Travelrific® Travel Journal
Picture postcards in prose.™ Check out the blogroll on the front page for official merchandise and other resources!Archive for short reads
A Landscape With Capabilities
By Linda Tancs
Nestled in the heart of England’s South Downs National Park, Petworth has been settled since at least Norman times and is mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086. The dominant attraction is Petworth House, a fortified manor house from the 12th century that was completely rebuilt in 1688 by Charles Seymour, 6th Duke of Somerset, who transformed it into the magnificent Petworth House seen today. The majestic 700-acre park at Petworth (home to the largest herd of fallow deer in England) is one of the finest surviving and unspoiled examples of an English landscape designed by Lancelot “Capability” Brown, widely acclaimed as England’s greatest gardener. The stately mansion also has the distinction of housing the finest art collection in the care of the National Trust. Don’t miss the current exhibition of Britain’s greatest watercolors, on show until March 10. The site is accessible via Victoria station in London to Pulborough. Local buses there pass through the town center of Petworth.
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Bon Temps in Mobile
By Linda Tancs
Home to the first Mardi Gras in the U.S., Mobile, Alabama, has been letting the good times roll since 1703. That rich cultural history is on display at the Mobile Carnival Museum. Located on Government Street in a historic building, the facility features royal gowns, crowns and scepters amidst 14 gallery rooms, a pictorial hallway, theater and gathering space.
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History and Design in Wilmington
By Linda Tancs
The Bellamy Mansion Museum in Wilmington, North Carolina, is one of the state’s most spectacular examples of antebellum architecture. Built by free and enslaved black artisans for physician and planter John Dillard Bellamy and his family before the outbreak of the Civil War, the 10,000-square-foot home now serves as a museum of history and the design arts. The home’s soaring main entrance and lushly recreated Victorian gardens are met with equally compelling slave quarters, one of very few preserved urban slave quarters in the country. Guided tours are given on the hour, and self-guided audio tours are available at other times.
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Carnival Capital of Croatia
By Linda Tancs
There’s good reason why Rijeka is the carnival capital of Croatia. Held between mid-January and Ash Wednesday, Rijeka Carnival blends culture, folklore and mythology with good old-fashioned partying, including pageants, street dances, concerts, masked balls, exhibitions and a parade. The International Carnival Parade on Feb. 26 is the crown jewel in the festivities. Be on the lookout for men in oversized animal head masks who dance and ring loud bells to frighten off evil spirits.
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A History of Immigration in Manhattan
By Linda Tancs
One of America’s foremost immigrant neighborhoods is Manhattan’s Lower East Side, in particular 97 Orchard Street. Built in 1863, this tenement apartment building was home to nearly 7,000 working-class immigrants. This ordinary building from which dreams were built forms the Tenement Museum. Accessible only via guided tours, visitors meander through restored apartments that recreate immigrant life in the 19th and 20th centuries. A testament to the lure of the American Dream, in 1992 the museum opened its first apartment, the 1878 home of the German-Jewish Gumpertz family. Since then, six more apartments have been restored, like the home of the Moores, Irish immigrants who lived at 97 Orchard in 1869. Tours start and end at 103 Orchard, site of the museum’s flagship visitors’ center.
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Japan’s Big Wheel
By Linda Tancs
Ready for the high life in Japan? Then head to Osaka for the country’s tallest ferris wheel at Expocity. The Redhorse Osaka Wheel is nearly 404 feet high with 72 passenger cabins boasting glass floors for that walking-on-air kind of view. The fifth highest wheel in the world, the ride takes 18 minutes to complete.
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The Seven Chairs
By Linda Tancs
The Roman colony of Emerita Augusta (now known as Mérida in Spain) was founded in 25 B.C. by the emperor Augustus to resettle emeritus soldiers discharged from the Roman army. Like any great city of its day, it needed a theatre, which was erected between 16 and 15 B.C. and is known today as the Roman Theatre of Mérida. Hosting 6,000 people, they were distributed from top to bottom according to their social status. By the 1800s, the ruins were called the Seven Chairs by the locals because only the upper tiers of seats were still visible above the sediment. Excavations and renovations have resulted in a venue prized for its artistic events. The Classical Theatre Festival, held every year since 1933, is the site’s most notable cultural event.
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Superior Architecture in Wisconsin
By Linda Tancs
Fairlawn Mansion is an authentically restored 1890 Victorian house museum in Superior, Wisconsin. Built as the family home for lumber and mining baron Martin Pattison, the Queen Anne structure with its four-story turret is an iconic landmark. Among the jewels restored during extensive renovations are gilded murals on the ceilings and frieze, a grand entrance hall and open staircase, marble and tile fireplaces and original leaded and stained glass windows. The master bedroom suite on the second floor also includes period family furnishings. All tours depart at the top of the hour from the gift shop.
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The Friendly City
By Linda Tancs
Wheeling, West Virginia, dubs itself “the friendly city,” no doubt earned by its reputation for heartily welcoming visitors—a stark contrast from the tumult experienced during the Civil War. The state was formed out of western Virginia and added to the Union as a direct result of the war. Born from the walls of West Virginia Independence Hall, a forerunner of today’s skyscrapers with wrought iron I-beams and box girders with cast iron columns, its three floors tell the story of political intrigue, treason, loyalty oaths and the threat of rebel invasion. Admission is free.
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A Kiss in Lima
By Linda Tancs
According to an old song, a kiss is just a kiss. Not so in Lima, Peru. The simple act is memorialized in a larger than life way with El Beso (The Kiss), a sculpture produced by native Peruvian Victor Delfin. It overlooks the Pacific Ocean at Parque del Amor (Love Park—what else?) in the touristy Miraflores district of Lima. The statue was unveiled on Valentine’s Day in 1993. Perhaps not surprisingly, the site plays host to an annual kissing contest.
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