Arts and Entertainment

One of the great things about travel is that the memories are always with you. A name, picture, book or movie often summons up wonderful travel experiences. That happened to me recently. The book “The Lost City of the Monkey God” by Douglas Preston was on the New York Times best seller list. While reading it I had flashback images of our adventure to the area of the Monkey God.

Did you ever feel the call of the sea? Or, feel the need to do something different? I did and you can, too. This is the time of the year to plan your summer adventure. Think outside of the box. Somewhere in my distant educational past I had to memorize – and never forgot – the first few lines from John Masefield’s “Sea Fever:”

Hunter Mountain, in the Catskills south of Albany, is usually thought of as a winter destination. And, basically it is, but when there is no snow there are still visitors. When John and I were there we took the chair lift to the top of the mountain for a panoramic view of the area. There is a short trail to a Rip Van Winkle Statue. While I was taking a picture of the statue, a group of teenagers who attended a Hasidic Boarding School stopped to ask what the statue was.

“The pen is mightier than the sword” is attributed to playwright Edward Bulwer-Lytton, who in 1839 wrote a historical play about Cardinal Richelieu. And, according Friedrich Nietzsche: “All I need is a sheet of paper and something to write with, and then I can turn the world upside down.” An example would be Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Life among the Lowly.”

We were in Galveston in January and the sea winds were blowing… and blowing. We were looking forward to walking along the beach but it was just too windy. Unfortunately we were there during the Arctic Vortex which put the south in a deep freeze. We stayed at the Holiday Inn Resort where the swimming pool was heated and while some kids went in and seemed to disregard the weather, it was just too chilly and windy for me.

Malta is a group of islands in the Mediterranean between Sicily and North Africa. Its location means that it has been influenced by a variety of cultures including the Roman, Moors, French and British. John and I stayed at the Corinthia Palace Hotel and Spa located in the capital city of Valetta. The hotel was once a 19th century country villa and many of the features were incorporated into the hotel. One of the best ways to experience the culture of an area is to eat like the locals. The cuisine of the island reflects the tastes of many groups.

The 27th U.S. president, William Howard Taft, who weighed 355 pounds, supposedly got stuck in the White House bathtub. It is open to conjecture; but, he did have an extra-large tub installed in the White House that could hold four ordinary men. When John and I were in Cincinnati, we visited the house where Taft was born. It is now a National Park. I have to admit, we didn’t know very much about Taft. But, during our tour of his house and the adjacent museum my ambivalence turned to respect for him.