Travel Thoughts

Not a Paperless (Travel) Society yet

March 21, 2024

Yesterday, I spent an hour sitting in a rental car at the Atlanta airport car rental center, unable to leave the airport and unable to return to the rental counter to solve the problem I was facing. The problem? The rental agent had forgotten to include the actual rental contract in the handful of papers I got, and I didn’t notice that as the agent directed me to follow the signs and leave. On the far side of the garage, at an exit booth, I was told I couldn’t leave. Or go back to the right…

Small Museums and Photo Rules

September 16, 2023

Take this as a rant, if you will, but its intent is to be an open letter to the directors and curators of small museums that forbid visitors to take photos. I’m a fan of small museums; there should be many more of them. Often, they are the way in which we learn about events, movements, people whose stories would be lost, or lost in a larger setting. At best, they explain in a local and personal way how things developed in a particular place or time, and how the events of the larger world…

“The problem we should have with ‘colonial charm'”

August 3, 2022

Everywhere we go, and everything we marvel at, has a history beyond its surface, a litany of what was there before, and who lived, worked

A Few Thoughts on Left Luggage

June 19, 2022

Most of us have, at one time or another, arrived in a new city too early to check in at hotel or Airbnb, and with no desire to drag the bags around until the afternoon. Or, we’ve checked out by 11 am, and need a place to leave the luggage until it’s time to move on. My easy solution used to be the ‘Left Luggage’ service that was in nearly every city’s main train station. But, over the past 20 years and especially the last 10, fewer stations have the service, or have it at impossible prices…

Why Traveling Makes Us More Creative

May 26, 2021

Traveling is a wonderful hobby for millions of people across the globe. This also provides various advantages to people. Here’s why traveling is important. The ability to move around from one place to the other place is the main virtue one can ever have. All humans and animals have been secured with this ability, but humans are always a step forward. We humans being, have an extraordinary virtue of seeing, experiencing, and learning from it, and this is exactly what makes our traveling more…

Fun Travel Activities for You and Your Children

December 27, 2018

Do you have many kids and tots in the family? Do you love traveling? Are you short of creative and fun ideas to engage them on long trips? If yes, you are in the right place. Don’t delay your travel plans for the time when your kids are older. Instead, you can improvise tons of fun activities and games to keep your kids happily entertained on the go. Don’t expect your toddlers to stick to their seats solemnly. They are going to be wiggly and restless. You will not have your Spectrum Internet…

199 Cemeteries to See Before You Die, by Loren Rhoads

October 31, 2017

I suppose I found this today because it’s October 31st. I’m much fonder of cemeteries in general than I am of Halloween, but glad it occasioned this book being promoted. I’m sure I’ve seen more than my share of cemeteries, what with interests in genealogy, photography, travel & hunting down long-gone people who’ve interested me, old churches and places of cultural distillation that cemeteries tend to be. I’m glad to see this one added to the list of directories, ones like ‘Permanent…

A Book Review for Writers

October 9, 2016

As I was putting the finishing touches on my last post, ’50 Years Later, Paris’ I’d just begun reading a book that sounded intriguing somehow, ‘Between You & Me, Confessions of a Comma Queen’ , by Mary Norris, a copy editor for The New Yorker magazine. I was attracted to it because commas have always been a mystery to me, not helped by the fact that a friend, Bill Moore, a poet and poetry journal publisher, commented once on the dearth of commas in my writing. He said I needed more and…

Getting travel insurance is really important

September 25, 2016

I want to tell a tale about what happened on our recent cruise. On our first day at sea my wife developed a very bad case of diahrrea. It was very bad and by the time we went to the doctor on the following morning she was dehydrated. The medical service was very good. They gave her iv fluid to rehydrate and drew blood to make sure that it wasn’t norovirus. They gave her antibiotics and anti diahrreal meds. They checked up her, and followed up the next day with a second iv. They even sent a…

Books That Sent You Packing (your bag, that is)

May 10, 2015

The book I always think of in this regard is ‘The Sheltering Sky’, by Paul Bowles. And the subsequent movie, with the devilish John Malkovich as, guess who, Port Moresby. It inspired me to take the plunge and travel outside Europe, to Morocco, a place I’ve returned again and again, sure that would be so as soon as I read the book. But there have been others – ‘The River’s Tale: A Year on the Mekong’, by Edward Gargan, added Yunnan Province in China to my first round-the-world destination…

Travel Thoughts

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