In 2013, when Detroit declared bankruptcy it was plagued by violent crime and racial division. Today, America’s Motor City is cruising in the fast lane. It has entertaining ethnic enclaves, a vibrant downtown, a tourist-friendly riverwalk and a growing local economy that is a source of civic pride.
Pilot shortages, rising fuel costs, constantly changing schedules and erratic weather have lessened the enthusiasm for flying. So why not hit the road for a summer vacation using one of these three diverse itineraries.
The best children’s museums transfix kids, introducing them and their attentive parents to the surrounding world. There are more than 200 children’s museums throughout the U.S. Here are some places perfect for youngsters you can stop on your summer vacation.
Chances are, wherever you travel, you’ll find an Agatha Christie paperback. With eighty detective novels and story collections to her credit, Christie’s work has been translated into 130 languages and ranks third in sales behind the Bible and Shakespeare. She loved nothing more than going away and was utterly fearless about trying new destinations. Of her “foreign travel books,” she later would write, “if detective novels are escape literature, the reader can escape to sunny skies and blue water as well as to crime in the confines of an armchair.”
Ah, college. Four years of meeting people you know will be friends for life. Going on road trips. Enjoying Spring Break. Why can’t the easy camaraderie attending the shared learning experiences of youth be recaptured later in life? The quick answer is that they can.
Most colleges and universities have an array of alumni programs. It matters little whether the institution is a small liberal arts college or a massive state university. Chances are it has an alumni association that offers former graduates an opportunity to travel together in small groups.
New Mexico is a land defined by its culture of green and red chiles. Chiles flavor the state’s history, cuisine, art and economy. New Mexico’s large Roman Catholic population may be shaped by its Native American, Hispanic and frontier heritage. But when it comes to food almost everyone wants theirs cooked with chiles. Both red and green.
Should you visit America this summer? Though statistically rare, violence against overseas guests has led several foreign governments to issue travel advisories. The Japanese Consulate General in Detroit warned of “potential gunfire incidents everywhere in the United States.” China cautioned its America-bound students that “shootings, robberies and theft have occurred frequently in the U.S.” Even Venezuela’s Foreign Ministry admonished its citizens to postpone trips to the U.S. “due to recent acts of violence.” And yet, with few exceptions, foreign arrivals in the United States have continued to climb every year since 2000. Are the rest of us missing something here?
Walking through Ålesund in the Sunnmøre region of Norway is necessarily a slow stroll; there’s just too much to take in. Most of the 66,000 inhabitants of this main city in Southern Norway depend on the sea for their livelihood, and there’s even a fishing museum celebrating its heritage. But this does not look like a fishing village. Towers, turrets and imaginative ornamentation decorate graceful buildings in shades of pink, yellow, blue. Small details – faces, flowers, animals – give each a unique design. It feels as if I have wandered onto the set of a fairy tale. And as with any good fairy tale, this happy ending began with a disaster.
Winning seasons pack arenas in every sports town, but that’s only the start of the story at Lambeau Field, home to the Green Bay Packers. What started as simply a place to play during the NFL football season has grown into a multi-purpose district with year-round reasons to visit. Developments that embrace sports and offer other ways to entertain profitably are growing from Baltimore and Los Angeles to Dallas, Indianapolis and Chicago. The trend that is redefining a stadium’s place in the community is not limited to one type of pro sport. Read More
Yorkshire is the United Kingdom’s largest county–about 3.6 million acres—and boasts a turbulent history that rivals entire European nations. In the late Middle Ages, the city of York was second only to London in status and wealth. Today, Yorkshire’s rolling hills are dotted with great houses and the ruins of once-magnificent abbeys. The Transylvanian Count Dracula emerged from his coffin-ship on Yorkshire’s North Sea shore. No matter the political, economic, or religious tumult that rolled northward, Yorkshire retained its stunning natural beauty. Yorkshire’s dales and moors are inspiration for several of the English-speaking world’s greatest novels. Some far-flung parts of Yorkshire have earned the moniker “God’s Own Country” for their curiously enticing bleakness. Yorkshire began life as the seat of Roman operations in Britannia (71-400AD) and, for much of the 9th century, was home to Danish Vikings. That era collapsed with the arrival of the Normans, followed by the disastrous “Harrying of the North” by William the Conqueror’s troops. (The Danes lost, badly.) Norse heritage lives on in place names like Whitby, Sheffield, Scarborough, and, according to some recent scholarship, in the very physiognomy of Yorkshire’s people.