What We Loved This Week: Sora Lella, Book Passage, ‘Travels in Siberia’ and More

Travel Blog • World Hum • 08.14.09 | 4:35 PM ET

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

David Farley
This week I dined at Sora Lella, a famous Roman restaurant on Isola Tiberina, an island between Rome’s Ghetto and Trastevere neighborhoods. But I didn’t go to Rome. I ate at Sora Lella in New York. The NYC outpost, I found, was just as good as the original and took me back to the last time I was living in Italy.

Eva Holland
The friendliest U.S. immigration officer in recent history. Before clearing customs at Halifax airport yesterday, en route to NYC, I found myself chatting about the latest “Harry Potter” movie with a cheery, approachable official. What a refreshing change from the “terrorist until proven innocent” attitude I’ve gotten so used to.

Terry Ward
Wadlopen off Texel, one of the Netherlands’ North Sea islands. At low tide, fleeting sandbank flats, isolated from the mainland and nearby islands, materialize miles off Holland’s coast. Opportunistic birds needle their beaks into what was just a few hours ago the bottom of the sea, searching for crabs, starfish and minnows marooned by the tide. Boats from Texel deliver tourists, too. Net and shovel in hand, I loved traipsing around the sandbanks during that wrinkle in time before they were once again swallowed by ocean.

Photo by Ben Wadewitz

Jim Benning
I loved the first night of the Book Passage Travel Writers & Photographers Conference last night. Tim Cahill and Don George talked storytelling. Travel writers talked “Confessions of a Travel Writer.” Much wine was imbibed. It was a lot of fun.

Michael Yessis
Ian Frazier’s two-part story Travel in Siberia. It’s one of those epic New Yorker stories that, unfortunately, isn’t available online to non-subscribers. There is, however, a podcast with Frazier and a slideshow from photographer Seamus Murphy.

Alicia Imbody
I loved being dragged to see ‘G. I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra’ and getting exactly what I expected: testosterone drenched action with a hint of nostalgia, plus some unexpected travel candy. It was definitely not your standard travel movie, but I found it extremely entertaining to watch the life-size versions of the infamous Kung-Fu grip action figures race around the globe with futuristic weapons and world-class special effects. Here’s the trailer that features my favorite scene of the Joe’s terrorizing the streets of Paris while they try to stop the Eiffel Tower from literally being eaten.