This month on GoNOMAD, we have a mix of solo travel, family travel, girlfriend getaways, even a guide to the South Bronx in New York City. And we're adding a new category: time travel.
In our Historic Travel section, we will be featuring great travel writers of history, starting with the very personification of intrepid solo women's travel, Isabella Bird, a Scottish lady who traveled the world in the late 1800s visiting Colorado, Australia, Hawaii, Japan, China, Vietnam, Singapore, India, Tibet, Turkey, Kurdistan, Baghdad, Tehran, China, Korea, and Morocco.
In the future we will feature writers like Ernie Pyle, who visited North Africa with the US Army during World War II, Frederick Law Olmstead, who made a tour of the slave states just before the Civil War, 'Dame Shirley' Clapp, who lived in California's mining camps during the Gold Rush, and Charles Dickens, who wrote a book about his travels in America in 1840.
The Hank Williams Museum -
photo by Shady Hartshorne
This month Shady Hartshorne and Laurie Ellis take us to Montgomery Alabama, where Hank Williams won a talent contest at the age of 14 and Rosa Parks famously refused to move to the back of the bus. Daniel Reynolds Riveiro takes us on a tour of the South Bronx, birthplace of Colin Powell, Al Pacino and Jennifer Lopez, and Esha Samajpati takes us to the summit of Gorham Mountain on Mount Desert Island in Maine.
Paul Shoul samples the food and wine and poetry of Minas Gerais, Brazil, Ann Banks finds 'nature's answer to Prozac' in the Bougmez Valley high in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, and Inka Piegsa-Quischotte explores the Eupalinos Tunnel that was build around 530 BC on the Greek isle of Samos
Jane Cassie finds great arts and crafts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Associate Editor Stephen Hartshorne extolls the historic architecture of Galveston, Texas, and Habeeb Salloum visits Taxco, the Silver Capital of Mexico.
Gary Singh visits the Geiger Museum in Gruyeres, Switzerland, dedicated to the work of H.R. Geiger, who devised the monsters in the movie 'Alien' and created many other macabre masterpieces, Steve Flahive dons a kilt and joins in the Scottish dancing on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia, and Susan McKee travels to Santa Catarina, Brazil, where she celebrates Octoberfest with the local German community, sips Italian wine at the Villa Francioni, and then tries the local favorite, cachaça, which is fermented from sugar cane at a local distillery.
All in all it's just another month of top-notch travel writing on GoNOMAD.
New stories recently published on GoNOMAD:
Montgomery: The South’s Capital City As the state capital, the original capital of the Confederacy, and the birthplace of the modern American civil rights movement, Montgomery has always been a magnet for historic events. For example, the Empire Theater where a 14-year old Hank Williams won an amateur talent contest in 1937 is the same spot where Rosa Parks took her famous bus ride in 1955. The orders to fire on Fort Sumber were telegraphed from the Capitol Building in 1861...
New York City: A Visitor's Guide to the South Bronx Sadly, the Bronx is often at the bottom of any traveler's New York list. A full week's worth of vulcanized rubber hardly dents most of Manhattan's must sees and the farthest most visitors make it from Gotham is the west part of Brooklyn. But for a certain type of traveler, the Bronx might just be the place to be. This is for the Bronx that never makes the guidebooks, the cradle of hip-hop, the childhood playground of Colin Powell, Al Pacino and J-Lo....
Intrepid Solo Women's Travel - Isabella Bird When you Google 'intrepid solo women's travel,' they should have a picture of Isabella Bird. I have been reading her book about Colorado, which she visited in the 1870s, but she also visited Australia, Hawaii, Japan, China, Vietnam, Singapore, India,Tibet, Turkey, Persia, Kurdistan, Baghdad, Tehran, China, Korea, and MoroccoIn later life, she used the celebrity status she had attained to found not one but two hospitals in India...
Magnificent Maine: Hikes and Lobsters on Mount Desert Island
'Vacationland' proudly proclaim the state license plates. “Lots of hikes with great views,” says my husband, Pinaki. For him, great views translate to great landscape photography. 'The world’s finest lobster,' screams website of the Maine Lobster Council. Enough already, I am hooked. Picking a warm weekend in July, we packed our bags and drove up to Maine. All the way up to northern New England from our home in Connecticut...
Minas Gerais: A Toast to the Heart of Brazil
Ouro Preto, means 'Black Gold' a reference to the black iron oxide covered gold nuggets found in the Tripui River in the late 1600s that led to Brazil's greatest gold rush. In its glory during the 17th century it was the richest city in Brazil and the capital of the state. It is impossibly beautiful. Red roofed meticulously-preserved colonial houses, some painted bright pastel colors roll up and down the hills of the town that are topped by gold-laden churches...
Morocco's Bougmez Valley: An Unspoiled Shangri-La
I’d seen the Bougmez Valley described as 'the best-kept secret in Morocco.” Admittedly, this was something I’d read in guidebooks. But no two guidebooks even spell the name the same way – which I thought was a promising sign. And until fairly recently there was no paved road to the valley, so it was plausible that this was still an unspoiled Shangri La. I was eager to see if Ait Bougmez really was 'nature’s answer to Prozac,' as the Lonely Planet described it...
Santa Catarina: A Quiet Corner of Brazil
Brazil is more than carnival in Rio de Janiero, crowded beaches in Sao Paolo and Amazon River cruises. There are quiet corners to this vast country where immigrants from across the sea have recreated a little bit of home. Santa Catarina is one of those places. The province was settled by Europeans – primarily Italians and Germans – and their influence remains strong. In Pomerode, for example, ninety percent of the population still speaks German....
Spooky Switzerland: Alien Nightmares and Mystical Savages
One is easily transformed upon entering the H.R. Giger Museum in the medieval village of Gruyères. It sticks out like a decapitated thumb. Giger, rhyming with meager, is the notorious troublemaker best known for designing the creatures in the 1980 film Alien, for which he won a well-deserved Oscar, but he also creates paintings, furniture, sculptures, album covers and graphic designs featuring transmogrifications of the most disturbing sort....
Taxco: Mexico's Silver Capital Beckons
Taxco de la Alarcόn, a city of 148,000 and Mexico’s silver capital is located 5,900 ft. above sea level between Mexico City and Acapulco. Cuddled by the mountains of the state of Guerrero, it is an attractive town known for its colonial architecture, steep and narrow cobbled streets, edged with whitewashed houses with red-tiled roofs, dominated by the stately and towering 250-year old Santa Prisca and Santa Sebastian Church, carrying the name of two saints....
Tips for Living Abroad with Kids
Immersion into a different culture is intellectually stimulating and forces you to examine your culture and your place in the world. Additionally, if you go to a non-English speaking country, your kids will get a head start on a second language. During our year in France we were freed from our never-ending list of chores and obligations. Our life was simpler, and as a result we slowed down and spent a lot more time together as a family....
Galveston, Texas: The Indomitable Island
Galveston is a great destination for all kinds of reasons. But don't take my word for it. Ask the five million people who come here every year. There are miles and miles of beautiful beaches, possibly the best birding and fishing in the world, as well as surfing, sailing, kayaking, shopping, antiques, art galleries, fine dining, you name it. Not to mention the Railroad Museum, the Flight Museum, and the Seaport Museum, home to the 1877 tall ship Elissa...
David Byrne's Bicycle Diaries: Seeing the World from the Saddle
Through this window I catch glimpses of the mind of my fellow man, as expressed in the cities he lives in. Cities, it occurred to me, are physical manifestations of our deepest beliefs and our often unconscious thoughts, not so much as individuals, but as the social animals we are. A cognitive scientist need only look at what we have made—the hives we have created—to know what we think and what we believe to be important...
Scenic Santa Fe: An Enchanted City Any Time of Year
'It’s sure not your typical metropolis,' I comment, as we veer onto the main road of Paseo De Peralta. 'There’s not a high-rise or a neon sign in sight.' The low-slung, flat-roofed adobe buildings appear to be hewn from New Mexico’s landscape as they rise from the okra soil like giant sleeping camels. The curvaceous shapes, housing hip galleries, trendy boutiques, and amazing museums are linked together by sliver-thin streets...
100 Places In Italy Every Woman Should Go
Susan Van Allen presents a guide to Italy's many attractions from a woman's point of view including historic sites, museums, villas, gardens, cooking schools, spas, beaches, shopping, crafts schools, and opera companies. She points out the palace where Audrey Hepburn lived while filming 'Roman Holiday, where to find masterpieces that celebrate the female form, jazz clubs, wine bars, and the best place to ski in the Dolomite Mountains...
In Search of History in Samos, Greece
Samos is a Greek island located in the northeastern Aegean Sea and a 1 ½ hour ferry ride from the Turkish port of Kusadasi, which was our starting point. According to Greek mythology, Samos was the birthplace of Hera, the long suffering wife of Zeus, and she was particularly worshipped on the island. Samos is very green and very mountainous. Mount Kerkis is actually the highest mountain in the North Eastern Aegean Sea...
Exploring Nova Scotia’s Scottish Roots
With the Bay of Fundy on its west coast, the Atlantic Ocean on the Eastern Shore, the i shape of Nova Scotia gets its dot from Cape Breton Island. The name Nova Scotia translated from Latin means 'New Scotland.' Nowhere is the designation more fitting than Cape Breton. Less than a century ago, Gaelic was the primary language for 60,000 of the island’s inhabitants. This number, though, has halved with the passing of each decade since 1920.
