Travelrific® Travel Journal
Picture postcards in prose.™ Check out the blogroll on the front page for official merchandise and other resources!Archive for December, 2023
Planting Fields on Long Island
By Linda Tancs
Located in Oyster Bay, New York, Planting Fields is one of only a few surviving estates on Long Island. It includes Coe Hall, a 65-room Tudor Revival mansion purchased in 1913 by English immigrant William Robertson Coe and Mai Rogers Coe, heiress and daughter of Standard Oil partner Henry Huttleston Rogers. Guided tours provide visits to select rooms on the first and second floors; self-guided tours are also available, with docents available for questions throughout the manor. Equally as stunning are the gardens designed by the Olmsted Brothers Firm (sons of the famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, designer of New York’s Central Park). Maintaining its original 409 acres, the garden complex includes an Italian garden, cloister garden and circular pool, rose garden and perennial garden together with two greenhouses.
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A Salty Spot in Africa
By Linda Tancs
Even saltier than the Dead Sea, Lake Assal is a crater lake surrounded by dormant volcanoes in Djibouti. Africa’s lowest elevation on land, it sits at 509 feet below sea level. Not surprisingly, salt extraction is a major industry. So is tourism. Besides the salty lake and volcanic fields, other attractions include its sandy beaches along the Red Sea and popular dive sites.
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Savannah’s First School
By Linda Tancs
Located in the Historic Landmark District, Massie School was the first free public school in Savannah, Georgia. Opened in 1856, it continues an educational function today as Massie Heritage Center. The kid-friendly exhibits include a photo history of people who attended, visited or taught at Massie School. There’s also an authentic 19th-century classroom where students can engage in authentic grade-level appropriate reading, writing, arithmetic and geography lessons and practice penmanship with quill pens. The facility is named for Peter Massie, a Scottish immigrant to Georgia in the late 1700s, who bequeathed a portion of his fortune to the city for the establishment of a free school for the poor.
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Billed as the Great North American Eclipse, a total solar eclipse will cross North America on April 8, 2024, passing over Mexico, the United States and Canada. The path of the eclipse begins in Mexico, entering the United States in Texas, and traveling through Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. The eclipse will enter Canada in Southern Ontario, and continue through Quebec, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Cape Breton. This will be the last time any solar eclipse will be visible within the United States until 2045.
Be prepared! So long as supplies last, you can purchase eclipse glasses and other accessories, like a phone app and photo filter, from American Paper Optics, a NASA-approved manufacturer. The link in the preceding sentence is an affiliate link, which means that if you click on the link and purchase merchandise from the page, then I may receive a small commission.
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The History of Tennis
By Linda Tancs
The International Tennis Hall of Fame preserves and promotes the history of tennis and celebrates its champions. The museum displays over 2,000 items from its vast collection, including items associated with each hall of famer. The facility also features The Hall of Fame Tennis Club, which is open to the public daily for court time, lessons and clinics. One of the most interesting exhibits at the museum is the hologram of tennis great Roger Federer, giving visitors the experience of a one-on-one encounter. The museum is on the second floor of the historic Newport Casino Building in Newport, Rhode Island.
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Burning the Clocks in Brighton
By Linda Tancs
Today marks the winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere, the longest night of the year. To brighten it up a bit, head to Brighton, England’s famed seaside resort, where a carnival-like atmosphere presides on this night every year. The event is known as Burning the Clocks, a family-friendly festival featuring the parading of handmade lanterns through the city to the beach where the event concludes with a massive bonfire and fireworks. The fun begins at The Royal Pavilion, just a few minutes’ walk from the seafront.
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Night of the Radishes
By Linda Tancs
If food art inspires you, then you won’t want to miss the annual event in Oaxaca, Mexico, this month. Every December 23, the locals celebrate the Night of the Radishes (La Noche de Rábanos) with an eye-catching display of sculpted radishes featuring everything from saints to cemeteries. But don’t try this at home; the radishes used for the festival are grown in a restricted field and can weigh as much as 7 pounds! Carvers aren’t just in it for the art; the competition for cash prizes is fierce. The festival is complemented by music, fireworks and Christmas market stalls.
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The Mountains Are Calling
By Linda Tancs
Named for ecologist and mountaineer John Muir, the John Muir Wilderness in California stretches for 100 miles along the crest of the Sierra Nevada. Muir was a staunch advocate for the area’s preservation and is widely known for saying, “The mountains are calling and I must go….” And many continue to go, especially the 30 million or so who live within a few hours’ drive of its snow-capped mountains, deep canyons and vast expanses of glacially-carved terrain. The region is approachable from both sides of the Sierra Nevada. Most visitors, however, enter from the east at various points along highway 395, from the town of Mammoth at the north end down to Whitney Portal above Lone Pine at the south end. Mount Whitney (at around 14,500 feet) is the highest peak in the contiguous 48 states.
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Billed as the Great North American Eclipse, a total solar eclipse will cross North America on April 8, 2024, passing over Mexico, the United States and Canada. The path of the eclipse begins in Mexico, entering the United States in Texas, and traveling through Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. The eclipse will enter Canada in Southern Ontario, and continue through Quebec, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Cape Breton. This will be the last time any solar eclipse will be visible within the United States until 2045.
Be prepared! So long as supplies last, you can purchase eclipse glasses and other accessories, like a phone app and photo filter, from American Paper Optics, a NASA-approved manufacturer. The link in the preceding sentence is an affiliate link, which means that if you click on the link and purchase merchandise from the page, then I may receive a small commission.
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The Gold of Varna
By Linda Tancs
Popularly referred to as the “sea capital of Bulgaria,” Varna is a port city and seaside resort on Bulgaria’s Black Sea. Its seaside resorts and beaches beckon holiday travelers, but its biggest claim to fame is the discovery of the oldest gold known to mankind. Buried more than 6,500 years ago, it was discovered accidentally over 50 years ago by an excavator at the city’s necropolis. So far, around 3,000 gold artifacts have been discovered. You can see many of them at the Varna Archaeological Museum as well as the National Historical Museum in Sofia.
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A Unique Treasure in Stockholm
By Linda Tancs
Located on the island of Djurgården, the Vasa Museum is a maritime museum in Stockholm, Sweden. One of the most-visited museums in Scandinavia, it displays the only 17th-century ship that has ever been salvaged, the 64-gun warship Vasa that sank on her maiden voyage in 1628. Decorated with hundreds of carved sculptures, more than 98 percent of the ship is original. A film about the ship is offered in several languages as is an audio guide.
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The Woman’s Bridge
By Linda Tancs
The neighborhood of Puerto Madero in Buenos Aires, Argentina, is built on reclaimed land and sits adjacent to the river. A must-see in the area is Woman’s Bridge (Puente de la Mujer). The graceful bridge over Rio de la Plata represents the image of a couple dancing the tango. The white mast symbolizes the man and the curved silhouette of the bridge, the woman. More than just aesthetics, the bridge has one of the largest turning mechanisms in the world, engineered with a rotating central section that opens and allows the passage of boats. The homage to women doesn’t stop with the bridge; every street in Puerto Madero is named after a famous woman in Argentine history.
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