Travelrific® Travel Journal
Picture postcards in prose.™ Check out the blogroll on the front page for official merchandise and other resources!Archive for tourism
Huguenot History
By Linda Tancs
Huguenots were French Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who fled religious persecution. Overall, nearly 180,000 found homes elsewhere around the world. Many of them escaped to Britain, contributing crafts, skills and trades that formed the basis of the modern economy. Britain’s only museum of Huguenot history is located in Rochester. Many of the items on display are from the nearby French Hospital, founded in 1718 as a charity for poor Huguenot refugees. The museum also offers an ancestry research service, considering that one in six English people may be of Huguenot descent.
*************
To limit the spread of COVID-19, attractions may be closed or have partial closures. Please keep those affected by the virus in your thoughts and be sure to follow the safety practices advocated by the Centers for Disease Control. Stay safe, and be well.
Share this:
Crete’s Egyptian Lighthouse
By Linda Tancs
The lighthouse of Chania in Crete is one of Greece’s oldest lighthouses, not to mention one of the oldest in the world. The telltale sign of its 16th-century Venetian origin is the base. Rebuilt in the 1800s in the form of a minaret, it’s often referred to as the “Egyptian lighthouse” because it was refashioned during a time of Egyptian occupation when Crete was rebelling against Ottoman control. An icon of the city, it stands at the entrance of the city’s old harbor.
*************
To limit the spread of COVID-19, attractions may be closed or have partial closures. Please keep those affected by the virus in your thoughts and be sure to follow the safety practices advocated by the Centers for Disease Control. Stay safe, and be well.
Share this:
Where Language Comes to Life
By Linda Tancs
If you love words, language and reading, then Planet Word is the place for you. Located on K Street in Washington, D.C., it’s touted as a museum where language comes to life. The facility is situated in the Franklin School, a National Historic Landmark named for Benjamin Franklin that had become the flagship school for Washington’s public school system. The museum features a speaking willow tree and a talking wall of words reaching 22 feet in height. The interactive exhibits encourage visitors to explore the origins of English and other languages and to speak, read and sing various texts. The experience is self guided, and admission is free.
*************
To limit the spread of COVID-19, attractions may be closed or have partial closures. Please keep those affected by the virus in your thoughts and be sure to follow the safety practices advocated by the Centers for Disease Control. Stay safe, and be well.
Share this:
A Mansion in Miniature
By Linda Tancs
In the 18th century, doll houses were used by aristocratic women in their younger years to practice running a country house and to learn the finer points of life to the manor born. Only a handful of these houses have survived, one of them being the Nostell dolls’ house. Newly restored, it replicates Nostell Priory in West Yorkshire, England, right down to the ionic pilasters and a heraldic ornament on the tympanum. And unlike many doll houses, it’s located in the very house that it mimics. Over 6 feet in height, no detail is spared in its elaborate features, like grand beds with carved headboards, hand-painted wallpaper and hallmarked silverware. You’ll no doubt feel welcome by its tiny occupants, including the footman on the ground floor.
*************
To limit the spread of COVID-19, attractions may be closed or have partial closures. Please keep those affected by the virus in your thoughts and be sure to follow the safety practices advocated by the Centers for Disease Control. Stay safe, and be well.
Share this:
The Story of Humans in New Mexico
By Linda Tancs
The first public museum in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Maxwell Museum of Anthropology is dedicated to telling the history of humankind. Although their catalog includes vast anthropological collections and archives from around the world, the majority of their 3 million objects comes from the U.S. Southwest. They even boast a skeletal collection of people who have donated their remains to the museum for study and teaching. The facility is located on the University of New Mexico campus.
*************
To limit the spread of COVID-19, attractions may be closed or have partial closures. Please keep those affected by the virus in your thoughts and be sure to follow the safety practices advocated by the Centers for Disease Control. Stay safe, and be well.
Share this:
Picturesque in Kent
By Linda Tancs
A picturesque scene may be in the eye of the beholder, but the term itself is an aesthetic category developed in the 18th century and most often associated with fashionable landscape gardening. A celebrated example of the picturesque style is the garden at Scotney Castle in Kent, England. It surrounds the ruins of a 14th-century, moated castle and is particularly noted for the cloud-like plantings of rhododendrons and azaleas. Overall, the estate boasts a Victorian mansion (where former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had an apartment during her time in office) bounded by 780 acres of woodland, including the stream that feeds the moat.
*************
To limit the spread of COVID-19, attractions may be closed or have partial closures. Please keep those affected by the virus in your thoughts and be sure to follow the safety practices advocated by the Centers for Disease Control. Stay safe, and be well.
Share this:
Spain’s Fairy-Tale Castle
By Linda Tancs
Touted as one of Spain’s greatest castles, Alcázar de Segovia invites imitation. In fact, some say that it inspired two iconic Disney castles. That’s high praise for a structure that grew from a small Moorish fortress. Historically a favored retreat for Spanish kings, it later became a prison, an artillery college and even a filming location for Orson Welles’s Chimes at Midnight and the Arthurian musical Camelot. Now a museum, it serves as the emblem for the Old Town of Segovia, a UNESCO site. You’ll get great views of this ancient Roman city from the castle tower. About an hour north of Madrid, it’s an easy day trip from the capital.
*************
To limit the spread of COVID-19, attractions may be closed or have partial closures. Please keep those affected by the virus in your thoughts and be sure to follow the safety practices advocated by the Centers for Disease Control. Stay safe, and be well.
Share this:
A Prodigy in Lincolnshire
By Linda Tancs
A prodigy house is a large, showy, late-Elizabethan or Jacobean English country house built by a courtier and other wealthy families. One of England’s grandest surviving examples of such a place is Burghley House in Stamford. It was conceived by William Cecil (the first Lord Burghley), Lord High Treasurer to Queen Elizabeth I, one of the most powerful courtiers of the first Elizabethan age. Direct descendants lived in the house for over 500 years, and it’s still very much a family home, with a direct descendant overseeing the charitable trust that governs operations at the estate. Among its many treasures, the house boasts one of the finest private collections of Italian Old Master paintings, and its gardens and parkland were largely designed by Lancelot “Capability’ Brown” in the 18th century. Enjoy a guided or self-guided tour of 18 sumptuous state rooms.
*************
To limit the spread of COVID-19, attractions may be closed or have partial closures. Please keep those affected by the virus in your thoughts and be sure to follow the safety practices advocated by the Centers for Disease Control. Stay safe, and be well.
Share this:
Small But Mighty in New Zealand
By Linda Tancs
Abel Tasman National Park is a wilderness reserve at the north end of New Zealand’s South Island. Despite its small size, it’s the country’s most popular national park, making the case that good things come in small packages. It’s known for the Abel Tasman Coast Track, a 33-mile trail between the seaside village of Marahau and Wainui. Along the way you’ll experience golden sand beaches and a 154-foot-long suspension bridge over Falls River as well as plenty of lookouts and rocky headlands. Don’t miss a side trip to Cleopatra’s Pool, a natural rock pool with a moss-lined waterslide. It’s best to take the trek in stages; there are four huts and 18 campsites along the track, which must be booked in advance all year round.
*************
To limit the spread of COVID-19, attractions may be closed or have partial closures. Please keep those affected by the virus in your thoughts and be sure to follow the safety practices advocated by the Centers for Disease Control. Stay safe, and be well.
Share this:
Smoking Mountain
By Linda Tancs
They say that only the most adventurous dare to climb Mount Fitz Roy, the highest peak in Southern Patagonia’s Glacier National Park. At over 11,000 feet above sea level, you can understand why. Due to a fairly consistent atmospheric haze over its peak, it was originally named Chaltén, a word meaning “smoking mountain” in the indigenous Tehuelche tribe’s dialect. The current moniker, Fitz Roy, is a nod to Captain FitzRoy of HMS Beagle, the ship that voyaged around South America with Charles Darwin. Although there’s nothing volcanic about the revered granite walls, you’ll get smokin’ views of Fitz Roy from Laguna de Los Tres, some 1,400 feet from the base camp reserved for mountaineers.
*************
To limit the spread of COVID-19, attractions may be closed or have partial closures. Please keep those affected by the virus in your thoughts and be sure to follow the safety practices advocated by the Centers for Disease Control. Stay safe, and be well.
Travelrific® Travel Journal 