All posts filed under: Heritage Travel

Observations from the Road: (“The Pedometer is Getting a Workout” Edition)

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Rome has steps. Everywhere.  A lot of steps.  (Yes, I can confirm for Mrs. Reeves, my sophomore English teacher, that I know a “lot” is a field and not “many” but I like the way “a lot of steps” sounds.) So begins this edition of “Observations from the Road” (or “The Pedometer is Getting a Workout” edition). For those who may be new to More to Come…, the “Observations from…” series are short – often meaningless – comments that don’t deserve a full blog post (or perhaps even the light of day) but that hasn’t stopped me from posting them in the past.  So here goes with the current edition. I’m going to break the pedometer – Everyone who has been to Rome told us that we’d walk a great deal…but I guess I didn’t really believe it until we arrived and started walking.  And believe me, I love to walk. Rome is a wonderful city to see from the sidewalk (or the middle of the street, where a great deal of walking appears to …

View of Florence

48 hours in Tuscany

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48 hours barely counts as dipping your toes in the water that is Tuscany, but it is what we had for this first visit over last weekend.  With Claire in the country for a limited time, we opted to experience a few sites and then return later for a longer drink of more that the region has to offer. But first, let me detour to talk about trains. At the suggestion of our friends Tom and Rod, we booked our trip on the Italo high-speed train from Rome to Florence.  Ninety minutes after boarding – following the smoothest train ride I’ve ever experienced and going 260 km/hour (that’s about 160 mph for the metrically challenged) – we pulled into Florence and walked ten minutes to our cozy little historic hotel. For those who talk about American exceptionalism, I’d beg to differ. When it comes to train travel, we aren’t even on the same planet! On Monday, while we were coming back from Florence on the train, our DC Metro apparently had another fire in a …

Looking Back, Looking Forward

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Candice and I arrived at the American Academy in Rome on Monday morning to begin my six-week sabbatical.  We suffered through the usual jet lag (and a bit more…but that would be TMI) and quickly settled in to our cozy apartment.  Over the course of the first few meals we were welcomed by dear friends of Tom (recent Rome Prize winner from the National Trust) and Rod’s (his husband); joined a talented graphic artist and his wife at the bar when we both realized we were there for our first night (and then later realized we had met a decade ago when he designed the branding for The Glass House); were connected to some new acquaintances through long-time colleagues in the U.S.; and simply met a host of welcoming fellows and “fellow travelers.” Once the jet lag wore off, we began to explore the neighborhood of Trastervere which lies at the foot of the hill from the Academy (down some 70 steep steps…but that’s another story.) Our focus was the Basilica di Santa Maria, where …

Observations from the Road: The “There are Worse Places to Spend a Blizzard (Day 2)” Edition

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After 27 inches of snow fell in Central Park over Friday evening and Saturday, Sunday dawned bright, clear…and cold!  So after being fortified by breakfast, I decided to wander out to see how New York City was faring as a follow-up to yesterday’s There are Worse Places to Spend a Blizzard.  First, a check of 5th Avenue at 54th Street.  When I was at that intersection last evening, it looked like this: While the hustle and bustle in the roadways hasn’t picked up, there are many more people out walking through this part of the city by mid-day on Sunday. It was great to be out with the “crowds” (using that term loosely).  I saw dog walkers…and (small) dogs wearing booties.  I saw people gawking at the Trump Tower.  I saw men (mostly) doing the hard work of shoveling snow (with the main culprit in bad sidewalk maintenance being the luxury store Bergdorf Goodman.) I stopped by and saw the handiwork of old friends George Taylor and John Boody – Opus 27 – built by …

Observations from the Road: The “There are Worse Places to Spend a Blizzard” Edition

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I came to New York City this weekend knowing full well that some of the meetings I had scheduled could be changed or cancelled due to the snow.  But the predictions were off significantly, and the blizzard that blanketed Washington came right up the eastern seaboard to New York. However, our team made the best of it, and we were fortunate to have two of our members here from New Orleans.  So they just did what they always do in the face of natural disasters, and we ended up having a great “hurricane party” in their apartment about a block from our hotel. What a wonderful way to spend a blizzard in New York City. More to come… DJB  

Talking Preservation’s Future on “Back to the Future Day”

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I am in Missouri as part of a cross-country trip that began on Friday in Los Angeles and will end on Thursday in New York City. The annual Missouri Preservation Conference – where I was the keynote speaker – brought me to Cape Girardeau, winner of a 2015 Great American Main Street Award. The conference theme?  The Past and Future of Preservation.  As luck would have it, my talk was on Back to the Future Day!  What better occasion to talk about the future of preservation! Here’s the description of Back to the Future Day from the New York Times: On Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2015, at 4:29 p.m., our today will finally catch up to the tomorrow depicted in “Back to the Future, Part II.” In that 1989 film, Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) and Dr. Emmett Brown (Christopher Lloyd) appear with a flash in their DeLorean time machine from 30 years in the past. Suddenly, they find themselves in the same town, Hill Valley, but surrounded by impossible technology and outlandish social mores. It’s …

Sunflowers by van Gogh

Connecting…across a distance

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After a very busy week of conference activities in Cambridge – going from early morning until late in the evening – Candice and I came to London for two days to rest and reconnect with each other and with our souls. Knowing that we were likely to need a break from seven days of nonstop travel, meetings, tours, discussions, and connections, we chose to see where the spirit would lead.  Little did we know that although we were quite a distance from home, we would connect to friends old and new in ways wonderful and unexpected. The train from Cambridge deposited us at King’s Cross Station on platform 9, and that was the first reconnection.  My mind immediately went to those summers of reading Harry Potter books to Andrew and Claire at the river house.  And I thought…hmmm, I bet Platform 9 3/4 is around here somewhere. Sure enough, there was a queue of twenty-somethings waiting to take their picture at Harry’s famous point of departure for Hogwarts.  We laughed, and reminded ourselves that our …

Ickworth

A brilliant week of English charms and global lessons

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In Cambridge – a lovely town with an international reputation for education – it was appropriate that the delegates to the 16th International Conference of National Trusts (ICNT) took in the charms of the East of England while also gathering so many valuable lessons from instructors both local and global. All in all – to use the British equivalent of great – it has been a brilliant week! The opening day’s remarks set the stage for discussions throughout the week.  Dame Helen Ghosh – Director General of the National Trust for England, Wales & Northern Ireland – began by reminding the delegates of the need to be open to change as we seek to conserve our heritage.  Jonathon Porritt challenged many of the assumptions the delegates brought to Cambridge, in a speech on our environmental challenges that was referenced throughout the week. Tuesday took Candice and me along with half of the delegates to Wimpole Estate, for conversations around cultural identities.  This emphasis arose from the 15th ICNT in Entebee, Uganda, in 2013, which raised …