Celebrating Soccer (and Cultural Exchange) in Africa
How high on your travel wish list is Nigeria? So what would possess more than 500 teenage boys from across the world to trek to the heart of West Africa at the height of summer?
A) School trip?
B) Free video games?
C) International soccer competition?
If you answered C, give yourself a gold star. This past month in Nigeria, the FIFA Under-17 World Cup took place. The semi-finals saw Switzerland defeat Colombia, and Nigeria beat Spain. In the end, Switzerland took home the golden trophy, winning 1-0 in the finals on Sunday, November 15 in front of a crowd of more than 60,000 screaming fans. But it wasn't just the players who were from across the globe. I interviewed a few fanatics in the international crowd to find out what brought them to this sports-mad country.
Name: HENRY
From: Johannesburg, South Africa
What Brought You Here: I've been working for the past eight months for DSTV.
What Have You Learned From Coming to Nigeria: How diverse the cultures around Africa are.
One Thing You Can't Travel Without: My camera.
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September 24, 2009
Top Five Tips From a Five-Month Family Road Trip
A family of five stuck together in an RV for five months? Most people shake their heads and have one question: "Why on earth would you want to do that?" When the economy started to falter, my husband's real-estate development company began to follow suit. Hard as it might be to believe, a feeling of excitement is what I felt, followed by a sharp stab of guilt. I quickly realized that the excitement was really just a feeling of overwhelming opportunity. With change, good or bad, comes opportunity if you look for it. Time is a precious commodity and we found ourselves in a rare moment where we actually had time, and we knew it may never come again. The moment seemed even more perfect because of the ages of our three children (11, 8, and 6). After eager thoughts of moving to another country were shot down by my husband, we arrived at a shared enthusiasm for hitting the road to explore all that this great country has to offer. An RV was our chosen method of travel. We created a website to help communicate about the experience at FamilyOffTrack.com.
After five months in an RV with a family of five, here are five tips that I'm sure can help any family road trip.
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July 16, 2009
The Broadmoor in Colorado Springs: "Our Princess Land"
“Welcome to my princess land, Gramma” is how my four-year-old granddaughter greeted me at The Broadmoor in Colorado Springs on our recent visit there. I could see how the historic towers might resemble a castle to a four-year-old enthralled with the storybook world of princesses and princes. Perhaps the only missing structures were a drawbridge and moat, but Kaydence didn’t seem to notice.
And it's no stretch of the imagination that the attention you receive from the uniformed staff is fit for a princess. A security guard greets you first, and from that moment, you’re whisked away into your own magical kingdom with what seems like your own personal servants. This wasn’t my first visit to the luxurious Broadmoor, but it was my first hotel adventure with my two grandchildren, Kaydence and two-year-old Ryland.
Surrounded by the mountains and framed by Cheyenne Lake, the historic Broadmoor is just 90 miles south of Denver, or a few miles from its own airport. The resort sits on 3,000 beautifully sculpted acres with splashes of brightly-colored flora and manicured lawns. The lake’s glassy surface is marred only by the occasional floating duck, and with the right amount of rain (such as we experienced), other creatures like earthworms and frogs might catch your child’s attention. Other animals, such as deer and foxes, frequently cross the fairways on the resort’s three 18-hole golf courses.
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July 09, 2009
The Pros and Cons of Cruises
A cruise ship in Ketchikan, Alaska (Brian Adams/courtesy, Alaska Travel Industry Association)
My family recently went on a cruise to Alaska, and if you're a traveler who likes to experience the most you can out of where you're traveling, you'll understand why "cruising Alaska" might sound like a sellout. Alaska is about wilderness, nature, and unfathomable expanses of mountains and ice fields and forests—man versus wild. I would think it's best experienced from on the ground, rather than by sailing past its shores. So it felt ironic to be confined to a boat—or more accurately, a resort-turned-water-vessel—when I probably should have been trekking a lung-busting trail or avoiding bears in the mountains somewhere. Instead, I ate myself silly, watched movies, and bowled on a boat (cue joke souvenir T-shirt reading, "I went to Alaska and all I got was five extra pounds").
But I don't want to make cruises sound horrible. Even though I don't think I'll be signing up for another cruise for a while, there are many great things about cruising. Millions of people do it every year, and many are repeat customers. Whether or not it's a good method of travel for you depends on where you're going, who you're going with, what type of traveler you are, and what you want to get out of your vacation. Below are some things to consider about cruising before you book your first trip.
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June 26, 2009
New Habitat Opens at the International Crane Foundation, Wisconsin
HOME ON THE RANGE: Grey-crowned crane (Mike Endres/Wanderlust Photos)
This past Saturday, the International Crane Foundation (ICF) unveiled a new 15-acre Spirit of Africa habitat at its headquarters in Baraboo, Wisconsin. I happened to be up in the area for a visit to nearby Wisconsin Dells with my family, so we dropped by the woodlands facility for a closer look at these majestic birds on the opening day of the new exhibit. The ICF is the only place in the world where you can see all 15 species of cranes, including the endangered whooping crane and red-crowned crane.
Unlike a zoo, where you can sometimes feel quite distant from the animals, the ICF's holding pens and open habitats allow you to get fairly close to these statuesque birds, which have become potent symbols for conservation because of threats to their survival that include habitat loss, predation, and pollution. Being there with small kids was a stark reminder that some of the species we were viewing might not even be around by the time my kids become adults. The ICF is dedicated to worldwide efforts to conserve the species as well as the grasslands and wetlands on which they depend for survival.
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June 19, 2009
From the Road: Cultural Diversity in Penang, Malaysia
In this series of posts, our roving guest
blogger Dave Zuckerman reports back from the road as he explores
Malaysia. We hope you'll enjoy reading about his experiences as much as
we did.
I’m now on the island of Penang and finding it a great place to get acquainted with Malaysia’s cultural diversity. Penang’s historic Georgetown district, a UNESCO World Heritage site as of 2008, is a microcosm of the nation’s multiethnic heritage. Wandering its streets you find mosques, Hindu temples, Chinese clan temples, and plenty of evidence of the colonial past (the British first arrived here in 1786). You’ll also see a wealth of vernacular architecture in a variety of styles and states of disrepair. The stunning Blue Mansion, a fantastically elaborate home built in 1898 by Cheong Fatt Tze, “the Rockefeller of the East,” is one of Georgetown’s treasures. True feng shui principals permeate every aspect of the Mansion’s design. Builders even oriented the house at a 45-degree angle to the street so it would, according to the dictates of a proverb, face the sea with the mountains (in this case Penang Hill) behind. More pedestrian (but no less interesting) are the abundant shophouses. Residents have restored a number of these traditional mixed-use structures, building them into galleries, cafes, and boutique hotels.
Even experiences that seem to offer only sensory stimulation are, in Penang, steeped in history. The Tropical Spice Garden, a lush, verdant garden devoted to brightly colored wild spice flowers (the blade-like ginger flowers are stunningly beautiful) was once a rubber plantation. At the top of Penang Hill, the Bellevue Hotel offers beautiful views of Georgetown. The hotel dates back to the days of the East India Company, when it was the home of William Halliburton, sheriff of Penang (then known to the Brits as Wales Island). A collection of prints depicts colonial-era Georgetown from the same vantage. Comparing them to the view, you can see how the city has grown.
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June 12, 2009
From the Road: Seeking Culture in Kuching, Malaysia
An exhibit at the Cat Museum in Kuching (Dave Zuckerman)
From the editors: In this series of posts, our roving guest blogger Dave Zuckerman reports back from the road as he explores Malaysia. We hope you'll enjoy reading about his experiences as much as we did.
From Kuala Lumpur, we flew to Kuching. The capital of Sarawak state, which stretches across a strip along the north and east coasts of Borneo, Kuching means "cat" in Malay and the city bills itself “the Cat City.” Kuching’s identity, superficially anyway, is tied up in a cat obsession. There are a number of large cat sculptures in the city center, and there’s even a museum dedicated entirely to the common house cat. It’s about ten minutes out of town on the ground floor of a government building designed to replicate the conical sunhats of local farmers. From the entrance, shaped like the yawning maw of an enormous cat, to the last vitrine, the Cat Museum is the ultimate in kitsch. There are displays dedicated to Garfield, the musical Cats, Hello Kitty, and my personal favorite, a ’70s Dutch band called Cats Aglow. It’s definitely worth a trip (if you can be entertained by that sort of thing).
Kitsch isn’t all you're in for in Kuching (though there is a lot of it). Between the Brooke dynasty (failed trader and adventurer James Brooke and his progeny ruled the state as white Rajahs from the 1840s until 1946), the tribal populations, and the historically recent influx of Chinese immigrants, the state of Sarawak actually has a pretty rich and bizarre history.
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June 04, 2009
From the Road: First Impressions of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
ON THE RISE: Kuala Lumpur's skyline, punctuated by the Petronas Twin Towers (Photodisc)
From the editors: In this series of posts, our roving guest blogger Dave Zuckerman reports back from the road as he explores Malaysia. We hope you'll enjoy reading about his experiences as much as we did.
After a few days in Kuala Lumpur (KL to Malaysians), one of the few things I can say about the place with certainty is that it’s hard to get to know. Buildings, finished and otherwise, make the first impression. On the way in from the airport we passed Putrajaya, a new complex of vaguely modern structures (and a big mosque) that houses the national government, then Cyberjaya, another compound meant for tech and telecom firms—still unfinished more than a decade since the project broke ground.
Later, strolling through the city center (okay, not strolling exactly—KL’s enveloping swelter makes walking any distance more like a slog), I saw the city’s odd abundance of skyscrapers, odd because the city center isn’t dense. It’s sprawling, with wide arterial roads. The tallest buildings are islands of vertical reach, dwarfing everything in their vicinity. They’d be anomalies on the cityscape if only there weren’t so many of them. There are also malls everywhere . The first, called simply The Mall, was built in the 1970s and they’ve been popping up ever since. The newest, the shiny, year-old Pavilion is home to the likes of Burberry and Jimmy Choo, though it doesn’t look like anyone’s buying.
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May 27, 2009
Revisiting Luray Caverns, Virginia
OPTICAL ILLUSION: What looks like stalagmites rising from the floor is really a reflection of the ceiling in a perfectly still pool of water (Karen Chen)
Sometimes revisiting a place results in seeing it in a totally different light than before. I recently went to Luray Caverns in Virginia, and even though I'd been once before while on family vacation as a kid (yes, it was part of the requisite family road trip to Washington D.C.), this time was more fascinating than the first—probably because I actually listened to the tour guide. Located just 90 minutes outside of D.C., Luray makes for a convenient day-trip destination, or a good stopover on the way to Shenandoah National Park, a favorite camping and hiking spot for weekenders from the surrounding area.
Though not by any means the largest, longest, or most beautiful cave in the world, the truth is that caves, no matter which ones, are a wondrous thing. I had evidently forgotten this because as we pulled up to the caverns' Information Center, I half expected a sorry excuse for a natural wonder. Adding to that feeling of doubt was the entryway to the caves, a swinging door just next to the gift shop, looking more like the door to the bathroom than the entry point to a great geological wonder. But as soon as we descended into the cool, damp caverns, my attention was immediately captured by all the awe-inspiring stalactites and stalagmites jutting out from every surface of the underground rooms. The caverns' lights cast a magical golden glow over the millions of spiky cones, giant columns, and bubbly rock formations. We'd been transported to a different world—and the gift shop was still right above us, though completely forgotten.
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March 13, 2009
To Bed and Breakfast, or Not To Bed and Breakfast?
AMERICAN PASTORAL: The drive to the Foxfield Inn outside of Charlottesville (Karen Chen)
In January, my boyfriend and I decided to take a quick weekend trip to Charlottesville, Virginia, an easy 2.5-hour drive from our home base of Washington, D.C. Since it was still the dead of winter, we wanted wherever we stayed to be relaxing, quaint, and cozy (i.e. fireplaces and hot tubs were just what we needed). As most vacation planners do these days, we headed straight to the Internet to search for a good hideout for the weekend. Ever-popular TripAdvisor practically screamed at us that the best place to stay in the Charlottesville area was a bed and breakfast called the Foxfield Inn. Boasting rave five-star reviews on page after page and ranked as one of the top B&Bs in the country, the Foxfield Inn sounded like a dream, with beautifully-appointed rooms and top-notch hospitality in the middle of Virginia's pastoral countryside.
As I'd never stayed at a bed and breakfast before, I had this notion that the stay would include various guests chatting in the sunroom over wine and cookies in the afternoon and sitting by the fire at night playing board games. In other words, I really had no idea what to expect. But I had always wanted to stay in a B&B—people gushed about them all the time, didn't they? Now that I've had my first foray into bed and breakfast vacationing, I've learned a few pros and cons that I'd recommend travelers think about when trying to decide whether to stay at a hotel or a bed and breakfast.
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