Category: travel
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Daytime in the Garden of Bad Tourists
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Recently my hubby and I visited Savannah, Georgia, the setting for a best-selling phenomenon of a book, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil; it reigned at the top of the NY Times list for a still-unbroken record of 216 weeks. Didn’t read the book at the time, but…
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The wonderful world of vintage carousels – Pt 1
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Music. Hot dogs and ice cream. Sunshine and breezes. Rides. Memories of childhood summers in the 1900s, and not just in that century. Happily, old-fashioned amusement parks still exist, and families still turn out to enjoy their simpler pleasures, free from timed attractions, long lineups and exorbitant prices. Summertime when…
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The wonderful world of vintage carousels — preview
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After dinner I closeted myself in Alistair’s study. With a bit of hunting, I found the book about carousels on one of the shelves. It was titled Garosello, the Little Battle of the Animals. There was a photo of a classic prancing horse on the cover. I’d always loved carousels,…
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Better travellers, better planet(s)
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I’ve always loved reading books that featured travel to exotic places. It was Agatha Christie’s murder mystery Death on the Nile, or more specifically the magnificently-filmed movie version in 1978, that cemented my desire to actually go to a country I’d been dreaming about since I was a child. Adding…
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Falls frenzy over the decades
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My parents honeymooned at Niagara Falls. I have a photo of them leaning against the scrolled metal guardrail that covers large sections of the walkways along the falls and gorge, my dad in a dark suit, my mom in a matching skirt and jacket with a pretty blouse, smiling for…
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How a humble subway map became an icon
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There’s a dragon approaching. You can feel its hot breath billowing out of the dark, sooty-looking tunnels. Soon it will emerge and devour you. That was my first impression of the subway system in London, England. At its deepest levels, it’s like a medieval labyrinth. As the trains get close…
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Searching the Stars
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This week we look out to the stars. What’s really out there, besides what we can see when we look up at the night sky? For thousands of years, humans have been paying attention to both the life- and warmth-giving sun during the day, and what was revealed above us…
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The mysterious Andean city in the sky, Tiwanaku
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At 12,500 feet in the Andes Mountains, the air is clear and cold. On a spring day, during the rainy season, clouds can blanket the sky and make the area look even more bleak. Yet, above the tree line, tucked into the Altiplano – a high, flat, barren plain that…
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Our Own Hero’s Journey
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Someone asked me once who my heroes were, and the person who immediately came to mind was a customer at the pharmacy where I worked. She had Crohn’s disease, which can be a miserable experience on a daily basis, but whenever she came in she was unfailingly pleasant and nice.…
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Holiday magic?
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So the Victorian Christmas wasn’t always so perfect, with all the social ills of the period, but in Dickens’ view, Christmas was what you made of it. And I think he understood the celebration far better than a lot of people do today. What makes a perfect Christmas, or other…