The Vanuatu archipelago is a true throwback—one of the “rawest” places to visit in the South Pacific, said A. Odysseus Patrick in The Washington Post. But if you want to escape the modern world, the tiny island nation is “gorgeous, exotic, occasionally scary, and often farcical. And fun. Mostly.” My recent family trip to Vanuatu almost ended before it began when a storm prevented our plane from landing at the antiquated airport, which lacked a modern guidance system. But this is to be expected when vacationing in a place where 80 percent of the population lives in thatched huts. Vanuatu may lack modern amenities, but the former French and British colony does have “unspoiled tropical landscapes, friendly locals,” and a rich heritage that mixes Melanesian culture with British and French influences.
Vanuatu’s biggest attraction is Mount Yasur, an active volcano located 130 miles south of the main island, Efate. To get to it, we hired a guide who crammed us into a tiny, six-seat plane, then flew for an hour through the mist before landing on a bumpy runway. Climbing into SUVs, we followed a “potholed, single-lane dirt track” through the jungle until we reached a plain of ash marked by “clumps of orange lava, long cooled and solidified.” The volcano’s peak loomed to the east.
At the volcano’s summit, our guides didn’t offer much advice, and there weren’t any warning signs about where we could go. To my wife’s dismay, my kids and I walked along the 3-foot-wide rim of the crater as steam and sulfurous gas billowed up from below. Every few seconds “a low boom sounded,” and the larger explosions shot chunks of molten stone into the sky. Some of the debris landed nearby, and although the taciturn natives insisted we were safe, each blast sent “a shudder of fear racing through our group.” Later, back at the resort, we were content to sip tropical cocktails and enjoy a delicious and inexpensive dinner while our kids ran free on the beach. It wasn’t a standard tropical vacation, but we hadn’t come for one.
Casual class on Portugal’s exclusive coast
Portugal’s Herdade da Comporta exudes an “under-the-radar cool,” even as it’s become more popular, said Maura Egan in Condé Nast Traveler. In the past 20 years, this region along the nation’s western coast has emerged as a secret, fashionable retreat for well-to-do Europeans. Newly opened hotels and restaurants should bring in even more visitors. Still, Comporta resists the overdevelopment plaguing much of the continent’s beachfront. When I visited recently, Isabel de Carvalho, co-owner of the chic restaurant Museu do Arroz, said to me, “People come here because it reminds them of St.- Tropez in the ’70s.”
There are seven villages in the Herdade da Com porta. One local explained that wealthy families live in Brejos, well-heeled tourists vacation at Pego, and Comporta village is “the destination for day-trippers from Lisbon.” Surprisingly, the elite mingle easily with fishermen and farmers, and many summer homes and rentals give off “a casual boho vibe, with little furniture and plenty of outdoor areas for taking in the landscape.” On one afternoon drive, I passed through the village of Carvalhal, where old men sat drinking espresso at an outdoor café, as they’ve done for generations, and a woman collected snails by the side of the road. I was on my way to Pego’s Restaurante Sal, the “unofficial clubhouse” of the Comporta. When I arrived, families were sitting on the deck, “lingering over their grilled fish, squid ink rice, and half-empty bottles of local rosé.” Everyone wore “their Sunday beach best: polo shirts and Top-Siders for the men, flowing caftans and straw hats for the women.” A grand father slumped in a chair while his grandson played on a nearby sand dune.
The casual mix of the upper and lower classes is readily evident in Comporta village. Businesses range from a tiny supermercado to boutique shops selling Moroccan pottery. Locals sit on a stone wall eating ice cream near an intersection congested with BMWs and Range Rovers. I met British artist Jason Martin, who moved to Comporta after seeing it on TV. He spoke of a “genuine” vibe and said that, even with increased attention, Comporta remains “Europe’s hidden treasure.”
Discovering Spain’s Roman ruins
To understand ancient Rome, start in Madrid, said Miranda S. Spivack in The Washington Post. “Spain is essentially one big archaeological site, much of it dating from the Roman era.” During a recent trip, my husband and I made a point of seeking out remnants of that mighty empire, which gained a foothold in the Iberian Peninsula in about 200 B.C. and ruled the region until the early 5th century. Dozens of Roman sites can readily be reached on day trips from Madrid, and they’re consistently less crowded and often in better condition than Italy’s own. “Add to that the economics of visiting Spain—where a tapas snack and a drink in a restaurant can be had for about $9 or less—and it’s tough to find a reason to stay away.”
Every site we visited we had nearly to ourselves. At Carranque, the site of a 20-room, 4th-century Roman villa, only 12 other people joined a tour during which we marveled at dozens of mosaics on the walls and floors. At Numancia, a hilltop outpost where residents valiantly held off Roman aggressors for two decades, we wandered among ancient Roman and Celtiberean homes filled with periodappropriate furnishings. At the Museo de las Villas Romanas, in Almenara-Puras, we toured a full-scale model of a Roman villa built next to the remains of the 4th-century villa it was based on. “It seemed like a lifesize playhouse, complete with an interior courtyard, spa rooms with neatly folded towels, and communal latrines, typical of the Romans.”
Farther afield, you can find a Roman chariot racetrack in Mérida, and large coliseums in Itálica, Segóbriga, and Tarragona, a city that sits on the Mediterranean coast southwest of Barcelona. From Tarragona, we took a short ride on a public bus one day to reach Centcelles, a Roman villa famed for a ceiling mosaic said to be one of the finest in the world. Previously we’d been told that the nation’s wrenching economic downturn had slowed tourism, but we were surprised to be the day’s only visitors. The day before, a curator told us, there’d been maybe three. We gazed upward in amazement for a long time.
Ankara—Turkey’s second city
Ankara too often gets overshadowed by Istanbul, said Andrea Sachs in The Washington Post. Turkey’s capital has only 4.5 million residents to Istanbul’s 14 million, and it has a reputation for being less fun—a Washington, D.C., to Istanbul’s New York City. But don’t let the concentration of universities and foreign embassies give you the wrong impression. Ankara is more than a place to study or practice diplomacy. It’s a pleasingly disorderly city—“energetic, loud, and alive, so very alive.”
I stayed recently in the historic Ulus quarter, buying my daily provisions at a market where the vendors routinely threw in extra fruits or vegetables for free. Whenever you look up in this district, “your eyes inevitably bump into the citadel, a colossal structure of towers and walls shaped by the hands of many civilizations (Hittite, Byzantine, Galatian, etc.).” One late afternoon, I entered through a dramatic archway and climbed ragged steps to a wall where I could sit watching boys playing soccer below me. At 5:57, a booming voice called Muslims to prayer, so I followed the faithful to Haci Bayram, Ankara’s most sacred mosque. Passing through a courtyard that contains the ruins of a Roman temple, I padded into the mosque though the women’s entrance, hiding my hair under my jacket’s hood. While children played around us, the women “remained deep in prayer, their covered heads bowed toward Mecca.”
My favorite hangout was a furniture shop run by a friendly man named Ahmet Geyikoglu. He’d invited me in for tea on my first afternoon in Ankara, and I kept returning to paw through his beautiful carpets and talk about the day’s plans. Finally, I playfully told him I wanted a chair, a stool, and a bench, but he ignored the chance to make a big sale while bubble-wrapping the least expensive of my requests and tucking in a complimentary kilim-covered pillow. Unexpectedly, “I had discovered Ankara’s true spirit in a rug seller’s cramped shop.”
A train through old Germany
"Steam locomotives are impossibly romanric"-perhaps nonc more so than those that run on the Fichre1bergbahn, said T.R. Goldman in The Washington Post. The small German railroad began operating in 1897, transporting people and freight 11 miles through the scenic Ore Mountains along what's now Germany's border with the Czech Republic. Today, the Fichtelbergbahn carries 200,000 sightseeing passengers each year, from Cranzahl to the low-key ski village of Oberwiesenthal, a former silver-mining town and the highest settlement in the nation. Many of these visitors are train aficionados who, like me, are drawn to the region by the ride itself.
Oberwiesenthal is one of Germany's bestvalue ski resorts, favored by families who pack the little inns above the train station and wander into the main square when they're not on the slopes. Picturesque lodgings like the Hotel-Gasthof Rotgiesserhaus sit near "very GDR" restaurants like the main square's Cafe Central, a place where the bad lighting, cheap beer, and raxidermied animals offer their own retrograde Soviet-era charm. We train buffs spent many hours just milling about the village's railyard, "photographing the engines as if they were exotic zoo animals." Because they run on narrow·gauge tracks, the locomotives are about half normal size, and though plenty powerful, they're also "impossibly cute."
The engineer and the fireman agree to let me ride in [heir cab as my train embarks for Cranzahl. A high-pitched, breathy whistle sounds, and thcn the chug-chug-chug starts, "first slowly and methodically, then rapidly crescendoing in speed." The engine shoots thick bursts of white steam into the air as we weave through the mountains, and I admire thc orange-roofed villages in the valley below. Later, I discover that both tourists and locals often pull their cars over to watch the train pass overhead on a 75·fooHall viaduct about half a mile olltside Oberwiesenthal. One Bavarian visitor struggles to answer when I ask him to explain the attraction. "It's black, it's beautiful," he says. "It's life inside."
No comments:
Post a Comment