Archive for ‘Travel Writing’

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December 16, 2010

Moscow impresses with its reverence for writers and the arts

[From “Moscow’s warm and poetic heart” published in the Toronto Star on December 9, 2010. Pictured below is a statue of Alexander Pushkin from the town near St. Petersburg that bears his name.]

MOSCOW — One of the great victims of the Cold War’s propaganda was the reputation of the Russian man and woman. Icy, serious, malicious, mechanical, soulless is what we were told about them. Arrive in Moscow and see flowers placed at the foot of statues erected in tribute to the nation’s writers, visit a classical music performance at the Bolshoi Theatre attended by people of all walks, learn about the conflicts endured and how this nation’s World War II memorial museum is decorated with 27,000 glass tears because it couldn’t hold 27 million to honour every life lost, and you will never again perceive Russians as anything but a people with heart; and one that’s perpetually mending at that.

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December 3, 2010

Adoration for the Magnificent Hermitage

[Got a chance to visit St. Petersburg for a second time and just like my first time, the Hermitage mesmerized me. It one most awe-inspiring building. Here’s a story from the Toronto Star’s Grand Tour series on the museum and city.]

ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA — Even if the Hermitage didn’t possess any paintings or sculptures, its walls alone would make it a place you have to see. The halls of the Winter Palace, the largest part of the complex, are laden with gold, malachite, silver, bronze, marble and ornate mouldings framing vaulted ceilings in this one-time dwelling of Catherine the Great. To stand in the airy armoury, surrounded by gilded pillars and hardly anyone is to be amazed by grandeur on an audacious scale.

Then, once you’ve taken in the walls, you can be mesmerized anew by what’s on them: Rembrandts, Da Vincis, Raphaels, Titians, Tiepolos, Monets, Picassos. The icons of art, whose names we all know and whose works we have seen in high school and university textbooks, are gathered on the banks of the Neva River in this museum founded in 1764. The Hermitage owns the largest collection of paintings in the world and has a total of more than 3 million pieces, only a small percentage of which are on display.

“Forget about what’s on the walls, look up and sometimes the rooms themselves are more amazing than the artwork,” says Eric Weiner, a student at Vassar University in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., who is spending this semester in St. Petersburg studying art history and Russian culture.

Read more in the Toronto Star.

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November 3, 2010

Curacao Cuts Loose

[Visited this Dutch Caribbean island that recently seceded from the Netherlands Antilles. Found it to be a cool spot with fascinating history and very kind people. Here’s a bit from “Freedom Found in Curacao” in the Toronto Star.]

WILLEMSTAD, CURACAO — Not many countries in the world exist where you can listen to the former leader of the land play jazz in a bar or dance next to a minister of government.

Curacao, though, is one of those places where status doesn’t seem to matter so much. People here have an easiness about them, even though the island has endured some hard history, including being the focal point of the Dutch slave trade. On a Friday night, the nightclub Asia de Cuba is jammed with people in their 30s, 40s and up who salsa through the night listening to jazzy Latin beats and favourites in Papiamento, the native language of Curacao. The dancers come in all colours and from all walks of life, including leadership, and some dress in elegant outfits perfectly suited for the sinewy movements of the sexy Spanish dance, others wear denim and short sleeves. Some were born on the island, several are immigrants from the Netherlands who’ve left the cold for the warmth of the Caribbean. They change partners from song to song, no coyness involved.

Around midnight, the Viagara set gives way to the young crowd that keeps the dance going until four in the morning or later.

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September 18, 2010

Queen Charlotte Lodge Reels Them In

[Thanks to the folks at the Queen Charlotte Lodge for a very exciting visit in August. Here’s an article from the Saturday, September 18 issue of the Toronto Star headlined “Chasing the Chief”.]

HAIDA GWAII, B.C.—The Haida are a matriarchal society, so it seems fitting that Jessica Eussen and the other women who journey to fish these waters would outperform the men. In one of those momentous, tell-it-to-your-grandkids, I-can’t-believe-what-I-just-pulled-off highlights of life, Jessica, a tiny 18-year-old from Vancouver, Washington, reeled in a 43-pound Chinook salmon while on a fishing trip with her father.

The thing was about half the size of her and coaxed a smile just as wide.

“I’ll never forget it,” she said a few minutes after being congratulated by other anglers in awe of the feat as well as the dockhands at the Queen Charlotte Lodge, which has built a reputation as a world-class fishing destination during its nearly two decades of operation.

It attracts avid sports fishermen who come to chase the tyee, or “chief”, a Chinook salmon that weighs at least 30 pounds. But the lodge has succeeded in guiding novices to trophy catches too, as Jessica’s tyee last month proved, and that’s helped it become a choice spot for families and couples.

Jessica’s father, Remy, chose fishing as the activity to spend time with his daughter before she leaves for university because “there are no electronics. It’s quiet, you can really bond.”

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September 4, 2010

Vij’s in Vancouver is Worth the Wait

[From “Vancouver chef reinvents Indian food”, published in the Toronto Star on September 3, 2009]

VANCOUVER, British Columbia–On a damp and grey Saturday, diners line up outside Vij’s an hour before the doors open at 5:30 p.m.

There’s room for nearly 200 diners in the 2,000-square-foot eatery in Vancouver’s South Granville district, which New York Times food critic Mark Bittman has described as “easily among the finest Indian restaurants in the world.”

Those who arrive too late for the first sitting either spill over to Rangoli, a more casual sister restaurant next door with lower prices and smaller portions, or crowd into an alcove at the back of Vij’s to wait 90 minutes or more for a table. There, strangers mingle and wait staff pass around hors d’oeuvres that won’t show up on the bill, treats like cassava fries and puri.

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August 7, 2010

Graham Elliot a Delight in Chicago

[From “This Chicago Chef Rocks” in the Toronto Star, August 7, 2010]

CHICAGO—Chef Graham Elliot Bowles believes you should be entertained when you dine out, not just satisfied. Pretty early on in a visit to his Chicago restaurant, it becomes clear the 33-year-old aspiring rock star with a physique Pillsbury would endorse has a bit of Spielberg in him.

Popcorn is the first indication you’re in for a show. At Graham Elliot, it arrives in a basket where bread would go at just about any other place; it’s drizzled with truffle oil, parmesan cheese and chives. Bowles could scoop loads of the stuff into brown bags and sell it on the down low to those he’s addicted.

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July 14, 2010

Visiting Brady’s Beach in Bamfield, B.C.

[From “Beauty and the Beach” in the Toronto Star, July 3, 2010]

BAMFIELD, B.C.—The perfect beach — far, far from crowds and close to heaven — is a traveller’s Holy Grail or Fountain of Youth, a thing of myth that sets us jetting over oceans to rummage around dots of rock and sand that belong to Thailand, or sailing about the Caribbean for the lone island that has escaped commerce.

Such extravagant explorations may not be necessary for Canadians, though. Brady’s Beach in Bamfield, a funny little place that Garrison Keillor or Richard Russo could go to town with, is a British Columbian beauty with many of the hallmarks of the legendary beach-to-end-all-beaches: It’s hard to reach and nearly unheard of; has not one café, chain hotel, Starbucks or McDonald’s near it; and possesses the ability to put your mind in a place you might only be able to reach with hard drugs.

To make it to the beach you first have to find your way to Bamfield. It has a population of not many and seems made for a fable.

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July 14, 2010

Soccer and History Mix in Soweto

[From the Toronto Star, June 12, 2010]

JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA—Gloria Pikitsha stands at the corner of her old high school and recalls the moments before the first gunshot. It was June 16, 1976, when white police officers came to Orlando West High School in Soweto to stare down several thousand black students who’d had enough. One side was armed with rocks and recklessness, the other lethal artillery and the imperviousness apartheid allowed.

Voices escalated, the rocks exchanged fire with bullets and Gloria ran home to hide under a bed. The fighting ratcheted up, the army joined the police and before the Soweto uprising was beaten down a day and a half later, hundreds of children had died in one of the grimmest episodes of South Africa’s bleak and bloody era.

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