ANNOUNCER: Funding for this program is provided by... [Celtic music playing] ...Tourism Ireland.

Visitors can experience a warm welcome... and a giant spirit... ...that will fill your heart with Ireland.

[guitar strumming] And Virtuoso: a global network focused on luxury and experiential travel.

This week on "The Travel Detective," it's one of America's most underrated cities, with a deep history intersecting with a legendary road heading west, art deco architecture, a thriving music and food scene, not to mention a few home runs along the way.

Let me share with you some of my hidden gems of Tulsa, Oklahoma.

That's our cover story.

Plus, from feeding pigeons to kissing in public, hear about some of the most ridiculous, unusual laws around the world.

And then, many shipyards around the world stayed busy during the pandemic, not just building mega cruise ships but smaller, ultra-luxury expedition ships, a new breed of high-tech, high-touch vessel, now sailing to remote and often inaccessible destinations.

The latest entry, the Crystal Endeavor.

We went behind the scenes to look at the design and construction of this cutting-edge ship.

I'm Peter Greenberg.

All that and more on this edition of "The Travel Detective."

[blues guitar playing] PETER: For many, Oklahoma evokes images of the plains, full of amber waves of grain.

But in Tulsa, there's a vibrant city.

It's home to roughly 10% of the state's population.

One of the great surprises of Tulsa, there are more than a hundred parks in the city, and the best surprise: 26 miles of trails.

This one will take you right to the banks of the Arkansas River.

[piano music] It was along the Arkansas River that oil was discovered in the 1920s, turning Tulsa into a booming city.

The new wealth flooding in spurred construction, and art deco was the style of the time.

If you look up-- and you should-- you'll see that Tulsa has maintained its love affair with this striking architecture, keeping the buildings preserved through the years.

Forget New York or Chicago, Tulsa regularly draws architectural enthusiasts from across the nation to marvel at its skyline.

Back at ground level, the visual beauty continues.

In 1969, Tulsa established a government-funded commission to support public art, and the city is now home to roughly 600 public art displays.

♪ You said goodbye... ♪ But what draws me to Tulsa is the music scene.

[upbeat blues guitar playing] It's everywhere.

There's probably not a time of the day in Tulsa where you're not going to find live music somewhere.

PETER: Bobby Dean Orcutt is the co-owner of the Mercury Lounge, a converted gas station that's now a cozy music venue.

[playing blues riff] All right!

[chuckles] That was good!

BOBBY: We book roots music, our interpretation of roots music, which is everything from hip-hop, soul, R&B, punk... country.

PETER: And if that musical styling sounds eclectic, the crowd is just as diverse.

You can come in here during the day, the happy hour, and there's lawyers, there's bankers, there's doctors, there's mechanics, there's bikers, there's all kinds of people from all walks of life, and if you notice, there's no TVs in here, for a reason-- we want people to engage, we want people to, like, know who's sitting next to them instead of staring at a screen.

PETER: With an atmosphere like that, you're guaranteed to meet someone friendly.

Whoa!

[gentle guitar music playing] While the Mercury Lounge is a great place for people to get together, there's another gathering place in town.

Literally.

JEFF: All great cities have great central parks.

In Tulsa, we had a lot of parks, but we didn't really have one that was a central park, and we wanted to create a place that brought everyone from all over our community together.

So this is called the Gathering Place for a reason.

It is.

You know, in today's world, we're so divided, by race, geography, economics, and we wanted to create a place that was unifying, that brought everyone from all over our community together.

PETER: Jeff Stava is the executive director of Gathering Place, a 100-acre riverfront park.

Opened in 2018, it's the largest privately funded public park in the nation.

JEFF: We have a five-acre adventure playground for kids.

Sport courts, where you can play basketball.

BMX pump track, 18,000-square-foot skate park.

There's just a lot of active things for people to do.

And before this was here, it was what?

It was a private home and a private piece of property, and we moved 465,000 cubic yards of sand and silt to create the topography.

We planted nearly 7,000 trees, 1.2 million bushes, shrubs, to create the landscape that you see here today.

Amazing.

JEFF: It's a place for all.

It becomes the heartbeat of the community.

It's a point of pride for all Tulsans.

[cool jazz playing] PETER: Gathering Place is quickly becoming a major draw in Tulsa, but there's another cultural institution that's literally been bringing people to town for close to a hundred years.

MARY: We are on Route 66.

The mother road is...

I mean, this is it.

This is the ultimate trip.

PETER: Mary Beth Babcock is a local entrepreneur who runs Buck Atoms Cosmic Curios, dedicated to celebrating Tulsa and the iconic Route 66.

MARY BETH: We've got the longest stretch of Route 66 in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

-What are we talking about?

-26 miles.

-Heading west.

-Yes!

PETER: Founded in 1926, Route 66 was the first transcontinental highway of its kind, stretching 2,448 miles, from Chicago all the way to Los Angeles and the Pacific Ocean, and it was a local Tulsa businessman, Cyrus Avery, who not only worked to help create the highway but also to make sure it passed right through Tulsa.

MARY BETH: Cyrus Avery is the father of Route 66.

Tulsa is the middle of Route 66.

So we're really right smack dab in the middle of it.

Yes!

PETER: Route 66 was decommissioned in 1986, a victim of the interstate highway system, but its spirit lives on, including with Tulsa's very own Muffler Man.

And what about the attraction in front of your place?

-Ehh!

-What's that statue?

His name is Buck Atom, and he is what they call a Muffler Man.

Muffler Men were built originally in the '60s, but we found a gentleman in Natural Bridge, Virginia, that still makes Muffler Men to this day, and makes them to look just like they did, from the '60s.

You've got so many things.

I mean, you've got the roadside attractions, you've got the neon signs.

You've got the old historic motels.

Up here on the right you'll see the Desert Hills Motel.

PETER: How cool is this!

A '57 Chevy in the driveway too.

MARY BETH: It's the magic.

It's celebrating the past but showing you can still do this stuff for the future.

[upbeat music] PETER: A little south of Route 66, there's a must stop that's not just another roadside attraction.

The Oklahoma Aquarium.

Sharks in Oklahoma, who knew?

ANN: Right?

This is the largest collection of bull sharks in the world in captivity, and the only place you can see them in the western hemisphere.

PETER: Dr. Ann Money is the director of development and research at the aquarium, a 90,000-square-foot facility, home to roughly 10,000 animals.

And there's even more to see outside of the main building.

So, Peter, this is our large animal holding facility, and a lot of people don't even realize that this exists, but we actually have even more sharks back here, and we offer experiences where people can come back if they ask... -But they got to ask.

-They got to ask.

PETER: And one of these experiences is feeding sharks.

Oh, my God, look at that.

Those guys are fast.

They're very fast, and they are considered to be the most dangerous shark in the world.

-PETER: Are they?

-Yeah, they are.

They're responsible for more bites than any other species.

You ready to do some feeding?

I'm ready.

Do I have to sign a waiver?

-You do.

-Hah!

I knew it.

ANN: Yeah, you do, just in case.

PETER: For my first feeding experience, I decided to skip the most dangerous sharks in the world and go with the safer zebra sharks.

Whoa!

One-stop shopping.

-[Ann laughs] -Or one stop sharking.

[Ann laughs] I have in my tongs the last piece of fish.

And... over!

[laughs] Done!

Did they get enough?

ANN: I think so, yeah.

You did good.

PETER: And I still have all ten fingers.

You still have all ten fingers.

-Wow.

-It's been a good day.

[upbeat jazz playing] PETER: But later that day, I really needed all of my ten fingers.

On summer nights in Tulsa, you gotta come out here to ONEOK Field.

It's minor league ball, it's the Tulsa Drillers.

They're the farm team for the Dodgers.

Now, it may be minor league ball, but if you know a guy who knows a guy, you might get to play.

[upbeat jazz playing] PETER: All right!

The Drillers have called the city home since 1977, but professional baseball has been played in Tulsa since 1905.

That's quite a sports legacy for a city, and I got a very special opportunity to be a part of it.

ANNOUNCER: Ladies and gentlemen, please direct your attention to the pitcher's mound for tonight's first pitches.

No laughing.

ANNOUNCER: First, we have a very special guest in attendance tonight, Peter Greenberg!

[cheering and applause] You ready?

[laughs] [fans cheering] PETER: I may need a lot more practice throws before they put me on the roster, so I decided to enjoy the rest of the game from a more comfortable vantage point.

Oooh!

That ball was a little outside.

Ohh!

All right, all right!

All right, all right!

[cheering and applause] [peaceful music playing] PETER: Until recently, an important part of Tulsa's history was for too long forgotten.

It was the single worst incident of racial violence in American history, and it took nearly 100 years to reveal that history that was buried by decades of silence.

The Tulsa Massacre of 1921.

HANNIBAL: The city fathers didn't want to talk about this history.

There were sections of the White community in which there was great shame that this had been allowed to occur in the community.

In the Black community, there was PTSD.

Fear, anxiety.

Could this happen again?

And people kept quiet for a long time.

They kept quiet for decades.

PETER: Hannibal Johnson is an educator and author devoted to Tulsa and its African-American community.

[jazz piano playing] HANNIBAL: We're in Tulsa's historic Greenwood District.

This is the hub of the Black community that originated in 1906, known as the Negro Wall Street of America, later Black Wall Street, with an incredible proliferation of entrepreneurs and business interests in the community.

-PETER: And wealth too.

-HANNIBAL: And wealth.

So there were a number of professionals, doctors, lawyers, dentists, accountants, et cetera, here.

So they created their own insular haven here in the Greenwood District.

PETER: So financially they fed themselves.

HANNIBAL: Absolutely.

[daunting music] PETER: Call it jealousy, call it ignorance.

The origin of the massacre was set in the tinderbox of an already racially strained culture.

A 19-year-old shoe-shiner was accused of assaulting a young White lady.

Spurred on by sensational newspaper coverage, a White lynch mob gathered the next afternoon.

But Black Tulsans, many who were military veterans, were equally determined to prevent the lynching.

[gunshot] A shot was fired and the city was thrown into chaos.

Throughout the long night and the next day that followed, the White mob grew into thousands, attacking African-Americans.

The mob went block by block, house by house, building by building, looting, robbing and setting them ablaze.

[plane passing] [mob shouting] [gunshot] By the end of the day, more than 1,200 homes, business and churches, covering more than 30 blocks, were burned to the ground.

Greenwood was destroyed.

The violence ended only when the governor brought in the National Guard.

Evidence suggests that 300 people perished, a majority of them Black, with an estimated 1,000 Greenwood residents left homeless.

So why are we first hearing about it now?

Most Americans, let alone Tulsans, were never even taught about the massacre in school.

Who's deciding what's on the curriculum?

It's not people who look like me generally, not historically.

So today, Greenwood is not rewriting history, it's revisiting it.

We are illuminating something that's been kept in the dark intentionally.

PETER: Perhaps the best way to understand that history is to walk the streets yourself.

Visit Greenwood, talk with the locals.

Frequent the small businesses.

Then take the time to experience Greenwood Rising, an amazing presentation of photographs, artifacts and projections that tell the story right on the spot where it actually happened.

Visit the Vernon AME Church, the only Black-owned structure still existing from the days of Black Wall Street.

Then walk this street.

The Pathway to Hope is designed really as a connection, sort of a reconnecting of the history.

PETER: The pathway is just a short walk, and it takes you to John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park.

Named after the historian and civil rights activist, it's a memorial to the massacre in Tulsa... and provides a quiet space to reflect, to learn, and to look towards a more hopeful future.

[ominous music playing] It's been said that forewarned is forearmed, and when it comes to traveling the world, there are some laws you probably don't know about that could get you in trouble.

And some are, well, ridiculous.

For example, are you going to Italy and visiting Venice?

Well, don't feed the pigeons.

It's illegal, and you can get fined up to $817.

In Russia, you can't kiss a person of the same gender in front of children.

That can get you jail.

In Vienna, you can't kiss a person of any gender if you're traveling in the subway.

That could get you a $43 fine.

And in Hawaii, it's illegal to order more than one alcoholic drink at any time, unless, oddly enough, you're ordering a shot.

And one law which is not ridiculous but not well known involves cactus in Arizona.

Many visitors are tempted to cut down the distinctive and beautiful saguaro cactus as a souvenir.

These are big, some get as tall as 60 feet, but even if you want to snatch a small one, be warned.

That will get you sentenced up to 25 years in prison, so look but don't touch.

[theme song playing] PETER: 2019 was a peak year for the cruise industry.

An estimated 30 million people traveled by cruise ship globally, but less than two million of those passengers embarked on an expedition cruise.

These are smaller ships that sail to remote destinations, like the Galapagos Islands and Antarctica, and they're able to navigate through narrow, shallow or icy waters.

In fact, some of the very early expedition cruises were converted Soviet Union icebreakers, with crowded bunkbed accommodations.

But all that started to change with the growing trend of luxury expedition ships, designed for travelers who don't just want to adventure across the world, they want to do it in comfort and style.

[dramatic music playing] We were aboard in the summer of 2021, as the Crystal Endeavor made her maiden voyage.

It was billed as a state-of-the-art ship, considered a Polar Class 6 vessel.

That meant it could operate through medium-thick first-year ice, and I got an up-close and personal look at the accommodations.

MAN: We have a hundred suites onboard.

They are all very spacious, obviously.

And every suite that you have here is butler-serviced.

Everything you need, there is somebody at your fingertips to provide any service that you could possibly dream of, and then some.

In every port that we go to, we will provide excursions that we provide with our own expedition team.

We have 18 Zodiacs onboard and we have a helicopter and we have a submarine.

PETER: Crystal also invested heavily in the ship's engines, designed specifically for an ice-class vessel.

For a ship this size, these diesel electric engines are massive, producing more than 16,000 kilowatts of power, and even at full speed during sea trials, no vibration.

THOMAS: Even on those crew cabins where we have below deck close to the engine room, there is almost no vibration, there's no noise coming.

I've not seen anything like it before.

PETER: Thomas Larson had worked on ships since he was 16 years old, starting as a second cook, and Endeavor was the third Crystal ship he captained.

Endeavor's story started in Stralsund, Germany, a city on the Baltic coast, where ships have been constructed for centuries, and in modern times, Germany has been responsible for 25% of cruise ship construction.

And who built the Endeavor?

A German yard, Werften, also owned by Crystal's parent company, Genting.

But the project was in jeopardy even before the first steel was cut at the beginning of 2018.

The parent company was losing millions and was then bailed out by the German government.

By August of that year, Werften was ready for Endeavor's keel-laying ceremony.

The keel is the central structural backbone of the ship, and keel-laying ceremonies are a tradition going back to the days of wooden ships.

It's considered the official start of the ship's construction and life.

And then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel was present for the dedication.

Over the next year and a half, the Endeavor slowly came to life.

A propeller here, an engine there.

Day by day, piece by piece.

In fact, the Endeavor was the only Polar Class 6 expedition ship ever to be made in Germany.

It began to take shape.

All signs were promising for the Endeavor to be ready for its planned christening and maiden voyage in August 2020 at the Tokyo Olympics.

By the end of 2019, Endeavor was ready for rollout, transferred from the massive construction facility and placed in the water for the first time.

Then, in March of 2020, everything changed.

As the COVID-19 crisis spread across the world, on March 23rd, the shipyard decided to put a four-week pause on all of its ship construction.

By the beginning of May, with the work stoppage continuing, the shipyard was close to running out of cash.

The German government had to bail it out, but by then the maiden voyage was again rescheduled, from August to November 2020, and then pushed back again to May of 2021.

Late in 2020, with 193 million euros in funding from the German Economic Stabilization Fund, work was finally able to resume.

The Endeavor successfully completed its sea trials in March and then again in May of 2021.

At the same time, the Endeavor, the ninth in the Crystal fleet, was still being billed as state-of-the-art in design and luxury.

The Endeavor was built for only 200 passengers and was planning to operate with a one-to-one crew-to-passenger ratio.

Guests were promised dining options in six different restaurants, and this was the only expedition ship with an onboard casino.

As it turned out, the Endeavor was a gamble that didn't pay off.

Ironically, the Crystal Endeavor's beginning was also its ending, at least as a Crystal ship.

In the summer of 2021, the Endeavor was finally and hastily christened and sailed quickly out of the shipyard in Germany.

It started its first voyage from a country not even listed in the ship's schedule or brochure.

Iceland.

And at the dock in Reykjavík, it was clear the ship wasn't even close to being finished, but the owners decided to sail her anyway, even with dozens of shipyard workers onboard, because sailing her on time freed up funds from the German government that were contractually released to the cruise line's parent company only if the ship sailed with no delays.

And passengers on that first disorganized cruise, on the still uncompleted Endeavor, were given vouchers or huge discounts on future cruises.

But those vouchers were never used, and now they're worthless.

Less than six months later, Crystal Cruises shut down, a victim of the financial woes of the shipyard and the parent company.

Crystal ships were seized by creditors, and while the Endeavor may sail again, it will never do so as a Crystal ship.

That'll do it for this week.

I'll see you next time on another edition of "The Travel Detective."

ANNOUNCER: Funding for this program is provided by... [Celtic music playing] ...Tourism Ireland.

Visitors can experience a warm welcome... ...and a giant spirit... ...that will fill your heart with Ireland.

[guitar strumming] ...And Virtuoso: A global network focused on luxury and experiential travel.

[theme song playing]