Travelrific® Travel Journal
Picture postcards in prose.™ Check out the blogroll on the front page for official merchandise and other resources!Archive for travel
Hooray for Hollywood
By Linda Tancs
At the Hollywood Museum, you’ll find 100 years of entertainment history under one roof. Boasting the largest collection of Hollywood memorabilia in the world, its sprawling four floors are a treasure trove of one-of-a-kind costumes, props, photographs, scripts, stars’ car collections and personal artifacts, posters and vintage memorabilia from favorite films and TV shows. The museum is housed in the historic Max Factor Building, named for makeup king Max Factor. You won’t want to miss his world famous makeup rooms where Hollywood’s biggest stars got ready for their close-ups.
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A City of Watchtowers
By Linda Tancs
Cádiz is the oldest continuously inhabited city in Spain. In fact, the Phoenicians named it Gadir and established a trading post there in 1100 B.C. It went on to become a thriving Roman port from which Christopher Columbus would later set sail for the New World. In the 18th century the city thrived thanks to international trade, a prosperity symbolized by its watchtowers. Approximately 160 watchtowers dominated the cityscape back then; over 100 remain today. The centerpiece is the Tavira Tower, located in the center of the city’s old town at its highest point above sea level. It’s named for the tower’s first watchman, Antonio Tavira.
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Culture for Connoisseurs
By Linda Tancs
A small city in northwest Switzerland, Basel is big on culture. Art lovers acknowledge that every year during the giant Art Basel fair. Situated on the Rhine (a scenic plus), Basel also happens to have the highest concentration of museums in the country (numbering 40 or so), including Basel Art Museum, the museum devoted to the iron sculptor Jean Tinguely, the Fondation Beyeler and the Museum of Cultures. Foodies flock there as well for local treats like traditional Basel honey cake. Today marks the start of the city’s carnival (the largest popular festival in Switzerland), Fasnacht. The festivities begin every year at 4:00 a.m. on the Monday following Ash Wednesday with the “Morgenstraich,” when all the lights in Basel go out and a colorful procession through the city streets begins. The party will continue until exactly 4:00 a.m. on Thursday.
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Unfinished Business in Natchez
By Linda Tancs
Located in Natchez, Mississippi, Longwood is an antebellum mansion built for wealthy planter Haller Nutt for himself, his wife and their eight children. As it was nearing completion, the Civil War began and the unfinished home was abandoned by its workmen, leaving the family to reside among the completed rooms in the basement. Now a popular tourist attraction, it is America’s largest octagonal house (at 30,000 square feet) and boasts a distinctive Byzantine onion-shaped dome. This listed home and national landmark is sometimes referred to as Nutt’s Folly, a reference to the mansion’s unfinished state because the fields and land owned by Nutt had been burned by Union soldiers during the Civil War.
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A Fisherman’s Paradise
By Linda Tancs
With 34 lakes and reservoirs and more than 680 miles of rivers and streams, the administratively combined Apache-Sitgreaves National Forests are a veritable paradise for fishermen. Encompassing two million acres of mountain country, it’s particularly prized for the vistas afforded by the Mogollon Rim extending two hundred miles from Flagstaff into western New Mexico. The Sitgreaves is named for Captain Lorenzo Sitgreaves, a government topographical engineer who conducted the first scientific expedition across Arizona in the early 1850s. The Apache National Forest is named for the tribes that settled in the area and boasts the White Mountains, where skiing, tubing and sledding reign this time of year.
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A Pan-Pacific Centennial
By Linda Tancs
There’s a celebration afoot as San Francisco’s Conservatory of Flowers remembers the centennial of the city’s 1915 Panama–Pacific International Exposition. The exhibition depicts the old fairgrounds, graced with model trains wending their way through graceful garden landscapes dotted with the fair’s most prized monuments such as the Tower of Jewels and Palace of Fine Arts. The historic world’s fair signaled the triumphant recovery of the city from the devastating 1906 earthquake. The special exhibit runs through April 10.
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A Hotbed of Activity in Australia
By Linda Tancs
Though it may be like little more than a trickle in a rain bucket, a tiny speck of southern ocean in Australia’s remote southwest is a hotbed of activity every February and March. For reasons yet unknown, Bremer Canyon is one of the only places on earth this time of year where killer whales can be consistently observed in a mass congregation (even more than 100 at the same time). Daily tours capture all the action as pods of killer whales (along with sperm whales, sharks, giant squid, sunfish and schools of tuna) participate in an unparalleled feeding frenzy. This is one annual phenomenon you won’t want to miss.
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North Carolina’s First Capitol
By Linda Tancs
North Carolina’s first permanent state capitol, Tryon Palace in New Bern is a complex of seven major buildings, three galleries and 14 acres of gardens. Home to Royal Governor William Tryon and his family, the Governor’s Palace was a Georgian-style structure completed in 1770. It was the site of the first sessions of the general assembly for the State of North Carolina following the revolution and housed the state governors until 1794. Destroyed by fire in 1798, today’s reproduction opened in 1959. Tours in the Governor’s Palace and historic houses are guided. Catch a free tour this Saturday, which is Free Day.
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A Different Kind of Boneyard
By Linda Tancs
It’s an alien world in Roswell, New Mexico—in more ways than one. Famously cited as the area of a UFO landing decades ago, these days it’s the alien feel of an aircraft boneyard that garners the attention of aircraft enthusiasts. That’s because Roswell International Air Center is where old planes go to die. One of a number of such sites (the largest in the world being Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona), its otherworldly connection gives it a leg up on the competition.
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London to Edinburgh
By Linda Tancs
The British Empire Exhibition of 1924 and 1925 made famous Flying Scotsman, the legendary London to Edinburgh rail service. In 1934 it was the first locomotive to clock 100 mph. The old-fashioned steam engine was retired by British Rail in 1963, only to change hands several times, including an attempt to resurrect mainline tours. But now, following a successful campaign, the “people’s engine” will once again steam proudly following a full restoration. Beginning this month a whole season of events and activities will mark the return of this locomotive legend as it readies itself for an inaugural run from London’s Kings Cross to York.
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