Costa Cruises extended early booking discounts of 20 percent or so - usually good only 90 days or more before a sailing date - to apply to dates throughout the summer.

Other lines offering discounting include Windstar Cruises, Orient Lines, Seabourn Cruise Line, Cunard Line and Royal Caribbean Cruises.

Museum created for Selena's fans

Fans are getting to know the different sides of Selena - singer, designer, even spelling bee champ - in a Corpus Christi, Texas, museum that showcases the slain star.

The museum is at Q Productions, her family's business. Abraham Quintanilla, Selena's father, built it about a year ago because her fans were showing up at Q Productions as part of their Selena-themed Corpus Christi visits. The museum is a way to keep his daughter's memory alive and to please her fans.

Selena Quintanilla Perez was already a Grammy-winning singer when she was killed at a Corpus Christi motel on March 31, 1995. Yolanda Saldivar, the former president of the singer's fan club, was convicted of murdering her and is serving a life sentence in prison.

At the museum, Selena's signature sexy outfits and dresses that she wore at concerts or awards shows are modeled on mannequins inside glass cases. The singer designed all but two of the outfits in the collection.

CSU professor leading India tour

Simon George, an India-born professor of physics and astronomy at California State University, Long Beach, will lead a tour of India and Sri Lanka Jan. 8-29.

Included on the itinerary are the Taj Mahal and visits to the Indian cities of New Delhi, Bombay and Madras. The cost is $4,900 per person, double occupancy, including round-trip air transportation from Los Angeles and all meals. Sita World Travel is booking the tour.

Information: [phone] or [phone].

Objects of art out of ordinary

Alessi, the Italian design company that has gained fame for turning ordinary household objects - from citrus juicers to toilet brushes - into works of art, is the subject of an exhibit at the Museum of Arts and Industries at Omegna, Italy.

The exhibit, ``Mostra Delle Mostre,'' traces the design of such objects as the Anna G corkscrew by Alessandro Medini and the Whistling Bird Teakettle by American architect Michael Graves. Open 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday through Sundays, it will run through Sept. 30.

Omegna, once Italy's center for the production of metal kitchenware, is about a 40-minute drive north of Milan.

Hometown puts on Hemingway week

For decades there was no love lost between Ernest Hemingway and his hometown of Oak Park, Ill., just west of Chicago. The town, then stodgy and strait-laced, snubbed the swashbuckling adventurer, and Hemingway, in turn, lampooned Oak Park as a village of ``broad lawns and narrow minds.''

But in the last 20 years, that has changed, and Oak Park is now a sophisticated, arts-friendly suburb. And this summer, in honor of Hemingway's 100th birthday on July 21, the Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park is staging a weeklong event with everything from a literary conference to a ``running of the bulls.''

The Ernest Hemingway Centennial Birthday Celebration, which will begin Wednesday and run through July 21, is designed both for aficionados of ``The Sun Also Rises'' and children more interested in, say, sword fighting.S

Information: [phone] or [phone]. Web: www.hemingway.org.

Florida beach, parks ban smoking

Cigarette smoking has been banned at a beach and two parks in Palm Beach County, Fla., forcing smokers to light up only in designated areas.

Within a few days, no-smoking signs will be posted at the entrances to Patch Reef and Sugar Sand parks in suburban Boca Raton and at the beach at Red Reef Park.

Park rangers will enforce the ban. However, there is no fine for breaking the rule.

Cruise ships deal in poker

Poker players on cruise vacations have begun to find a vent for their passion. Card Player magazine, a publication that specifically targets poker players, has arranged for poker rooms on its Card Player Cruises. It is also accommodating novices, providing free lessons by world champion Linda Johnson.

``Although casinos aboard luxury cruise ships are nothing new, this . . . gives (poker players) a special environment aboard ship,'' said Barry Shulman, chairman of the magazine.

The next such offering, scheduled for next month on a Carnival cruise, will sail the western Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico. Information: [phone].

Frequent-lier miles draw criticism

Customers are being taken for a ride by airline frequent-flier programs, according to the Consumer Reports Travel Letter.

Award tickets are not something for nothing, says the June issue. They are a promotion that airlines value at 1 to 2 cents per mile, a cost that ends up in the price of your ticket.

But, alas, the travel letter concludes that travelers put up with this because they are so happy to get their so-called ``free rides.''

But there was a scrap of good news: The 6.5 million award tickets handed out by the seven major U.S. carriers in 1998 was an increase of 329,000 seats over the year before.

American Airlines was the most generous, giving away 10 percent of its seats, according to data supplied by the U.S. Department of TransportatSion. Delta forked over only 6.3 percent of its seats as awards.

Museum revisits the space race

This month marks the 30th anniversary of man's first landing on the moon, and the Newseum in Arlington, Va., is celebrating that American achievement with a retrospective exhibition on the news media's coverage of that event and the national frenzy that led up to it.

Called ``Dateline Moon: The Media and the Space Race,'' the show fills three full Newseum galleries and follows changing public perceptions of the oft-troubled space program from initial disbelief, skepticism and ridicule to fascination, excitement and awe. As the earliest stuff illustrates, most Americans were extremely doubtful we'd ever reach the moon this century. Now it all seems so much dull, ancient history - but not in these very vivid and electric displays.

The Newseum (1101 Wilson Blvd.; 703-284-3700) is in Arlington's Rosslyn section, right across the Potomac from Washington. Through Sept. 12, the Newseum will operate hourly ``Lunar Shuttle'' free passenger bus service between it and the National Air and Space Museum on the capital Mall.

Self-guided tours of B.C. available

BC Ferries, which serves the British Columbia coast, is joining with railroad, bus and hotel companies to offer self-guided tours of British Columbia. Many packages include an Inside Passage voyage, a 15-hour daylight trip between Port Hardy, on the northern tip of Vancouver Island, and Prince Rupert, on the north coast of the British Columbia mainland.

In partnership with BC Rail - [phone] - the five-night Totem Circle Rail and Cruise package is being offered through Sept. 28. It includes two train trips (Vancouver to Prince George and Prince George to Prince Rupert), an Inside Passage cruise, bus or ferry connections from Port Hardy to Victoria to Vancouver, and accommodations in Prince George, Prince Rupert, Port Hardy and Victoria. Prices start at about $585 a person, double occupancy, at $1.47 Canadian to the UniSted States dollar.

A package organized with Gray Line buses - [phone] - from Vancouver includes voyages through the Gulf Islands to and from Victoria, a bus tour through Vancouver Island to Port Hardy, and an overnight cruise in a private cabin to and from Prince Rupert. The four-night package, with accommodations for two nights in Port Hardy and one night in Victoria, starts at about $400 a person, double occupancy; it is also available through Sept. 28.

More information about BC Ferries is available at [phone] or at www.bcferries.com.