All posts filed under: Heritage Travel

Architecture Old and New

Published by

Too often college campuses can be poorly designed landscapes for a hodgepodge of mediocre buildings.  So when you come across good – or great – buildings in the academic setting it is a real treat. On this year’s vacation/college tour, we’ve seen some of both, but I’m pleased to say we’ve been fortunate in visiting colleges that through the years have been thoughtful about their buildings and their settings. We’ve now become old pros at the campus tour.  Andrew and Claire head off with one tour guide so they aren’t intimidated (if they ever are) by having the folks in the same group.  Candice and I then follow a second guide.  Candice pays attention to what the guide is saying, while keeping her eye trained on the design and maintenance of the buildings.  I take pictures of the architecture and any landscape feature that strikes my fancy.  We all come together at the end and share what we’ve seen and heard. Hey, it works for us! At the end of week one, we’ve seen some …

The people and places on Main Street

Published by

There are few things I like better than walking along a great Main Street. For the past two days, I’ve been lucky enough to walk around four terrific Main Streets:  Middletown, Connecticut; Amherst and Northampton, Massachusetts; and tiny Red Hook, NY. You can pick up life lessons on Main Street – like the bumper sticker I saw on a car parked along Northampton’s Main Street this morning:  Just say NO to Negativity. You can also meet very interesting people.  While taking photos around Northampton, I was approached by a resident of the streets of the city.  He must have seen my inner preservationist (sometimes people who look at the world a little differently have great powers of observation), because he told me he liked to work for the “hysterical society.”  He then proceeded to point out the historical courthouse (where Calvin Coolidge first practiced law) – a very nice 1885 building seen in the photo above. My new friend then pointed in the opposite direction and identified the Northampton City Hall.  “See those turrets?” he …

Two Years and There’s Still More to Come

Published by

I began writing More to Come… two years ago as a way to keep friends and loved ones updated during a family trip out west.  As I wrote I found I enjoyed capturing not only experiences from travels, but also observations about books I was reading, music I was hearing, or simply life.  The feedback was also positive (probably helped by my admonition in the “About” section that if you didn’t like what I was writing you should “get your own blog”). Two years later I find myself on another vacation with the family and More to Come… has over 300 posts to date.  So look forward to some more vacation reports.  I should warn you that it is that type of vacation that hits families with teenagers:  the college visits.  We’re in the northeast for this trip, and while I won’t bore you (or embarrass my kids) with litanies of schools visited and reactions to the tours, I will post a few stories and photos  along the way of great architecture and interesting people …

After Pepe’s Pizza, Only 999 to Go!

Published by

Some time ago Candice purchased the book 1000 Places to See Before You Die:  USA and Canada to spur us to find some interesting places to visit as we traveled.  So as we headed out to the northeast for vacation and college tours (not in that order), she picked it up and began to check what was on the list in the cities we planned to see. If the first day is any indication, we’re going to eat well.  As we pulled into New Haven, she read, You can appreciate the city’s self-anointed role as ‘Pizza Capital of the World’ by visiting Little Italy, specifically Wooster Street, where a few acclaimed pizza joints stand cheek by jowl, the most famous being Frank Pepe’s, which has been turning out incomparably delicious thin-crust pies since 1925. Never one to pass up “the most famous” of any restaurant, we went, stood in line for 45 minutes on a Monday evening, and then entered the no-frills dining room (we were in booth 17) where we feasted on two fabulous …

Save ALL Of Ellis Island

Published by

Last week I was in New York and had the opportunity to tour the South Side of Ellis Island. It was my first trip to this evocative place where as many as 40% of Americans can trace their initial experience in this country.  From the Save Ellis Island website, here are the basic facts: The Ellis Island Immigration Station opened on Ellis Island in January of 1892. It served as the primary immigration center for the United States from 1892 until 1954 when it was closed. Facilities were built to house and feed immigrants while they waited for their identification papers to be processed. A state-of-the-art hospital complex treated and cured most sick immigrants in order for them to be permitted entry into the country. More than 12 million immigrants passed through Ellis Island between 1892 and 1954, reaching a peak of 1.25 million in 1907. It has been estimated that 40% of Americans today can trace at least one ancestor’s entry into the United States through Ellis Island. It is the early twentieth-century state-of-the-art …

Summer Saturdays are the Best

Published by

The joyful photograph at the top of the post – which comes from the wonderful photo/blog Real People Eat Local (check it out for their delicious pictures) – is a perfect encapsulation of our day.  Summer Saturdays really are the best! Today started relatively early (by Saturday standards) as Andrew had to be at the Cathedral for a choral practice at 8 a.m.  Our car is in the shop this weekend waiting for a leaky fuel pump to be repaired (one never wants to smell gasoline in your home garage), so Candice, Andrew and I had to juggle our schedules around the availability of Zipcars – the wonderful car sharing service we swear by.  Because we have some 25 Zipcars within about 3 blocks of our house, we picked one up (a little Honda) and were on our way by 7:30.  Urban living is great! Swim team meets the past six weeks have their own charm, but they have disrupted the Saturday morning ritual Candice and I established this year.  So we were pleased to …

A Takoma Park July 4th Celebration

Published by

Yes, that’s a “precision drill team” made up of environmentally friendly reel mowers you see in the picture.  (See my update at the end of the post) Welcome to the Takoma Park July 4th Parade. Folks who live in the Washington area have a wide range of Independence Day festivities to choose from.  You can have your fireworks on the National Mall, as far as I’m concerned.  My favorite thing is to hop on the Metro, take a short ride to the next station, and then head into downtown Takoma Park, MD, for the annual 4th of July parade.  We’ve done it for years, and it takes some major event to pull us away from this family tradition. Takoma Park is known – to put it mildly – for its political activism and progressive outlook.  For instance, it is the only “nuclear free zone” in the DC metropolitan area.  Takoma Park also has a well-deserved reputation as  being a bit quirky.  Many of our friends from the pool and the twins’ schools live in the …

Oklahoma City National Memorial: The power of remembrance

Published by

When in Oklahoma City last week, I made the time to visit the national memorial dedicated to the memory of those killed, wounded, or changed forever by the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995. It was a powerful experience that would  be moving at any time.  In these days of bombing attempts in Times Square and daily cable television rants against government, the power of remembrance seemed all the more important.  This place – forever altered in horrific ways 15 years ago by the act of an individual angry at the federal government’s actions at Waco and Ruby Ridge – is a somber counterpoint to the hysteria that counts as civic discourse in parts of America today. One enters the outdoor symbolic memorial through a gate marked 9:01 – the minute before the bombing – to represent the innocence of the city.  At the other end of a reflecting pool, the west gate is marked 9:03, after everything changed.  The best known feature of the memorial is the field of empty …

Dale Chihuly: Works in Seattle and Tacoma

Published by

Recent travels have taken me to both Seattle and Tacoma, Washington – described by writer Margery Aronson in the book Fire as “the new ‘Center of the Universe’ for the medium of glass, a shift in no small part due to (Dale) Chihuly’s decision to return to the Northwest to live, work, and continue his early commitment to education.” Glass artist Dale Chihuly has been back in his home region since 1971, making amazing sculpture, seaforms, chandeliers, towers, and more.  He’s been in my consciousness for about the past 12 years, as I’ve come across more and more of his work in my travels. So it was great to spend time recently in Chihuly’s  hometown of Tacoma and his current city of Seattle, viewing works both very public and more private. We began in Tacoma, where the 2002 Chihuly Bridge of Glass offers much for the eye.  As a welcoming gateway to downtown Tacoma, the Bridge of Glass has two rising crystal towers, a seaform ceiling that is beautiful in any light, and a Venetian …