Archive for March, 2009

You may have suffered from the stereotypical mis-perception that Belgium is not the most interesting of places, and and that Brussels has nothing much going on beyond the European Parliament and museums filled with Old Flemish masters.

Well, like me, you’d be wrong. Brussels is a beautiful city. Unexpectedly chaotic, hilly and fragmented, it mixes sumptuous architecture with seedy waterfront districts; fancy chocolate emporiums (more…)

Editor’s note: Travel writer George Dunford is sending us the occasional trip report from the road as he makes his way from Beijing to St Petersburg on the Trans-Mongolian train. This is his second trip report, catch up on his first post here.

China seems to be behind us as we pull into Erlian, to cross the border into Mongolia. Already we’ve seen the landscape growing drier and stations have lost their grim institutional look. (more…)

What to do in Hong Kong? Simply take it all in

Hong Kong reminds me of urban landscapes from cyberpunk novels. It’s all grime and glitz with narrow, twisting alleyways the color of sepia, mile-high concrete block buildings, and mirrored office towers, all bursting from a motley skyline of a billion neon signs. It’s eclectic, fast paced, stylish and modern –- but even so, there are plenty of places to find (more…)

Where DO you go to get the best views of New York? Me, I’ve always spent most of my time on the Manhattan sidewalks, gazing upwards with my mouth open. I did wind up on the receiving end of some “Watch where you’re going!” comments, and I did get a sore neck, but I didn’t really grasp the scale of the city.

So this time I resolved to do something a bit different. I probably wouldn’t take Manhattan, but I would (more…)

We’re not going to catch the train out of Beijing. Our first leg of the Trans-Mongolian train and the cab doesn’t seem to be going fast enough to get us to Beijing West Train Station. It’s about 10 minutes before departure and I’m trying to communicate with my scraps of Mandarin – and frantic pointing – that we need to go faster. The cab driver takes this has a critique of his music and switches from the hip hop station to some fluffy (more…)

Standing in the middle of Muir Woods it’s a little hard to believe that San Francisco — and I mean downtown San Francisco — is just 20 minutes away, over the Golden Gate bridge. It’s so eerily quiet in this stand of old-growth redwood trees, you may as well be a thousand miles from civilization.

That’s probably why people find it attractive; like standing on a beach with raging surf, the force of nature (more…)

Editor’s Note: Tiffany Lee Brown is a writer and interdisciplinary artist based in Portland, Oregon. Author of “A Compendium of Miniatures,” she is an editor of Plazm magazine and adjunct faculty at Prescott College. Follow the Easter Island Project (her ongoing participatory project of art, music, and writing) on her website at www.magdalen.com or here on the Viator Travel Blog. This is the first installment.

It (more…)

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Sometimes, new technology makes like more complicated. Think: the highly programmable coffee-espresso machine that collects dust in your kitchen pantry.

Other times, new technology looks cool at first. And then quickly turns tedious. Think: laser pointers and clapping light switches.

And then once in a blue moon, along comes something new that is actually useful. In this category (more…)

I am noticing a strange trend in my travels over the past year. I end up in places turning 400.

Are a lot of places celebrating 400 years? Probably not. Nor do I seek out the big birthday celebrations. And yet last summer I found myself in Quebec City for its 400th anniversary. This winter, escaping from work and the rain, I headed to Bermuda as they kicked off their year of 400th anniversary celebrations.

Bermuda has a (more…)

“You can’t come to Cornwall without having at least one cream tea. And one again tomorrow. And one again on Wednesday.”

I turned quickly but this obvious expert had put the scone into her mouth before I had time to find the answer to a question haunting me all afternoon: jam first or cream?

I was in Cornwall, England, in the small ex-fishing village of St Ives, now popular for beach holidays (and voted (more…)