Category Archives: Travel

Map Out Your Holiday Gifts

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map, Paris

(photo: author)

OK, Santas’ helpers, if someone on your list loves New York, loves maps, loves travel, or just loves to get down with the details, that person might enjoy this wildly popular book of personal maps: Mapping Manhattan: A Love (and Sometimes Hate) Story in Maps by 75 New Yorkers, by Becky Cooper, illustrated by Bonnie Briant, with an introduction by Adam Gopnik. Pointing to this book as a bellwether, The Guardian says hand-drawn maps are in. So much so, their creators even have their own association. “All maps tell stories,” Cooper says, and proves it with the creative contributions in this very book.

Alternatively, The Guardian story says Wellingtons Travel spent three years creating a map of modern London full of hand-drawn charm, using the 1800s style that shows individual trees and buildings. The photograph accompanying this article is similar to the Wellingtons approach, but it’s a portion of a map of Paris from a favorite poster of mine that’s so realistic, I’m sure I can pick out that little hotel I stayed at near L’Etoile.

Many people have participated in Cooper’s Mapping Manhattan project, contributing their own unique memory portraits, like the map of “My Lost Gloves.” (That one is available as a print from Uncommon Goods, which has an array of intriguing map gift ideas, including the “Single Malts of Scotland” or “Great Wines of France” tasting maps—bases for a couple of good tours, there.) Contribute to the collective mental map of the city by downloading a blank map of Manhattan on which to show the places where you took your own favorite bites out of the Big Apple. Download another and stick it in your love’s Christmas stocking.

“Where the West Begins”

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Fort Worth, Chisholm Trail

(photo: author)

Just back from a week in Fort Worth, Texas. Enough fun to make any Easterner sit high in the saddle and holler “Yee-haw!” When friends heard where I was spending Thanksgiving, the universal response was either “Where?” or “Why?” Now I’m here to tell you. It’s a vacation you might enjoy, too. Fort Worth has its own running “w” brand, but it could just as easily be the 5-C’s: cowboys, chow, culture, characters, and community.

Just to remind you, in 1849, Fort Worth was established as an actual fort, one of a string of outposts at the very edge of the Wild West, meant to protect settlers after the Mexican-American War. Soon “civilization,” such as it was, moved westward, and the fort was abandoned (now the site is occupied by the Beaux Arts Tarrant County Courthouse). A town grew up around the place on the Trinity River that was so well suited to watering and grazing livestock for a few days before the long trek north to market along the Chisholm Trail, and while the cows rested up, the cowboys made the best use of the neighborhood called “Hell’s Half Acre.”

Cowboys

Unique to Fort Worth is the stockyards area, much of which has been preserved as a tourist attraction, where once literally millions of beeves, sheep, and pigs were housed, awaiting their trips that end at our dinner tables. At first, cowboys drove the longhorn cattle north to slaughter, to feed Easterners’ desire for beef after the Civil War. Then the railroads came and made transportation faster. Then the big meat processors—Swift and Armour—decided to build factories right there and save the animals the trip.

cowboy boots

(photo: wikimedia.org)

Several museums and walking tours describe the cowboy way of life, including a fine exhibit of beautifully maintained wagons. Shops of cowboy and cowgal gear, too, including drool-worthy boots.

In keeping with the cowboy theme, we attended an initial National Cutting Horse Association World Championship Futurity round at the Will Rogers Coliseum. Despite having no idea how such an event is scored, we spent a morning spellbound, seeing these talented horses and their riders separate a cow from the herd and keep it from doing what it most wants to do—rejoin its companions. Lightning reflexes, flawless technique, intensive training, and inbred determination.

National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame

National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame (photo: author)

Must mention the Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame, about the women who’ve participated in rodeo events, trick riding, barrel-racing, sharp-shooting (Annie Oakley!), as well as the Romance of the West (Dale Evans!!). (The horse-head detail is from a column in this museum.) Beautifully put together exhibits in an Art Deco building in the Cultural District.

Chow

With all this stockyards-walking, museum-going, and cow-watching, a gal’s gotta eat. What can you get, besides Tex-Mex? Steak. Big and delicious. Hickory Bar-B-Que in Bonham, Texas (why Bonham? Answer next week). Chicken-fried steak, a personal favorite, at Cowtown Diner, where the wry humor of our server-manager-barman provided unexpected entertainment. Saint-Emilion—Le restaurant Français de Fort Worth. Great wines, excellent food! Not a bad meal on the whole trip.

It’s always great to leave a place feeling there’s more to see and do, and that’s how we left Fort Worth! Culture, Characters, and Community next week!

London Calling

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Sherlock Holmes, London

(photo: wikimedia)

The Museum of London has a new exhibit that will have mystery lovers dusting off their passports. “Sherlock Holmes: The man who never lived and will never die” will be on view until April 12, 2015. If you can get there by Friday, November 21, you can participate in “Late London: Sherlock’s City,” a multipart event that includes mind games, improv, theater, and liquid refreshment. There are archaeology events, a Sherlock Holmes walking tour, and much more planned. During Dickens’s 200th birthday celebration in 2012, the Museum of London offered a terrific exhibit. This promises to be as good.

The Sherlock Holmes Museum claims the address of 221B Baker Street (but is actually between 237 and 241). In Conan Doyle’s day, the street did not extend into the 220’s. The entity (now closed) that actually did have his address had to employ a full-time secretary to open and respond to the voluminous correspondence sent to Holmes there.

Or, branch out a bit with the Mystery Reader’s Walking Guide: London – Second edition. I have the first edition (also available), and it’s a tantalizing neighborhood-by-neighborhood tour where favorite fictional detectives—even modern ones—have encountered deadly doings. Enjoy!

Finding Philip Marlowe

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Raymond Chandler, Philip Marlowe, Humphrey Bogart

(art: wikimedia.org)

Some authors are unalterably linked to a particular place and time—Faulkner, Dickens, Cheever. For Raymond Chandler, the time and place are Los Angeles in the 1930s and 40s. His books about that era convey a very specific mindset, with such classic lines as “There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself” (The Long Goodbye), “It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window” (Farewell, My Lovely); and “You know what Canino will do—beat my teeth out and then kick me in the stomach for mumbling” (The Big Sleep). You can’t read his rhythms without seeing Humphrey Bogart as the perfect personification of his detective, Philip Marlowe.

According to Electric Lit, from Malibu to Pasadena, Chandler’s “iconic spots dot the landscape.” Now you can retrace the high (and low) points from this master of the hardboiled detective novel with a new map of the City of Angels
, written and compiled by Kim Cooper and designed by Paul Rogers, which the publisher calls “an insider’s guide to the city Chandler knew.”

Cooper’s company Estouric conducts literary, true crime, and California culture tours, including “Raymond Chandler’s Los Angeles: In a Lonely Place” and “The Birth of Noir: James M. Cain’s Southern California Nightmare,” as well as the uplifting “Mausolea of Los Angeles.” (Mystery writers attending the big Bouchercon conference will have a special edition of the Chandler tour.)

Given the amount of research done for the tours, the map was a logical next step. Cooper had to do a fair bit of digging, too. “I was thrilled to be able to confirm the actual location of Victor’s, the bar where Marlowe and Terry Lennox grow close over gimlets in The Long Goodbye,” (my review) she told Electric Lit.

A Dining Room with a (What a!) View

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restaurant, Puglia, Italy, Grotta Palazzese

Ristorante Grotta Palazzese in Puglia, Italy (photo: hereandthere.eu)

At the end of a long week, I’m ready for nothing more challenging than some pretty pictures. And here’s a collection of photos of 35 restaurants with truly spectacular views! I thought some of the dining room vistas in the recent movie The Trip to Italy were beautiful, and here are more, culled from around the world. My favorites: #4 and #33. (The photo above is also from #4, Ristorante Grotta Palazzese in Puglia, Italy).

I hope the diners who patronize #23 never see the restaurant from the angle at which the photo was taken. Looks way too precarious in an earthquake-prone country! That would seriously interfere with my digestion.

#5, is pretty spectacular, too. Pictured below, it’s Ithaa Undersea Restaurant in Rangali Island, Maldives. “I’ll have the steak, please.” And the ladies’ room is NOT out back.

restaurant, fish, Maldives, Ithaa Undersea Restaurant

Ithaa Undersea Restaurant, Rangali Island, Maldives (photo: conradhotels3.hilton.com)

 

The Trip to Italy

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Steve Coogan, Rob Bryden, Trip to Italy

Rob Bryden & Steve Coogan in The Trip to Italy (photo: sundance-london.com)

If you saw the well-received 2011 movie The Trip in which British comedians Rob Bryden and Steve Coogan (who surprised in his straight role as the journalist in Philomena) play themselves on a restaurant tour in northern England—neither one supposedly knowing a thing about haut cuisine—you know what to expect from The Trip to Italy (trailer). Both movies are edited versions of the pair’s television sitcoms, and both were directed by Michael Winterbottom. In Italy, they are doing the restaurant thing and pilgrimaging to places where the Romantic poets lived, died, and are buried.

Some critics prefer the earlier film, but I liked this one at least as well. For one thing, I knew not to feel like I’m on pause, waiting for the plot to start. There isn’t one. Or not much of one. In The Trip, the food scenes involved visiting posh restaurants with hushed, museum-like surroundings serving unbearably pretentious foams and essences and portions that might satisfy a wee fairy. It was funny, but it was more or less a single joke. Still, with these two, mealtime is never a bore. Coogan and Bryden make terrible scenes at every dinner, usually with their dueling impressions. In The Trip, there was a long hilarious sequence of each man’s “definitive” way to do Michael Caine at different ages. In The Trip to Italy, they take on a large cast, and we get The Godfather.

You have to listen closely because the jokes just keep coming, as the two plunge into various socially awkward situations, yet maintain a plausible fiction of two prickly friends on a simple driving tour. But beneath la dolce vita is a strong current of middle-aged angst and, as the movie progresses, an increasingly strong thrum of death—which culminates in visits to Pompeii and the giant ossuary that is Naples’s Fontanelle Cemetery caves. This juxtaposition sneaks up on you and makes their pursuit of life that much richer and more grounded. These aren’t just two overgrown showoffs on an expense account. Thankfully, Winterbottom has a light touch with all this, and you’ll walk away thinking you’ve seen a comedy. Rightly so.

The scenery alone is worth the price of the movie, and the glimpses of the Italian restaurant kitchens and their chefs at work—fantastico! I guarantee you’ll leave the theater wanting to drive right to the nearest restaurant—“how about Italian?” Rotten Tomatoes critics rating: 87%.

****The Danube

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Danube, river

(photo: author)

By Nick Thorpe, a BBC East and Central European correspondent who has lived in Budapest for more than 25 years. Subtitle of this book is “a journey upriver from the Black Sea to the Black Forest”—in Bavaria, home of Danube’s the headwaters, a spring in the town of Donaueschingen. The Danube, queen of rivers, runs through and along the borders of ten countries of Western and Central Europe—Ukraine, Moldova, Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, Croatia, Hungary, Slovakia, Austria, and Germany—the middle six of which I’ve visited. In one brief stretch, it passes through four nations’ capitals: Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest, and Belgrade. And through great swaths of sparsely populated countryside, known mainly to birds and watermen.

Thorpe’s travelogue-cum-history lesson-cum natural history exploration ranges widely and freely over this vast geographic and intellectual territory. In part his story is told through the wars and occupations, the conquests and lost empires that have shaped the region over thousands of years, and in part through his warm-hearted stories of individual men and women who still depend on the river as neighbor and provider today. Ways of life that withstood centuries of disruption have been torn apart by modern improvements—hydroelectric dams, locks, canals, diversions, “straightening.”

Though Thorpe understands the motives behind these changes, his heart is on the side of the scattered environmentalists who are trying to restore the natural flow of the river and, here and there, to nudge it back into its old, meandering course. Efforts to do so have led to a resurgence of wildlife and an elevation of spirit among those who perceive a river as a living thing, moving and changing, mile by mile, as Thorpe’s book so eloquently shows.

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Dear Class

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Dear ClassDelighted to announce my friend Jane Stein’s children’s book, Dear Class: Traveling Around the World with Mrs. J., with charming illustrations by Pamela Duckworth, has been published and is available for ordering online.

The book is about a teacher who visits more than a dozen countries in an amazing six-month trip. It’s based on the travel log of the real Mrs. J, who took this trip in 1963. Readers learn about her adventures through the letters she writes her students, reproduced in the book.

Sidebars include historical information, updates, fun facts, websites, and activities. Written for children ages 8 to 12, Jane says, the book is the story of living out a dream—in this case, to travel around the world–and having the adventurous spirit to do it alone.

During the course of her adventures, Mrs. J studies at the Sorbonne, visits a school in Istanbul, lives on a houseboat in India, and more. She sets out to learn about people, places, food, art, and the culture in countries around the world. While she does that, she also learns a lot about herself.

Here’s an excerpt from the first chapter. Order for your kids, grandkids, kids of friends, and reward this imaginative, fun project! Good work, Jane!!

Been There! The Danube

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Danube, Orthodox churchI’m reading a book by Nick Thorpe about the Danube and encountering familiar scenes from the middle portion of the river we sailed on last year. Almost the exact photo at right is in the book, called “The Church Above the Waters” and on Thorpe’s BBC page “an Orthodox monastery.” The rooftops have been restored and slightly redesigned–made rounder–since his earlier pictures, though, and the church has a new coat of whitewash.

Vukovar

Danube, VukovarI wish I’d learned more at the time about Vukovar, besieged by the Serbs in the early 1990s, and the memorial on the farm where patients and staff from Vukovar hospital were taken and murdered. The townspeople kept their damaged water tower as an ad hoc war memorial. A deteriorating water tower in my experience reflects economic hard times, but both meanings apply here. Thorpe says, “The doves of peace have taken over” the tower now. Pigeons, at any rate. And he describes, Vukovar’s most famous scene of rebirth: “In one of the houses near the (river) shore, still in ruins, purple flowers burst from the frame of an upstairs window.”

A Most Charming Tour

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Czech Republic, small town, Europe

(photo: farm3.staticflickr.com)

A weekend break for all you armchair travelers, is this photo essay of the “25 Secret Small Towns in Europe You Must Visit” on the World of Wanderlust website. In the photo at left is Cesky Krumlov in southern Bohemia, Czech Republic. (No McDonalds, the caption writer celebrates or warns, depending).

Other small towns on this charm tour are scattered across Europe and possibly within driving reach if your travels take you to the larger cities in France, Austria, Belgium, Slovenia, Poland, England, Spain, Croatia, Italy, Norway, Switzerland, Malta, or Bosnia & Herzegovina. Or Turkey. Though I’ll bet not too many tourists make it to Ittoqqortoormiit, Greenland, even if they can spell (or pronounce) it. Is Greenland in Europe now?

The caption-writer for this essay ran out of synonyms for charm early on and defaulted to superlatives. “Most charming,” “so picturesque,” “most underrated.” Annency, France, below, is “arguably more charming than any other French town you will find.”

France, small town, Europe

(photo: pixabay, CC)

 

tulips, Holland, Mich., windmill

(rkramer, flickr)

Another non-European entry and representing the U.S.A., oddly, is Leavenworth, Kansas, which does not have much a a reputation as a place for a brief visit—20 years to life is more like it.

World of Wanderlust says Leavenworth is modeled on a Bavarian village, but if what you’re after is finding the Old World in the New, you might want to visit Holland, Michigan—especially at tulip time!