by J. Norvill Jones, Alexandria, VA
Iran has been demonized by our government and the American news media, but is it really part of an “axis of evil”? As one who spent much of his working life dealing with foreign policy issues, I am inherently skeptical of government pronouncements. In April 2007 I went to Iran [...]
A dawn boat ride on the Ganges is the highlight of any trip to Varanasi, also known as Banaras or Benares. Situated in India’s state of Uttar Pradesh, Varanasi is a sacred center of Jainism, Sikhism and Buddhism. However, for over 2,000 years it has been the religious capital of Hinduism, more revered and sacred than all the other places of pilgrimage put together.
I’m not sure how surprised the monks who lived here 400 years ago would be to hear the soft sounds of bossa nova echoing in the cloisters where they once lived and prayed. No doubt, chanting and church music would have been more familiar to them, but I suspect that bossa nova would not have [...]
Looking for some royal treatment on your next trip overseas? What better place to be treated like a royal than London, where they’ve been perfecting the art of luxury for centuries?
Granted, with current exchange rates, it’s not the first destination that comes to mind for those on a tight budget, but if you’re ready for a bit of a splurge, perhaps an account of my September ’07 visit will provide a few suggestions to make your trip a more memorable one.
Haley’s book and the TV miniseries were wildly popular, presenting in a graphic and realistic way the horrors of the slave trade. The book was translated into 26 languages and sold 8½ million copies. Haley was awarded a Pulitzer Prize and won multiple Emmys for the TV series that riveted us to the tube with its 12-hour marathon presented over eight consecutive nights.
There’s an apocryphal story, probably not true but fun to tell, about the establishment of The Gambia’s borders. When the British, during sailing-ship days, wanted to set boundaries for a country along the river, they fired a ship’s cannons in both directions perpendicular to the river, and where the cannon balls fell, that’s where the boundaries were drawn.
Everywhere I went in this outdoor museum, something enticed me to look more closely. The city’s Baroque past was everywhere. Men and women of stone and marble stared out from doorways of elaborately ornamented buildings while carved faces peered down from amongst the swirls and curves above their windows. The statues that couldn’t fit at eye level adorned the parapets — a veritable army of warriors, saints and historic figures living at the rooflines.
“When we commissioned the first edition of this guide in 1997 it seemed an almost impossibly obscure destination.” Even though 10 years had gone by since that comment was made, and although tourism there had probably grown, I expected that a trip to this rarely visited volcanic archipelago — off the coast of West Africa, some 600 miles south of the Canary Islands and scattered from 275 to 480 miles off the coast of Senegal — would be a fine source of “soft adventure.”
Martha and I, like many travelers, are drawn to Paris and seem to return there more often than to any other European city. On a recent 3-week trip to France, we spent our first week in Paris.
“Hans Sloane’s agreement ushered in Chelsea’s golden age as the world’s most richly stocked botanic garden,” commented Atkins as we strolled the garden’s quadrants in October ’07 under a sky threatening a downpour. “A new concept was taking hold: the treatment of disease rather than the chasing out of spirits. Physicians could not study medicine without studying botany.”
Fresh air and the exposure to sunshine helped reset our body clocks, and the exercise felt great after the long flight the day before. At the end of the trail was an array of seafood restaurants, well stocked with refreshing cold drinks and snacks and convenient for either having lunch, as we did, or just awaiting the arrival of the ferry back to Hong Kong.
Chile’s landscape stretches from the northern deserts of Atacama to the southern glaciers of Patagonia, adorning it with a diverse and alluring array of scenery that is catching the eyes of Hollywood filmmakers and setting Chile apart as a hotspot for movie-making.
My wife and I took a memorable 2-week Greek vacation in August ’07, spending four to five days each in Crete, Santorini and Athens. We traveled only to Greece because we had missed it on a previous trip and we wanted to focus on one country to experience it more in depth.
So, it’s time to plan your next trip and you’re thinking… Europe. But you’d like to venture to a place not yet overrun by tourists, an area of rugged, natural beauty, one where the streets of the local towns still whisper the secrets of those who walked there centuries ago. Is there such a place left to be discovered? I believe there is, and it’s called Extremadura.
Over the course of 15 years and seven trips to Lithuania, I have been present at all stages of that rebirth: from empty spot to open pit with archaeologists extracting artifacts to construction of a palace resembling the one that stood there 500 years ago. On my last trip, in July 2007, the outer shell of the palace stood almost complete. Only the interior needed to be finished and furnished.
A well-preserved medieval center, dozens of world-class museums, a wealth of Art Nouveau architecture, affordable antique and flea markets and more than 1,500 restaurants are enough to belie Brussels’ reputation for being boring. Visitors will find Brussels a joy for looking, learning, walking and eating.
by Randy Keck, part 2 of 4 on India & Nepal
Rajasthan is India’s most popular visitor destination, with its triangular route of Udaipur, Jodhpur and Jaipur being easily accessible by road from Delhi and Agra. My May 2008 road journey through Rajasthan, hosted by SITA World Tours, focused on these three equally intriguing destinations.
For the [...]
by Philip Wagenaar, M.D.
It was just what we had always looked for: a 2-week stay in a 4-star accommodation — a large, airy room with great en suite facilities; personnel hovering over my wife, Flory, anticipating her every wish and accommodating her every whim; fantastic meals, and the zero charge upon checkout.
This took place in [...]
Vietnam is a country of great natural beauty. I was particularly impressed by Ha Long Bay and the beaches at Hoi An and Nha Trang. All the people I met were patient, polite, gracious and gentle, and I found myself surrounded by a festival of colors and smells of often artistically arranged flowers, fruit, fish and vegetables.
Our first few exposures to the event were pretty much a sensory shock — all terrifying yells and thundering hooves, and then something really, really big would hurtle by involving, perhaps, a man in a bizarre getup — but it’s all over before you can draw a breath. As we got accustomed to it, though, we began to appreciate the Zen-like union of man and animal engaged in this warlike endeavor. (We also sympathized with the poor devil who couldn’t get the damned arrow to seat properly on the bowstring while a bazillion pounds of raw energy propelled him right past the target.)
