Becoming A Fan

by Dorty Nowak

Hot and frustrated, I stared at the pieces of the supposedly easy-to-assemble electric fan that came with nine parts instead of the required ten. My apartment, like most buildings in Paris, has no air conditioning and, after several days of unremitting heat, I was desperate. I picked up the instruction sheet, ignoring the number for the help center that was probably located in China, and folded it into a fan. My makeshift fan worked surprisingly well, reminding me of a museum that I had been meaning to visit ever since I read several years ago that it might have to close.

Le Musée de l’Éventail, the fan museum, if mentioned at all in guidebooks, usually merits only a brief reference.  All I knew was that it was a museum about the history of fans. Not electric fans but, rather, the hand held kind that was an essential accessory throughout most of human history, including, for me, today.

Conveniently located near the center of Paris, the museum is housed in a typical Parisian building that looks like the others around it except for a large stone bas-relief of a fan on its façade.  Pulling open the heavy wooden door, I knew that this was not a typical museum. Steep steps led to a dimly-lit door beside which a sign announced mysteriously, “Mme. Hoguet.“ Wondering if I was in the wrong place, I rang the doorbell and waited.  After a long pause, an elderly woman opened the door, and I entered another world. 

Fans were mounted on every inch of the walls of a long corridor – ancient fans from Egypt, China, Greece.  I picked up a flyer titled simply “History” and read that fans can be traced to man’s earliest days. Originally the accoutrements of royalty, by the 5^th century B.C. fans had become a widespread fashion accessory. These early fans were rigid but, in the 7^th century A.D., a Japanese artisan created the folding fan after observing the wings of a bat.

Turning a corner, I entered a sunlit boutique where a riot of color greeted me.  Beautiful fans of all sizes and shapes were offered for sale, from very expensive to modest in price.

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The Things You Need And The Thing You Don’t

by Jules Older

I'm a travel writer and videographer. I fly to New Zealand, drive to San Jose, train to Banff, ferry San Francisco Bay. I've come to know what travelers need and what they're better off without.

So here's my list: what to buy and one thing to avoid. Here we go…

Clic reading glasses. They've gone up in price from about $30 to just under $80 (or $24.99 at The Trip Shop), but they're still savers of time and space. One pair of Clics replaces, in my case, a dozen reading glasses, one in every room of the house, one in the car and one in the place I put them where I'd never forget them and then forgot them. Clics, which you can buy online, just hang around your neck waiting to be magnetically clicked into action. I never travel without ‘em. And I no longer use strong language when searching for my accursed glasses. www.clicgoggles.com

 

High Sierra luggage. First rule of suitcase: It’s gotta have sturdy wheels. Second: Must be as light as possible. Third: Has to hold everything you need. If, like me, you're a skier, that means a lot of holding. Between boots, helmet, gloves, parka and ski pants, we don’t travel light.

One bag that meets all these requirements is the High Sierra 32” A.T.GO expandable, wheeled duffel. It’s big enough to hold everything, thus avoiding airline extra-bag charges. It’s light enough to save your back and avoid airline extra-weight charges. Sturdy zipper, strong wheels, good balance. If you pack big, you'll be glad you got it. And though it retails for $340, The Trip Shop (powered by Amazon) has it at $126. www.highsierrasport.com 

Salomon shoes. Start with this: For any footwear — hiking boots, running shoes, ski boots, sandals — fit is 10 times more important than brand. If they don’t fit in the store, when you get to the trail, the track, the mountain or the beach, expect a world of pain.

That said, if they do fit (and they fit me better than any other brand) Salomon athletic shoes are your best bet. That’s because Salomon came up with QUICKLACE — where one pull replaces tying and retying laces. It’s Lacing for the Lazy. Like me.

Ah, but which model: the XA Comp 3 or Wings? The XA Comp 3 is a bit lighter, 350 grams, and somewhat cheaper, about $100. Wings has more padding, which means more protection from pavement. It also means more weight, 390 grams, and more moolah, $130-160. www.salomon.com/us 

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A Backup Plan: Don’t Leave Home Without One

words + photos by Elyn Aviva

At last the long-awaited day arrived. Our kids (Jesse and Yui) and Sophie, our adorable granddaughter (two years and eight months old), were flying from California to visit us in Spain. My husband, Gary, and I took the train to Madrid on Wednesday, the day before they were supposed to arrive, and spent the day exploring museums and sipping espresso at outdoor cafés. It was a lull in the middle of Holy Week, which runs from Palm Sunday through Easter.

That night, just before we went to bed, the cell phone rang. It was Jesse, my son, calling to say their flight had been cancelled and they would update us when they knew more. Two hours later, another call. Jesse again. They’d managed to be rebooked, but instead of arriving at Barajas Airport at 11 a.m. on Thursday, they would be arriving at 7 p.m. No problem, we assured them. We were relieved they were still arriving the same day.

The initial plan had been to drive north on Thursday to Sahagún de Campos, the small town where Jesse and I had lived for a year in 1982. Jesse was hoping to reunite with schoolmates he hadn’t seen in 28 years. These friends were returning to their pueblo, Sahagún, to celebrate Holy Week. We realized that if the kids arrived at 7 p.m., by the time they got their luggage and we picked up the rental car, it would be too late to drive all the way to Sahagún. So Gary went online (we had free wifi at our hotel) and booked two rooms in a hotel in Segovia, en route to Sahagún. We knew that Jesse and Yui wanted to see Segovia, so we figured that would make the best of the situation.

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Airing Dirty Laundry on the Road

by Laurie Gilberg Vander Velde

Why is it that the image of colorful clothes hanging on a line and fluttering in the breeze in a foreign country is so appealing and picturesque?  I often grab my camera to snap a photo when I see it, but, somehow, when I have to do my own laundry in the same country, I consider it a chore.  Dirty laundry. They say you shouldn’t air your dirty laundry, but when you’re traveling for more than a week or so, you have to get it clean somehow.

Maybe the ideal trip is 7-10 days.  It’s possible to bring enough clothes for that amount of time.  You come back with a suitcase full of dirty laundry and toss it in the washing machine.  That’s the ideal trip length for some folks, perhaps, but it’s way too short for me!  I prefer packing enough clothes for a few days in a small suitcase and taking my chances about getting them clean while on the road.

I’m always willing to have someone else do my laundry if the price is right.  Laundry by the kilo at a lavanderia in the Galapagos was so easy!  Drop off in the morning; pick up the same night.  It comes back all neatly folded and wrinkle-free.  It worked in the rest of Ecuador too.  When we stayed in a place for a couple of days, we managed to find a lavanderia in the neighborhood.  It was always much cheaper to schlep our clothes to the lavanderia instead of handing them over to the hotel desk.  So, for about $10 or $12, we had clean clothes for our travels.

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Newfoundland: Three Lifetimes in Three Days

by Jules Older

I'm a travel writer, which means I'm a hit-and-run artist — New Zealand’s North Island today, the southern Sierra tomorrow. I'm the man who rarely returns.

Except to Newfoundland. I've been five times to Canada's easternmost, poorest and most interesting province. That chunk of rock in the North Atlantic, closer to Ireland than to Vancouver, 1,600 miles east of New York, captured my heart an hour into my first visit.

On the latest visit, I experienced three lifetime thrills in three consecutive days. Where else on earth can you do that?

THRILL ONE: ICEBERGS

It began in the tiny town of Springdale, where we hooked up with ace pilot Rick Adams, owner-operator of Springdale Aviation Ltd.

I flew over and around massive icebergs making their way south from Greenland. Never before had I seen a berg, and now they were scant yards below the Cessna 185's wing.

But if iceberging from a low-flying plane is a thrill, berging from a sea kayak is a life event. Because sea kayaking has a very steep learning curve -- you can be moderately proficient in an hour or so -- and because icebergs have a tendency to get stuck just offshore in the province's protected harbors, the experience is open to the many rather than the fit few.

It's a stunning experience. I drove over a hill and down into an outport, Newfoundland for coastal village. My heart thumped a little louder as I spotted the gleaming white of half a dozen icebergs towering above the dark water like dollops of cream on a chocolate cake. I couldn't wait to haul the kayak off the roof of the van.

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Hidden Venice Beach: A Walking Tour

words + photos by Don Mankin

Someone once wrote that if you tip the United States on edge, everything that’s loose will slide down to Los Angeles. I would add, if you tipped Los Angeles on edge, it will all slide down to Venice Beach.

The best place to see all those loose odds and ends is the “boardwalk,” which has no boards but lots of asphalt. That is the Venice Beach known far and wide – the low rise mix of vintage buildings and radical modern architecture lining one side of the boardwalk and the vendors, entertainers, and champions of obscure causes with provocative signs -- “meat is murder” and “circumcision is worse” -- lining the other. And then there are the people walking along the boardwalk in outfits they would never wear at home.

Few visitors stray far from the boardwalk. Those who don’t miss the best show of all -- the other attractions that make Venice Beach the largest spontaneous outdoor theme park/playground and one of the most interesting communities in the world. To discover the hidden highlights of Venice Beach, just follow this easy, leisurely walking tour. It should take about three hours or more if you want to shop, linger, and eat, or less than three if you are in a hurry.

THE BEACH

The first stop is the beach, which begins just a few yards west of the boardwalk and extends for over 100 yards to the water’s edge. On the way to the beach, stop and check out the new skateboard park at the foot of Market Street and watch the boarders sail into the air, frozen in mid flight against a dramatic background of broad sandy beach, crashing waves, coastal mountains and big sky.

From here, you can take off your shoes and shuffle on the sand to the water. Most days the beach is almost empty except for a few sunbathers, surfers, or meditators gazing at the sailboats gliding off shore or, at the right time of year, dolphins playing in the breaking waves. Look south and you can usually see the outline of Santa Catalina Island in the distance; look north and you can get a better look at the background that framed the soaring skateboarders -- a beach curving around a vast bay all of the way to Malibu and beyond. Behind that, the Santa Monica Mountains taper down to the ocean. When visitors tell me that they think that Los Angeles is ugly, this is where I bring them to change their mind. I have never failed to do so.

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