What We Loved This Week: Ellis Island, Dining in Bogota and More

Travel Blog  •  World Hum  •  05.29.09 | 4:13 PM ET

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

Sophia Dembling
My husband and I, feeling like huddled masses yearning to breathe free, waited for 90 minutes to board the ferry to Ellis Island. I worried that the museum wouldn’t be as spectacular as I remembered since visiting it in the early 1990s. Whew—it was indeed worth the tedious wait, even worth suffering through the piercing tones of competing steel drums played by overenthusiastic buskers. Ellis Island remains among my required sights for Americans. Next time, I’ll buy a ticket in advance, though.

Joanna Kakissis
Memorial Day weekend in Boulder, Colorado means two things: the Boulder Creek Festival and the Bolder Boulder, one of the biggest 10K races in the country. I loved both the giddy festival (music! food! rides! art!) and the race, my first in five years, especially the Olympian, finish-line stretch around a cheering stadium. I felt as giddy as this girl bouncing on a giant trampoline at festival, wishing spring could last forever.

Photo by Joanna Kakissis

Eva Holland
I loved the chance to sneak in a surfing lesson on one of my last days here in Barbados—and I really loved that I hadn’t forgotten everything I learned last year.

Jim Benning
My new surfboard, 6’4” Rusty tri-fin, which I plan to put to good use this weekend. I refuse to allow the May-gray San Diego weather to cramp my stoke.

Terry Ward
Reading about Germany’s famous film locations in the European edition of a new guidebook series, The Museyon Guide: Film+Travel—turns out Dennis Hopper prowled my gritty-chic Hamburg ’hood, St. Pauli, in his 1977 flick, “The American Friend.” The book covers film locations in much of western Europe, Turkey and Russia, and the photography is über-atmospheric.

Rob Verger
I loved the Into the Sunset: Photography’s Image of the American West exhibition at the MoMA in New York City. One of my favorite photos was the expansive Abandoned Uranium Refinery near Tuba City, Arizona, Navajo Nation—it reveals vacant buildings in the desert, and in the distance, a heavy gray column of rain. Beautiful and captivating.

Michael Yessis
I loved the New York Times Magazine profile of Bill Clinton. As noted in the Morning Links today, Clinton considers himself an authority on craft shops around the world. He “can tell you the best ones in Hong Kong or Arusha,” writes Peter Baker.

Frank Bures
I loved getting on my bike and going to Africa yesterday. About 20 minutes from my house in Minneapolis, I stopped at a Senegalese shop called Tempo Afric, where I bought an obscure soukous CD, chatted about the recent elections and ordered an old Nigerian movie I need for a project. Then I biked over to a Somali mall, where I had to wait till everyone got back from prayers before the stores opened. When they did, I confused everyone by purchasing two pounds of frozen camel meat. Then I went home.

Nicholas Gill
I’m in love with the dining scene in Bogota, Colombia—it’s almost as good as the one in Lima. There are great cevicherias like 80 Sillas, a U.S. southern-style bistro called Anderson’s in La Candelaria, and even outposts of top Peruvian chefs like Rafael Osterling. Then there’s Andres Carne de Res, a steakhouse north of the city with every inch of wall space filled with curios and oddities. It has become an all-night party palace with performers, tropical drinks served in gourds, and dancing on tables.

Photo of Andres Carne de Res by Nicholas Gill
Tags: Shameless Self-Promotion, What We Loved This Week, News and Briefs


5 Comments for What We Loved This Week: Ellis Island, Dining in Bogota and More

Rob Verger 05.29.09 | 4:58 PM ET

Sophia,

Glad to hear you enjoyed Ellis Island—I was actually there this past week, too! On Saturday. My great-grandfather came through there in 1910, so it felt significant to visit.

And those ferry lines are crazy, right? ...although we had bought our tickets in advance :)

Lola A 05.29.09 | 6:06 PM ET

Frank - Are you sure you weren’t African in another life?!.

Frank 05.30.09 | 1:36 PM ET

I’m not sure at all…

Oceanside Lodging 06.01.09 | 1:26 PM ET

The estimated 100 million Americans having at least one ancestor who entered the U.S. through Ellis Island cheered when 22 million records from 1892-1924 were uploaded to the Internet for free searching at: http://www.ellisislandrecords.org.

grizzly bear mom 06.01.09 | 5:44 PM ET

Ellis Island is fabulous.  It include artifacts immigrants brought over such as Rabbi Goldmans Torah, and Mildred O’hara wedding gown.  It also includes maps of the slave routes.  Go! Is there a west coast version?

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