Destination: France
“Let Your Passions Guide You. They Are Unique…Let Them Subsume You.”
by Jim Benning | 07.27.05 | 11:38 AM ET
That was the message that writer Jeffrey Tayler delivered to students enrolled in Rolf Potts’ writing course in Paris earlier this month. His lecture has been published on Potts’ weblog, and aspiring writers and fans of Tayler’s work will find it both inspiring and instructive.
In addition to offering advice, Tayler recounts his own path to the writing life, emphasizing the importance that passions played along the way. “I mean passions for subjects that fascinate and thrill you the way a good novel or poem or even movie does,” he told them. “These passions drove me to acquire knowledge and accomplish the things I would write about. Most of all, they focused my energy.” Tayler, of course, is an Atlantic Monthly correspondent and the author of a number of books, including “Facing the Congo” and his latest, Angry Wind: Through Muslim Black Africa by Truck, Bus, Boat and Camel.
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Yahoo! Buzz“WE SAW LANCE!!!!! WHOOOOO!”
by Jim Benning | 07.14.05 | 12:50 PM ET
Anyone even vaguely familiar with competitive cyling can appreciate yesterday’s weblog post from Rick Steves’ son, Andrew, who is on his first parent-free trip to Europe and watching the Tour de France. His entire post: “WE SAW LANCE!!!!! WHOOOOO! Pictures coming in a couple days, check em out!!!”
The Flight of the 800-Passenger Gorilla
by Jim Benning | 04.28.05 | 10:44 PM ET
Off the Road
by Jim Benning | 03.28.05 | 3:53 PM ET
The Washington Post’s Jerry V. Haines reviewed “Off the Road” in the Sunday Travel section. The book, by Jack Hitt, chronicles the author’s not-so-religious pilgrimage on foot from France to Santiago de Compostela. Apparently Hitt didn’t consider himself a religious pilgrim but thought the journey would make for a nice hike. What did Haines think of the book? “Hitt has surprisingly little introspection for someone in such a contemplative undertaking,” he writes. “He slips in a little geography, legends of the Knights Templar and deaths of the martyrs. All in great fun. Is it irreverent? Inspirational? Actually, both—and capably so.”
Checking Off the Mona Lisa
by Jim Benning | 11.18.04 | 9:06 PM ET
Most first-time Paris visitors insist on seeing the Mona Lisa—so many, in fact, that on most days a crowd is gathered around the painting by 10 a.m. The Guardian recently featured a terrific overview of the phenomenon, from the crush of tourists to the complicated psychology of a Mona Lisa visit. “To doubt that the Mona Lisa is worth seeing is a bit like asking whether it’s worth coming to Paris at all,” Amelia Gentleman writes. “The Mona Lisa is a key part of the Paris package, and one of the reasons why you come to France, why you come to Europe. For most tourists this moment will be a critical part of their memory of France as a whole. To come here and not be amazed or delighted is in some way to admit that the whole Paris experience is somehow not as great as it’s cracked up to be. Most people know this is illogical, and yet they buy into it anyway.”
The Life of a Traveling Writer
by Jim Benning | 10.05.04 | 7:13 PM ET
Chasing Lance
by Frank Mungeam | 07.11.04 | 9:39 PM ET
Watching a recent Tour de France on TV wasn't enough, so Frank Mungeam packed his bike for the main event
Out: Provence. In: Tuscany.
by Jim Benning | 03.05.04 | 8:56 PM ET
Woke Up This Morning and I Got Myself a Beer, Which I Brought to the Lizard King
by Michael Yessis | 02.09.04 | 9:22 PM ET
Why do so many travelers visit Jim Morrison’s grave at the Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris? Undying love for The Doors? A chance to show off graffiti skills? Time to kill before the nearby hostel opens? Mark Neumann has been exploring the subject for the last seven years by recording interviews with pilgrims. He’s gathered highlights into a piece for public radio’s The Savvy Traveler, which aired this weekend.
The Curse of the Tenacious Tourist
by Michael Yessis | 09.17.03 | 1:29 AM ET
How do you shake the fellow traveler who clings to you and just won’t let you be? It’s not easy, writes San Francisco Chronicle columnist John Flinn. His ditching of “Gaston,” a fifty-something, air-guitar strumming Parisian postman who wouldn’t leave him and his wife alone has left him feeling awful. “It had to be done,” Flinn writes. “But instead of feeling relief, I felt horrible, like a real jerk.”
Tale of a Travel Martyr
by Michael Yessis | 09.09.03 | 1:17 AM ET
September’s GQ features a terrific story by Michael Paterniti about a man who “lives” at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris. The story is unavailable online, but its first sentence is. In fact, Village Voice media critic Cynthia Cotts features it in her annual celebration of great magazine ledes. Here it is: “He is a man without a country, a family and a home. For more than a decade, Merhan Nasseri has been living in Terminal One at Charles de Gaulle Airport, waiting. For what, he doesn’t know anymore.”
When Travel Really Stinks
by Jim Benning | 07.22.03 | 9:59 PM ET
Anyone who has traveled in Southeast Asia has undoubtedly encountered the durian, perhaps the worst-smelling fruit on Earth. It smells so bad that it is often banned on trains. Writer Zona Sage noticed the stench shortly after the plane took off from Paris, but she couldn’t identify it. Flight attendants and passengers were baffled, scouring the plane for the source. Bad cheese, perhaps? Then they realized a Vietnamese nun had brought on board medicine made from the dreaded fruit. “The nun turned over the contraband that she had succeeded in carrying through innumerable security checks—a large plastic container of the King of Fruit, as its fans call it,” Sage writes in an entertaining story in Sunday’s South Florida Sun-Sentinel. “The flight attendant held it out ahead of her as she went forward with it.”
Frivolous Update: MTV Cast Working For Frommer’s Guides
by Jim Benning | 06.04.03 | 9:12 PM ET
According to today’s Los Angeles Times, cast members of MTV’s “The Real World” in Paris (see item below) were each given a job writing for Frommer’s travel guides. The things publishers will do for publicity. (Registration required.)
Americans in Paris, Like, MTV-Style
by Michael Yessis | 06.04.03 | 3:01 PM ET
The new season of The Real World debuted last night on MTV, featuring the crazy, young, always dramatic and frequently intoxicated American kids living abroad—in Paris. Tuesday’s show included a couple of cast members arriving at a Paris airport, hollering in English at passing Parisians, asking for directions to a train into the city. They were, of course, largely ignored. (They’ve obviously been taking travel lessons from those Americans on “The Amazing Race” who scream at people, regardless of the country in which they find themselves, only in English.) Tuesday night’s show also featured obscure references to the job that cast members would be assigned while living in Paris: writing a new series of travel guides. God knows what this is about. But if you ever see any of these guides in a bookstore in future years, run. Or at the very least, skip the train directions.
France: The Writer/Reader Divide
by Jim Benning | 04.28.03 | 3:21 PM ET
A fellow travel writer sent an e-mail to me Monday. “Just when I thought I was getting really depressed, I came across this,” she wrote. She included a link to a recent column written by the reader representative of the Minneapolis Star Tribune. The representative explained that the newspaper had heard from a number of readers complaining about the Travel section’s recent coverage of France. A typical reader remark quoted in the column: “We were appalled to see the Travel section last Sunday promoting France as a place to travel with it being so anti-American, anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian and opportunistic a country.” And that was just the beginning. “Jeez,” my friend concluded in her e-mail. “Hope you are weathering this silliness better than I am.”
I wish I could say I am, but I’m probably not. I just don’t understand the logic. If I made foreign travel decisions based on whether a country’s government always agreed with my politics, I’d probably never leave home. When will this end?