{Insert City Name}: City of Contrasts

Riga, Latvia: City of Contrasts

My third feature story for BootsnAll has been published as part of their travel writing week.  Link to the article: Exploring the “City of Contrasts” and other Tired Travel Clichés by Matthew Stone.

For fun, go to google and type in “city of contrasts” along with any big city in the world, and you will see what I mean.  I think City of Contrasts is the funniest overused travel writing phrase of all because it has been applied to nearly every destination on earth.

Many of the best travel writers are those who read the most.  There is no question that Paul Theroux, Jan Morris, Andre Aciman, and Pico Iyer are well-read.  As an avid travel reader (and I would like to pretend to be a good writer), I keep coming across the same clichés in travel stories, but city of contrasts will always be my favorite.

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As goes Dubuque, so goes Hong Kong

A century ago, half a world apart, wealthy people faced a similar dilemma.

In 1881 in Hong Kong, there was a hotel at the top of Victoria Peak, and a rich man wanted to continue to build residences for the wealthy at the top.  But the journey up was tragically inconvenient, requiring a sedan chair and a pair of pointy-hatted poor folk to carry them uphill.  What to do?  A rail line!  And, thus, in 1882, approval was granted for the Hong Kong High Level Tramways Company, a rail line which would prove much more efficient than two dudes and a chair.  It finally opened in 1888 as the first cable funicular in Asia, covering 1,350 metres.

View from Victoria Peak...not to be mistaken for Dubuque

Dubuque is missing the all buildings and smog of Hong Kong

In Dubuque, Iowa in 1882, Mr. J. K. Graves, a banker (as well as former mayor and state senator), faced a similar inconvenience.  Continue reading

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STL-BRU-HAM-LIM-WAW

Since I have an airline obsession, I wondered how much it would cost and how long it would take to duplicate my St. Louis-Brussels-Hamburg-Lima-Warsaw trip from yesterday.

The answer:  $4,986.54.  Coach class, of course.  But I bet my butt would hurt after this itinerary:

STL ORD 1:40pm – 2:50pm (Sunday)- American Airlines Continue reading

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World Travel in Western Illinois

It was quite a travel day…off to visit the world via the Mississippi River Road.

First, I left St. Louis to drive to Dubuque.  In Illlinois, the cities sound so exotic.  First stop:  Brussels.   No sprouts for me!  I stopped for a cinnamon roll and a very delicious gooey butter cookie (highly recommended!) from Bliss Bake Shoppe.  Apparently, the gooey butter cookie is a St. Louis tradition that made it up the river to Brussels.  After a photo and  only had time for a cinnamon roll before I left again…

…for Hamburg.

 

Hamburg in the rain was not very romantic (and by the looks of it, it had been raining for a long, long time), so there was no reason to stick around.

 

 

 

Then I headed out to Lima, slightly smaller than the Peruvian capital, where the weather was equally gray.  If you didn’t know better, you would think they were stuck in the same weather front.  Hmm.

 

So, out for Warsaw…

…which had seen better days.  We’re talking back before the Communist takeover, back when river towns were river cities.

The welcome to Warsaw sign may have been the highlight, until I later learned about the Warsaw Brewery, a restaurant which had opened up in a historic abandoned brewery.   I’m bummed that I missed it, but it was difficult enough to want to get out of the car for photos in the rain.  Stopping for a meal would have been quite a commitment.

Some of the Mississippi River views were fantastic.  Some were a little too close to the roadway.  Even though I traveled the world in just a few hours, I don’t think the pictures will fool anyone.

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Tiger Love at O’Hare

Tiger Lovin Happened So Fast

 

MEOW!  I caught a picture of tigers being intimate at O’Hare Airport.  There’s one crazy mural in the tunnel that leads from the terminal to the CTA trains, where tigers make love out of nothing at all.  At least the naughty parts are in shadow.

I think they wanted to join the mile high club, but they just couldn’t wait.

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Why I Can’t Love High Speed Rail for All

They say “If you build it, they will come,” but High Speed Rail is not a movie.  It’s a multi-billion dollar expense.  As a traveler (and tourism educator), I want to love high speed rail, but it just doesn’t make sense in most of America.

There are no blinding statistics here, just basic logic.  There are ways to some ways to shoot through these arguments, which I would happily rebut, but I wanted to make it simple.

1)  The cost of high speed rail is too high when compared to possible usage. The most studied high-speed rail line is the Orlando-Tampa route. Continue reading

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Weekly Travel Quote

She wished him steaming trains that left from winter stations.

-Robert James Waller, Bridges of Madison County

Quote in honor of National Train Day (May 7)

Photo: elsie esq. (http://www.flickr.com/photos/elsie/346942670/sizes/m/in/photostream/)
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Virgin America, will you do me?

Virgin America,
I want to love you, but I am still a Virgin America virgin.
@JenLeo loves you.  @SpudHilton loves you.
I want to love you, too.  But I can’t.

I read the consumer travel surveys, ranking Virgin America as tops in the USA, but the surveys need to put a big * at the bottom, reminding us that Virgin America is barely a niche player in the airline industry.  Comparing Virgin America to United and Delta is not fair (and I hate to defend the big airlines) because Virgin America barely serves America.  Delta serves 350 cities.  Virgin America serves 14.    You cannot compare the Mobile Museum of Art to the Met in New York.  And you cannot compare little Virgin America to the big guys, no matter how good they are.

I live in the 4th biggest city in America.  We have 4 million people in the metro area, but I cannot fly Virgin America.  Last year, I lived in the nation’s capital, but I could only fly Virgin America to the West Coast, and then only when it fit their schedule (3 daily non stops to LA, for instance).

It appears to me that Virgin America is unmatched in inflight experience.  It appears to me that their fares are reasonable.  It appears to me that Virgin America has an unmatched PR machine.  I will make them my carrier of choice when I can use them to get to Columbus, Orlando, and Peoria.  And I would especially love it if they could drop me off at home at the end of the day.

For further reading:  Conde Nast Traveler’s Readers’ Choice

Photo Credit:  Maka from Flickr Creative Commons  http://www.flickr.com/photos/mjc/2426824557/
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Weekly Travel Quote

Why is my experience spoiled by sharing it with others who are after precisely the same thing as me?…It all has to do, I think, with the objective every traveler pursues:  an authentic experience.  The traveler looking for an authentic experience is looking for places that have retained their “character.”  In practice, “authentic” often means untouched by modern life, by tourists and commerce.  So it would be superauthentic to trek through the Sahara with a band of nomads and a camel caravan… But modern nomads aren’t stupid.  They abandoned the nomadic existence long ago and now hire themselves out as guides and make good money putting tourists on camels.  So that they can buy, say, a Mercedes and never have to ride a camel again themselves.  Or, to put it another way, wherever you go in the world, sooner or later you run into other people, and then the party’s over.

–Jeroen Van Bergeijk My Mercedes is Not For Sale

(Global Postmark review of the book My Mercedes is Not For Sale)

Photo credit:  Shawn Allen (http://www.flickr.com/photos/shazbot/18083045/sizes/m/in/photostream/)
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You Gotta Belief

My favorite Chinglish

This is my favorite Chinglish shirt, spotted at a Chinese market in Laos.  It is almost inspiring.  Keep saying it to yourself, and you will start to belief it too.

 

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