Archive for Travel

5DC (Dalia Cracken) | May 16, 2010
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Geneva Music Festivals

As one of the larger financial centers for all of Europe, Geneva is a city that attracts a rather broad array of visitors every year. Some come to do business, of course, but the rest come to enjoy the hotel accommodations and all that the city has to offer. The locals are very cosmopolitan, and pretty well-versed in world history as well as world culture, and they tend to like outdoor activities, taking advantage of the temperate weather here. Winters are typically snowy, and skiing is a prime attraction here, and the rest of the time there is a potpourri of choices. Because of the cultured population, music festivals are at a premium, and for live music, it’s hard to beat.

Geneva’s Fete de la Musique is one of the big events in the city, and is also a major music festival for the rest of the world. Those fortunate enough to be traveling here in June can enjoy a three-day music festival that is one of the largest in the world. It truly has something for everyone, with 50 stages that have a constantly-rotating lineup of everything under the sun, from classical to hiphop. There are plenty of local acts, along with some stunning international acts that represent the best in their genre. Plan on using the city’s public transport during this time, since the roads are blocked off to make room for the music and the crowds.

For the more esoteric tastes, there is the Akouphene festival , which happens for four days in September. Here, the focus is on music that crosses over into other genres, from Brutism rock, experimental, and noise rock, and way, way beyond. This is one of the most exciting festivals for those who are deep into the eclectic, and have a taste for the ultimate in modern. European art tastes tend toward the remix and mash-up these days, and these new genres are some of the most exciting experiments from young and adventurous world musicians.

Those who like performance mixed in with their live music should try to attend the La Batie Festival. The focus here is more theatrically-based, with a big emphasis on the visual arts. Again, this is something that represents contemporary trends for mixing genre and playing with form, and demonstrates some of the best artistic minds working today.

There is plenty more where this came from, and those looking to discover the music scene in Geneva don’t have to wait for festivals. Live music is heard in clubs, pubs, and performance spaces all around town.

Category: Music, Travel | Tags: , ,
5DC (Dalia Cracken) | May 14, 2010
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Video Rental in Austin

The film industry is very much alive and well in the city of Austin. Ever since the release of the underground classic, “Slacker,” in the 80s, Austin has registered on the radar of nearly every member of the hip and infamous, and has now begun to register on their offspring. It’s a bit strange to think that the Gen X’ers are now having kids, but these things are inevitable, and the irony is not lost on the city. It’s established itself as a hub of national alternative culture, and maintains a high standard of cultural literacy, and there are plenty of things going on here.

Music has always been rather excellent in Austin, and with the SXSW festival, it’s even better. That same festival has also boosted Austin’s prominence in the film world. It’s no accident, then, that there are so many great video stores in Austin . The knowledge of the film industry is very broad and intense here. Like everything that the locals in Austin like, film is admired with a rather ridiculous passion. In any of the video rental places, it’s likely to get into a conversation about film with the owners and the workers, because the next best thing to watching film is talking about it.

However, it might be only a short conversation about what’s available on video in Austin before it seems like talking might even be better than the real thing. Other customers also join in on the conversation, and it can become a lively night out. You’ll certainly find out about other people’s tastes, but it’s also likely to learn about the movie industry, too. The people in Austin simply know a lot about film, and that’s one of the most exciting things about the city.

If you are visiting for awhile, you might even consider getting a membership at one of the Austin video joints. It’s worth the trouble to have the access, and most places will rent to out-of-towners. And it is a pleasure to rent a cult classic or something new and strange, and watch it from the privacy of your hotel room .

One thing to remember, too, is that the video stores have a sense of humor that is as open and engaging as everything else. The owners and the employees like to laugh, generally, and have a pretty witty take on the world of video, along with everything else. Check out some of the store policies, too, where some will offer amnesty on the first of the month and cut the late fees in half, and other places offer free beer on some evenings. There are things in this town that are impossible to manage anywhere else.

Category: Entertainment, Travel | Tags: , , ,
5DC (Dalia Cracken) | May 11, 2010
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News in Amsterdam

With the very high amount of alternative shops and alternative culture in general in Amsterdam, it’s pretty reasonable to suspect that there’s a lot of alternative newspapers in circulation. There is certainly plenty of reading material, and given the European propensity for maintaining a steady flow of knowledge, historical and contemporary, it’s easy to find lots of papers here. Cafes and record shops all become reservoirs of free information, and it’s a lovely way to spend a morning, poring over the various sources of news with a coffee and thinking about the day ahead.

Of course, seeing the world from the luxury of one’s hotel in Amsterdam is also pretty lovely, because it’s one of the most interesting cities in the world. It can be very lively, with a nightlife, and a daylife, that’s pretty hard to beat for fun, but it can also be pretty laid back and rather beautifully calm, too. Having access to the news in a strange city in another country can offer some very telling truths about one’s own country, and the pace of the city allows for these kinds of contemplation. Something that often happens here is that foreigners discover that their own home countries are not the center of the world at all, and in Amsterdam, there’s little of the sense that the people here feel they’re the center of the world, either. That’s one of the great pleasures about staying in a truly cosmopolitan city.

There are many different sources of news, then, for those wondering what’s happening in the city. Apart from the indie rags that can provide some very insightful commentary, along with some that only offer ads, there are online sources that can give a sense of what’s happening here. These can be helpful before leaving, but they can also be good references for when one comes home, and starts to miss Amsterdam. Everyone who has visited will miss it eventually.

Some online sources, like topix are user-generated sources, which is a very contemporary trend, and has some excellent links. It’s important to watch out for messages that are adverts, however, since access is fairly open. Pink point is an excellent source for Amsterdam’s GLBT community, which began as an ice cream cart in 1998 and has grown by leaps and bounds since then. Radio Netherlands Worldwide is a fairly broad, and purportedly objective, source for news here that’s available in English.

There are many sources for news in Amsterdam, however, and it’s important to keep that in mind, because they very much value the notion of keeping a point of view that can be shifted.

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5DC (Dalia Cracken) | April 21, 2010
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Primary Flight – Miami

It’s a city that continually challenges and frustrates expectations. For the local art lovers and artists, and for visitors, too, this is a pretty wonderful thing. Confounded expectations usually translate to delightful surprises, and this makes for a rather lively citiscape that is continually evolving, revealing new, hidden sides moment to moment. This was perhaps best exemplified in the recent Primary Flight exhibit at the Art Basel showcase last winter.

Art Basel Miami Beach typically brings in a lot of the heavy hitters in the art world, including artists, exhibitors, curators, art critics, and collectors alike. The international art community at large turns its eye on the city, where international connections are established and firmed up, and some of the most interesting works of contemporary art get shown in the city. It’s a particularly good time for the hospitality industry, as visitors get to take advantage of Miami’s lovely accommodations , and enjoy all that the city has to offer. For some artists, particularly those whose work falls outside the established institutions, it’s an opportunity to make public displays that will attract the attention of the art world at large.

Primary Flight , in its third incarnation, is a way for outsider artists to make bold statements in a way that escapes the institutions. Interestingly enough, the last manifestation got the endorsements of some larger forces, notably Dr. Dre, and also gained the participation from some big names in the art world.

They create the largest public art installation in the world, by gathering the artists together to create, on their own time schedule, large murals that grace the streets. It’s graffiti art with a difference, and some of the most well-known taggers were involved. It’s been a fascinating evolution, the move from outsider status to public support that’s on the verge of seeming to be institutionally supported. However, it’s still based on rough forms and rough techniques, which are necessary to give these artists the breathing room to create as they wish. The results are surprising, and often confounding, revealing an uncertain sense that the walls of the institutions may not be speaking as loud as they think they are, and that the streets are still the place where ideas can be formed, and occasionally even realized.

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5DC (Dalia Cracken) | March 8, 2010
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New Orleans Zeitgeist

There’s something about New Orleans that feels like the very edges of culture, those unusual underground edges that we reach before we fall. In New Orleans, it’s always a feeling of falling off that very same edge, the edges of the earth, and into the mouths of sea monsters that are waiting just below. There’s also something in the air in New Orleans, where all of this seems like it might actually be a good thing, and the fall is liable to be interesting, and the sea monsters probably have very good taste in music. In New Orleans, it’s the beginning of something interesting, and at also seems like it’s the end of something else.

There are always plenty of ways to negotiate the space between here and there in New Orleans, where the sense of otherness that was so disconcerting in other places is common here. There is a sense of being in a city that’s unique and lively, and also a feeling of entering another world. Great hotels are splendid ways to maintain a kind of contact with a familiar world, or at least one that’s remarkably gracious, and as hospitable as the rest of the city.

There are also plenty of adventures here, ranging from the easily accessible, in body and spirit, to the more local and unusual, like the programming offered at Zeitgeist . This multi-disciplinary arts center is curated by local Rene Broussard , whose tastes are eclectic, innovative, and also rather visionary at times. There are plenty of art forms to experience here, and lots of film, but the roots of the space are in experimental theatre. It started operations in the 80s, and has had a pretty spectacular run, featuring a stunning number of artists and performance from all over the world. There is also always a generous number of artists working locally, and presenting work here. For visitors, this is the perfect opportunity to enjoy something very much rooted in the neighborhoods in New Orleans, and there be sea monsters for sure.

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5DC (Dalia Cracken) | February 27, 2010
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Love San Francisco

If you have been staying at a great hotel like this and you have been to all the crowded attractions like a whole day just to visit Alcatraz and spend time on the Fisherman’s Wharf. Maybe you caught a comedy show and now you want a day to stroll one of San Franciscos unique neighborhoods how about Haight Ashbury district. It is named after the famous intersection it resides on and its nickname is The haight. The Streets were originally named after Henry Haight at pioneer, exchange broker as well as tenth governor of California and Munroe Ashbury who was an early politician of San Francisco who was on the S.F. Board of Supervisors between 1964 and 1870. Munroe Ashbury was Henry Haight’s nephew and they both helped develop the neighborhood.

There are two parts to the neighborhood the upper Haight and lower Haight because of there height on the hill. The lower section was originally an area of African American and Japanese residents. The upper Haight district is the one that is famous for its part in the hippie movement in the sixties. It all started when students and artists couldn’t find affordable housing in most parts of the city so they took over Haight street where there was cheap rent. The neighborhood was actually quiet before they came along.

Today there are many shops and restaurants to visit and thing are a little more main stream than it was back in the sixties but it still holds much of its charm and has many great old buildings to see. Come and see some of the vibe that contributed to another name is  was called by Journalist, Hunter S. Thompson, which was Hashbury because it was. Come see the trail left behind by bands like the Greatful Dead, Janis Joplin with Big Brother and the Holding Company and Jefferson Airplane.

Category: Music, Travel | Tags: , ,
5DC (Dalia Cracken) | February 25, 2010
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Balto The Wonder Dog in New York

If you stroll through Central Park, you’re sure to come across a number of interesting statues, but one, in particular, may give you reason to pause.  At 67th Street, on the southeast side of the park, just off Central Park East Drive/Park Drive North, there’s a bronze statue of Balto, The Wonder Dog.  You might consider that few enough people in the world have statues created for them  (I’m pretty sure, for instance, that I won’t have one), much less dogs, but this one animal is particularly special for its service to its Alaskan owners in the first half of the Twentieth Century.  The plaque says the statue is dedicated to the spirit of Sled Dogs, but its two dogs that deserve the credit: Balto and Togo, who is the other Wonder Dog.

The town of Nome, Alaska, in 1925, was the epicenter of a diphtheria epidemic.  Isolated, remote, and in the middle of winter, where the world is dark most of the day and bitterly cold.  Dr. Curtis Welch, Nome’s lone physician, put out a radio call for help.  He needed antitoxin serum to save the townspeople.  At this point, several children had died, and more would die, if they couldn’t get the serum.  The closest hospital, though, was seven hundred miles away.  The only way to reach them was to send the medicine by a dog sled relay.  Gunnar Kaasen took up the last leg of the journey with his Siberian huskies, whose lead dog was new.  This was Balto.  The dogs and Kaasen braved temperatures of sixty to seventy degrees below zero for the last fifty-three miles.

As you look at this statue, whether its winter, spring, or summer, consider those fifty-three miles with Balto.  It certainly makes me grateful for living in a city and the chance to go back to a warm, comfortable room.  The actual Balto was stuffed and may be seen at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.  Most of the fame goes to Balto, as he was the lead dog in the last relay; however, another lead dog, Togo, who led musher Leonhard Seppala, brought the medicine across another arduous part of the trip, over Norton Sound.  Togo’s team actually traveled hundreds of miles there and back.  If the governor of Alaska had not added another relay to the team, the statue in Central Park would belong to Togo.  He’d be at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History too, instead of in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race Museum in Wasilla, Alaska.  Fortune and fame sometimes lends itself to odd quirks of fate; all food for thought while wandering Central Park.

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5DC (Dalia Cracken) | February 20, 2010
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A Wonderful Relaxing Time in Burbank

Day one in Burbank, California: took a VIP Warner Brothers Studio tour. It was one of the best studio tours we’ve been on. The groups are small, around 12 people at a time, and we were taken right past working sets. We rode through the back-lots on a small tram vehicle and we were allowed to get off and peek inside the sets. We were then taken to the front lot, this is where all the current TV shows are filmed. We were really lucky to see some actors rehearsing their lines. At the end of the tour, we got to see the Warner Bros. museum, which houses memorabilia from the entire 70 years of their history.

The next day, after having a wonderful breakfast at our hotel, which, by-the-way, gave us a great deal because we booked online. For more information: this site was the best we’ve found. We went to the Civic Center in Los Angeles, we just hung around in case anything exciting happened, nothing did, so we went to Little Tokyo not far from the Civic Center and had lunch. At lunch we marvelled at having a two week vacation, made us feel more relaxed about what we wanted to do, if we wanted to we could just switch our activities to another day.

Day three, we headed back into Los Angeles and visited the famous Farmers Market and the new outdoor mall called the Grove, which is now attached to the Farmers Market. The Farmers Market was fantastic. There was so much to eat, so many wonderful smells and we just fell in love with the relaxed atmosphere. We then walked over to the Grove, what a great outdoor mall, there’s even a streetcar and a fountain that’s timed to music. Most of the major anchor stores are there. We were hoping to spot a celebrity, we here they come here all the time, but no such luck.

Days four, five and six were spent at the beach in Santa Monica. That place is a total blast, there’s so much to do there, like eating and shopping and then eating. We decided to check out of our hotel and drive up the Pacific Coast Highway. We haven’t made reservations with any other hotels, but we figured with that online site we mentioned above, we’d have no problems with booking online when we are at a coffee shop with free wi-fi.

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5DC (Dalia Cracken) | February 18, 2010
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Great Cheese Steak in South Philadelphia

With most of the major cities in this country there are certain aspects that are specifically associated with them. New York is known for having great theatre, Chicago is not only the windy city but also known for its incredible jazz scene. One of the things Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is most known for is also one of its citizen’s favorites. It is home of the best cheese steak sandwiches in the nation and probably even the world. Tourists who visit a Philadelphia area hotel are likely not there specifically to have a cheese steak sandwich, though you can certainly bet that they will enjoy at least one of them during their stay.

Different people will have their own opinion on where the best sandwiches are actually served and how to create the perfect cheese steak. However, there are certain institutions that are acknowledged as having some of the best sandwiches and these are generally the places that tourists are most likely to migrate to. However, there are always those who are willing to explore all options to find what they themselves consider to be the best, which is what ultimately many of the residents of Philadelphia have done.

For individuals looking for a guaranteed and accepted as great cheese steak sandwich, Geno’s in South Philadelphia is a great option. One of the great things, in addition to their food, about Geno’s is the fact that they are open twenty four hours a day, which makes accessing a great sandwich whenever the craving or need strikes is possible. The restaurant was established in 1966 by Joe Vento who learned the art of making cheese steak from his father who had previously owned and operated Jim’s Steaks in the 1940s. Traditions and recipes that are passed down through the generations are usually guaranteed to be of high quality or obviously they would have been weeded out through the years. And when dealing with food, longevity of an establishment is always an indication of quality.

Category: culture, Travel | Tags: , ,
5DC (Dalia Cracken) | February 16, 2010
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The Western Frontier in Lubbock

Want to understand what it was like to live on the Western frontier?  If so, then you might want to check out the National Ranching Heritage Center in Lubbock, Texas.  This interesting museum has a number of exhibits that display how the chuck wagon was used, how Native Americans dressed, and how frontiersmen even furnished their ranch homes.  More impressively, perhaps, is the display of ranch homes and structures vital to the ranching life (you’ll see a school house, a barn, and even a complete rural train station, and that includes an entire train, from the locomotive steam engine to cattle cars to caboose; there’s also livestock pens.  Inside, you’ll find the buildings with authentic furnishings of that frontier time period.  This educational center is well operated and maintained, and just about anyone from young children to adults can enjoy a visit.  Note, too, that the amount of walking you’ll have to do is small and that over mostly level paths.  Everyone in the family might find something he or she will enjoy, and you might find yourself even wanting to come back.  Figure on spending about three hours here.

The center’s latest acquisition is a 1923 Ford Model T touring car.  But the exhibit of most interest to me is one on toys in the Old West.  Here, you’ll see toys which reflect the world in which children lived down through the years.  Your kids will be able to work with gigantic Lincoln Logs, a large jigsaw puzzle and ride a “barrel bronc.”  It’s fascinating to compare the toys then with the videogames and  interactive video “toys” we have now.  There’s also a section about America’s mid-twentieth century fascination with the late 19th Century (that is, the 1880s and the Old West), and how toys, such as cap pistols and holsters and sheriff badges, and so on, were so popular during the same time period as such television programs as Davy Crockett and The Rifleman.

If you’re planning to stay overnight, take a look here a great place.  While in town, youi’ll also want to check out the Buddy Holly Center and the Silent Wings Museum, where you can check out the history of rock and roll and World War II, respectively.  But if you’re into the Old West, the National Ranching Heritage Center is the place to be.

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