All posts filed under: Heritage Travel

Posts about travels to places around the globe that reflect our shared heritage

Inauguration Planning – Sites to See Off the Mall

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Well, our little place on earth is getting pretty excited about the next ten days.  Washington is making plans to keep Virginians from coming into the city.  (I would have thought they’d be treated better since they actually voted for Obama, going blue for the first time since Jamestown was founded, or so it seems.)   While Candice and I will be passing each other in the airport on the way to and from town, the children are busy making their plans.  Claire has a good friend on Capitol Hill, so she’s already set for a sleepover and a morning hike to the mall.   Andrew is vacillating between hiking to the mall with friends and watching it all in the comfort of the restored AFI Theatre on the big screen.   I just hope I can see the actual ceremony before I have to head out of town. But for those looking for something to do in Washington during the inaugural week, my organization, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, has put together a great list of …

Save Mid-City New Orleans

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The National Trust for Historic Preservation is working with the Foundation for Historical Louisiana and other partners to try and stop the demolition of significant portions of the historic Mid-City neighborhood in New Orleans.  The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and Louisiana State University recently announced the selection of the Mid-City neighborhood for the site of their new hospitals. As the National Trust website PreservationNation.org states: The new hospitals would needlessly destroy the historic neighborhood around Charity Hospital where residents have been rebuilding and restoring their community since Hurricane Katrina. We believe this decision was a serious error and urge LSU and the VA to explore the alternative sites that would restore needed health care facilities faster and at less cost, while preserving much more of the historic Mid-City neighborhood. The video below is just one of several prepared by the Foundation for Historical Louisiana where the affected residents talk about the decision to demolish their neighborhood.  Click on the link above to see more videos and learn what you can do to try and reverse this …

I Believe Thanksgiving is my New Favorite Holiday

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I’m not sure what has been my favorite holiday, but I think Thanksgiving has now taken over the top rung on the ladder.  I think it may be the fact that big business hasn’t yet figured out a way to commercialize it.  Or perhaps it is the fact that food plays a big role.  I like the focus on the act of being thankful for all we have in a country that’s been abundantly blessed. Then again, maybe it is just that we’ve figured out how to get together with people we really enjoy and have a very relaxing time.  Whatever the reason, it is my new favorite holiday. Candice and I have always enjoyed Thanksgiving.  For many years we traveled over the mountain from Staunton to a wonderful inn, Prospect Hill, for a bountiful Thanksgiving dinner.  It was especially meaningful to us because we honeymooned at Prospect Hill while we were very poor graduate students.  Little did we realize that just a year after our wedding we’d move to Virginia and be an hour away.  With …

Wrap-Up from Vienna

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As promised, I’m posting a few additional photos from my travels to Vienna, Austria last week.  The top two photos are a detail from Hofburg Palace and a view of St. Peter’s Church in the rain.                   The next is a detail from St. Peter’s.   Finally, the last two are shots from St. Stephansdom:  the organ on the left and a detail of the pulpit and nave on the right. More to come… DJB

The Best Places to Raise Your Children…Murfreesboro Edition

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(NOTE: See my 2020 update to this post here.) Business Week magazine just included Murfreesboro, Tennessee as one of the best places to raise your children.  Well, if they’d just asked me I could have told them that a long time ago. For years now, I’ve been using a little vignette about growing up in Murfreesboro as a part of a talk I give about the livability of towns and cities.  While Business Week focuses on Murfreesboro as a recession-proof college town, I believe there’s a lot more to it. When I think of home, I remember 407 East Main Street in Murfreesboro.  I grew up in Murfreesboro when it was a city of 35,000 people.  My parents bought a simple 1880s-era home on Main Street because it had an apartment where my grandmother could live with us.  Over the course of twenty years, four generations of our family lived under this roof. Murfreesboro has a history that was very real and very present to me as a child.  I could walk four blocks to the town square, …

A fitting day for a Viennese funeral

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Today was cold, gray, and rainy in Vienna.  But since it was also the only day I had to tour the city, I hit the streets early bundled in my winter coat and sheltered (somewhat) by my travel umbrella.  It turned out to be a fitting day for a (Viennese) funeral. For someone interested in history, architecture, and cities, being in Vienna for only one day on your first visit can be as frustrating as being a kid in a candy store with a very strict parent.  There are only so many things you can choose.  Luckily, my friends Jim and Janet (they of the great Western trip itinerary) had steered me to a wonderful (and relatively inexpensive) little family hotel that sits astride the St. Stephansdom and Hofburg districts of the city.  These are the names for the medieval city and the imperial city respectively.  So I could jump back and forth with ease and, in the course of a day, see 4 of the best churches in the city while also spending an hour …

When You Need More Water…Have St. George Slay a Three-Headed Dragon!

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Last evening in Bratislava, i went with friends and colleagues from the International National Trusts Organisation (INTO) to a lecture and reception hosted by the Slovakian Ministry of Culture and the National Trust of Slovakia.  The evening was at a former palace for the Roman Catholic Cardinal in Bratislava, and so was very opulent and grand. We entered through a courtyard and came across the statue of St. George slaying the dragon that you see at the left.  We were admiring it when someone said, “I didn’t know St. George had to kill THREE dragons.”  Well, we looked closer and there was only one dragon, but this variety had three heads.  One bit of speculation was that the Cardinal simply wanted more water in the fountain and a three-headed dragon was the answer. Whatever the reasoning, it was another good day for our meetings, which were held at the University Library in Old Town.  The library was part of a complex of three historic buildings, which have been adaptively reused.  The courtyard (see photo) made …

Dinner along the Danube

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Bratislava, Slovakia is the only world capital that borders two other countries.  (Isn’t Wikipedia a wonderful thing!)  And last evening I had the chance to enjoy some of the best of this city with my friends and colleagues from the International National Trusts Organisation (or INTO). After my all-night flight on election night, I arrived in Vienna around 9 a.m. local time and caught a bus from the airport that took me the 45 minutes to Bratislavia.  The countryside between the airport and the city was very rural, broken only by the occasional wind farm and two delightful small historic towns (one of which still maintained its historic city wall surrounding the town).  Since the hotel where I’m staying didn’t take guests until 2 p.m. and I needed to do something to stay awake, I ate a bit of breakfast and then strolled the streets of Old Town Bratislava. And I’m here to say that the historic core was hopping.  I was on the streets at lunch time and those streets were swarming with people eating …