What We Loved This Week: La Vela Puerca in Hamburg, Tavern on the Green and More

Our contributors share a favorite travel-related experience from the past seven days.

Michael Yessis
I loved reading Gary Shteyngart’s views on travel and travel writing, courtesy of his interview with Rob Verger. Makes me want to go back and reread his excellent book, Absurdistan.

Terry Ward
Watching the Uruguayan flag-waving crowds go crazy in Hamburg during the La Vela Puerca concert. The Latin rock fusion band from Montevideo played under the glass roof at Fabrik, an old machine factory where daylight was still streaming in at 10 p.m. The band’s double encore included eight songs—talk about pleasing the crowds.

Eva Holland
Eating at the Friday night fish fry on my last night in Barbados. I had a heaping plate of peas and rice, macaroni pie, fried plantains and cole slaw, topped by a grilled slab of caught-that-day mahi mahi, and washed down with a couple of Banks beers—a delicious way to say goodbye to the island for this year.

Joanna Kakissis
Once in a while, I hear a song that digs out memories of a place I’d long forgotten. My Sweet and Bitter Bowl, to which Woody Guthrie wrote the lyrics in 1947 and Jonatha Brooke added music in 2008, took me back to childhood scenes of 1980s North Dakota and my very first crush. He was like western North Dakota itself—distant, internal and blessed with discipline and empathy that wasn’t immediately evident on a placid and unforgiving surface. As I listened to this love song of fate and wilderness, I tipped my hat to a big-sky land that still feels, at least to me, like a last frontier.

Rob Verger
I loved attending an event at the Tavern on the Green in Central Park this past weekend. After dark, the place lights up with lanterns, giving it a cool, Ewok village or fairyland-type feel.

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