San Francisco — That icon of all icons, the Golden Gate Bridge, is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year, so I happily used the occasion to revisit this engineering masterpiece, which links San Francisco with Marin County.
Making a couple of days of it, I combined the visit with things to see and do within easy range of the famous span, whose unique “International Orange” color glimmers in the western sun.
Growing up near New York’s Metropolitan Museum, I had no idea how lucky I was to have access to a room full of Clyfford Still’s wild, uninhibited canvases. With their signature vertical drips of paint, they reminded me of the water damage on the wall of our spare room. When I told my dad this, he always said I’d appreciate Still when I got older: “He’s one of the giants.”
The first thing you may notice about Marrakesh, especially if you arrive in the morning, is how cool and fresh the air is. Here on the desert fringe of the Atlas Mountains, chilly, star-filled nights give way to a searing daytime sun. The antidote to this arid climate, as generations of Western visitors have found out, is a cup of fresh-squeezed juice from a fruit cart.
Years ago, when a cousin became engaged to a doctor with a practice in Pennsylvania steel country, the whole family was anxious. Could their urbane New York girl find happiness in the rolling green landscape of the Lehigh Valley? And would she be the only Jew?
I’m increasingly convinced that if you want to really see another culture, especially in the globalized West, you have to get out of the cities and into the countryside.
It says something about Belfast’s troubled political past that the Northern Irish capital would rather be known for a shipwreck.
2012 marks the 100th anniversary of the much-heralded launch and subsequent spectacular sinking of the R.M.S. Titanic, the vessel that sold a zillion movie tickets. Belfast, home to the shipyards that built the behemoth, has been capitalizing on this claim to fame ever since — and in this centennial year, the mood is so celebratory it’s easy to forget the Titanic was actually a colossal failure.
Lately, while reading about other people’s travels, I’ve noticed a recurring phrase. It’s expressed in different ways, but with the same ominous sense of urgency, the gist of which is: “Get there before it’s too late.”
Or: “I give Bucharest another three years, max.” (Then what?) “Go to Olinda now, before it’s gone.” (To where?) “In five years, Apulia will be Tuscany.” (Heaven forfend!)
I ran into an Irishman in a Barcelona hair salon in February, and when I told him of my plan to visit his country for St. Patrick’s Day, he replied: “Oh, St. Patrick’s Day is a U.S. holiday — an Irish-American thing, really.”
Well, I felt like a rube. But then I remembered how, years ago, lots of smug people told me not to expect pizza in Italy before my first trip there, claiming the dish was an American invention (advice that, obviously, was way off base).
We all think we know Fort Lauderdale, a sunny winter escape as familiar to many of us as the Upper West Side.
Fort Lauderdale is the airport we fly into (Miami is strictly for international travel, and then only reluctantly). It’s the spring break of myth, the destination for Chinese food at Christmas with the grandparents. More recently, halted cranes and foreclosures have added an unsettling note to these palm-lined boulevards.
I have found Jewish outcroppings and history in Shanghai, Mumbai, and Johannesburg. But when I recently headed for South America, speaking on a cruise, I didn’t know what to look for when I got off the ship in Chile.
You see, I’ve got this obsession to find Jewishness in places you really don’t expect. What I didn’t anticipate was, in a country with only 20,000 Jews, I’d have some memorable, offbeat Jewish experiences.
