This T-Boy writers’ poll is devoted to THE LAST PLACE in the world where you would NEVER want to visit, or revisit. The instructions were simple: it could be a nation, state, region or province, a city or town, or a place; like that fisherman’s bar in Valparaiso, where I was once thrown out of for singing the Sex Pistols’ rendition of God Save the Queen a tad too loud.

By Susan Breslow, T-Boy Writer – The Garden of Earthly Delights? Hell, no!

A travel guide to Myrtle Beach could save on photography costs by simply featuring the hellscape from the Garden of Earthly Delights on its cover to represent the destination. Hieronymous Bosch’s sixteenth-century vision of Hades is a portrait of chaos, gluttony, porcine characters, hideous body modifications, and antagonistic flags. Myrtle Beach features all of these… plus miniature golf and a beach whose water turns polluted brown after storms.

We drove into this redneck Riviera hotspot from the south, coming up from sedate Charleston. We had no way of knowing that it was Bike Week (held every May, it turns out). Harley-Davidson owners decked out in black leather with silver studs and their similarly appointed, slutty-looking molls (even those old enough to know better) preened along the main drag beside thousands upon thousands of shiny parked hogs.

Behind them, a maelstrom of marquees for bars and fast-food joints where “fried” is the daily plat du jour. These troughs stand alongside souvenir shops where skeevy-looking, gray-bearded riders of both sexes have no problem buying and wearing black T-shirts that boast, “Born to be Wild.”

Had enough of this American Grotesquerie? Myrtle Beach: For a good time, drive on by.

By Richard Carroll, T-Boy Writer – The MV Sundancer, on Alaska’s Inside Passage

I was on a cruise with my mom and I booked the MV Sundancer to Alaska’s inside passage and upon reaching the Seymour Narrows, it sank. This specific cruise is the last place I would want to return too. It was June 29, 1984, and at 8:30 p.m. I was in the main lounge interviewing a crew member while a small band was performing show songs to a few of the 787 passengers sitting about enjoying the moment, when suddenly there was a heavy jolting thug that vibrated the ship. The band instantly stopped playing, and the ship seemed to be quietly floating dead in the water, then another whack and the lights went out, fluttering dimly and the smell of oil permeating the air. The Canadian Pilot had miscalculated our position and the Sundancer had slammed twice into Maud Island near Campbell River, an attractive town with wonderful residents.

The ship was quickly taking on water from a 32-foot gash on the starboard side. I rushed to my cabin where my mother was getting ready to retire. I said, “Mom, we have a problem, and you need to get dressed and put on a life jacket.” Water was seeping into our cabin, and it seemed like it took mom forever to get dressed, I could hear people running in the corridor and shouting. I said, “Forget the panty hose,” which was a tremendously slow process with only one foot in place, “Just slip on a dress, we have to get up to the top deck ASAP.” Finally, we departed the cabin and made our way up the dark stairway, sloshing through sea water, past panicked passengers, some who were frantically crying, to the top deck that was tilted to a sharp downward slant.

Garbled messages from the captain were useless as were the lifeboats that were banging against the side of the ship. The Sundancer made it to the Elk Falls Mill pier at Campbell River with almost complete chaos on the ship. It seemed, and not a generalization, that most of the young passengers panicked, while the older ones were calm and quietly standing on deck with their life jackets. A young couple on their honeymoon were hovering near the railing, when the husband hopped atop the rail facing the water yelling “I’m not going down with the ship!” My mom grabbed his shirt shouting, “Get down from there young man!” His wife was aghast. She was looking at him in disbelief and must have been thinking, “Is this what I just married?”

Campbell River, noted as “The Salmon Capital of the World,” was incredible in organizing a Cherry Picker to host off the elderly passengers like my mom, and were a great help overall. The ship had destroyed most of the pier, and, not by choice, I was the last passenger off the ship climbing down a rope ladder into a tug boat with a young boy from Puerto Rico who had become separated from his parents. As he clutched my arm, he told me he didn’t know how to swim. On land at the Red Cross Help Center, the Campbell River people gave the passengers clothes, blankets, hot drinks, good thoughts, and thankful that no one on the cruise died. The young man who wanted to jump ship and leave his new wife behind was strolling around shirtless sipping a cup of coffee, his distressed wife staring at him with sad eyes. Mom came up to her and with a big hug said, “Honey, give him a chance, maybe he’ll be okay.” We flew back to Southern California with no luggage. Years later I discovered my late mother’s collection of matchbooks and spotted the Sundancer souvenir from her first and only cruise, a memento I keep on my desk to this day. Inside she had inscribed, “Went on cruise with Richard. Ship sunk.”

By Peggy Polinsky, T-Boy Writer – Chaos at Versailles

Yes, chaos at Versailles, in this day and age. Unfortunately. So sad. When I first visited Versailles in 1965 with two friends (we had just graduated from college), there was an orderly line to enter the castle. Then we just walked around and saw everything under the guidance of our friend who became a successful travel agent. It was a beautiful, memorable experience. And then we visited the gardens as well – just strolling through.

The next time I went was in 2019 with my husband. We signed up for a tour. Connecting to the tour was frantic. Upon entering the palace, we discovered that there were hundreds of tours with thousands of tourists. There were so many people that the only time you could really see anything was if you looked up. But, although beautiful, not everything is on the ceiling.

And it was so loud. So, we made it through and got outside where we could see the outstanding gardens at a distance. We knew we couldn’t walk that far. No one had told us about the trams that will take you through the gardens. By then it was too late in the day. So, we made it back to the train and then the bus that took us back to our hotel. Determined not to ever do that again.

By Raoul Pascual, T-Boy Webmaster – The Horror Stories of Iran

I would never ever want to visit Iran. Because of the horror stories of head chopping and degradation of women and infidels, this is the country I would avoid at all cost (unless I want to leave this earth prematurely). It’s a Hotel California trap – you may enter any time you want but you will never leave… at least with your organs in one piece.

The Ayatollah Khomeini

“Ayatollah Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini, (May 1900 or September 1902 -June 1989) was an Iranian Islamic revolutionary, politician, and religious leader who served as the first supreme leader of Iran from 1979 until his death in 1989. He was the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the leader of the Iranian Revolution, which overthrew Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and ended the Iranian monarchy.

Khomeini was Time magazine’s Man of the Year in 1979, and has been described as the “virtual face of Shia Islam in Western popular culture,” where he was known for his support of the hostage takers during the Iran hostage crisis, his fatwa calling for the murder of British Indian novelist Salman Rushdie, and for referring to the United States as the “Great Satan” and the Soviet Union as the “Lesser Satan.” Following the Islamic revolution, Khomeini became the country’s first supreme leader, a position created in the constitution of the Islamic Republic as the highest-ranking political and religious authority of the nation, which he held until his death. Most of his period in power was taken up by the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988. He was succeeded by Ali Khamenei on 4 June 1989.” – From Wikipedia.

Muslin Woman in the U.S. Today

Comment by Ed Boitano: Recently I met with a Muslim woman from Tehran, who spoke of her dislike of American liberals. I began to understand that her disdain stemmed from American liberals’ support of Iran’s Holy Muslim Quran, and that it was none of our business what goes inside of their country.

As the Muslim woman from Tehran continued with her tirade, she wished that U.S. liberals and conservatives alike would bond together and try to abolish many of the words in the Iranian Constitution, whose language, based on the Quran, spoke of misogyny, inequality and abuse of human rights. And whose words led to a state sponsored theocracy, the exacty opposite of what many of us in the U.S. pretend not to believe today.

By Ringo Boitano, T-Boy Writer – Hoodwinked in Daufuskie

As our little ferry boat graced the salt marshes of Hilton Head Island, surrounded by a world of sea grass in South Carolina’s Low Country, we were on our way to the island of Daufuskie Island in search of Gullah history. The ferry ride served as our introduction to our tour vendor, Tour Daufuskie. Little did we know that this very ferry ride would be the high point of our tour.

I recall the words on Tour Daufuskie’s welcoming sign, but noticed another on the ferry dock landing, which said, “No food Allowed.” But, before I booked my tour with Tour Daufuskie, I should have remembered the sacred verbal sign, which is known to all travelers as they journey throughout the world’s land: “Investigate Tour Operator Before Booking.”

My photographer and I were escorted by a Tour Daufuskie employee to a row of golf carts by a general store. His scripted remarks included “If you want any food you better get it here, ’cause this store is the only place on the island you can get it” (later we found an independent grocery in the island’s center), and “this is our BEST golf cart on the island… I know ’cause I just rode it!”

As we rode the BEST golf cart on the island, we were more than happy to leave the Tour Daufuskie man; and, with map in-hand of historic Gullah sites, we excitedly navigated our golf cart down the dusty dirt road in search of the past culture of these remarkable people who had once called Daufuskie their home. But our excitement was tempered, due to our golf cart, lumbering along at half speed. We returned it to the less-than-embarrassed Tour Daufuskie slicker, who offered no explanation, and were given another, which broke down ten minutes later. This time, a more qualified man arrived at the spot of our breakdown, and said we should have never have been assigned the first two carts and gave us another that actually worked.

But, first, a little about the Gullah; after all, that was why we were there. Research told me that slave traders brought Africans from Sierra Leone to the chain of Sea Islands for their expertise in planting, harvesting and processing rice. During the 1700s, American colonists in the Southeastern U.S. realized that rice would grow well in the moist, semitropical country bordering their coastline. But the American white plantation slave owners had no experience in the cultivation of rice, so they purchased slaves with a preference for Africans from the “Rice Coast” or “Windward Coast,” the traditional rice-growing region of West Africa. The enslaved people became known as the Gullah (Gul-luh), perhaps derived from Gola, a tribe found near the border of Liberia and Sierra Leone. Daufuskie itself: translated to “pointed feather,” a name attributed to island’s earliest inhabitants, the tribes of Muskogean stock.

I read that when the U.S. Civil War commenced, white slave owners hurriedly abandoned their plantations and slaves, and fled to the mainland, while some Gullah were actually unaware of the war and their eventual freedom from slavery had finally ended. Due to this isolation, the Gullah were able to preserve more of their African cultural heritage than any other group of African-Americans. They spoke a unique Creole language and maintained a life similar to that of Sierra Leone. I was anxious to meet a Gullah person and hear their unique language in conversation, and, who knows, maybe even a bit of folklore.

So, we were now officially off on our expedition in search of the Gullah, though it did take awhile. The map turned out to be fairly accurate leading us to the First Union African Baptist Church, listed as a historical landmark, followed by Maryfield School (circa 1930), the primary school for the Gullah children. This is the school where author Pat Conroy taught in the late 1960s, later documenting his experience in the novel, “The Water is Wide.” Transportation only began in 1950, so the children must have had a long walk in the woods, in particular with long walks without shoes. The small Billie Burn Historical Museum was next on our agenda, with Ms. Burn considered the first true Daufuskie historian, having documented life on the island’s past in her book, An Island Named Daufuskie.

The afternoon closed, after quick looks at the Maryfield Cemetery, the largest Gullah cemetery on the island. As we returned to the petite ferry, it was obvious that we had been misled and even lied to by Tour Daufuskie employees. Nevertheless, we were happy to see and learn all we did. But, were still annoyed that we had been taken advantage of, and wondered why such a company like Tour Daufuskie could even exist. It occurred to me that South Carolina is one of the least regulated states in the U.S., a state where the establishment of forming workers’ unions was once illegal. Curiously, the Sea Islands were the first place in the South where slaves were freed. And it made no sense to my Yankee mindset, for at the beginning of the U.S. Civil War, 96% of the population of South Carolina were African-Americans who wore the chains of slavery.

But the experience did serve as a life lesson, a lesson I had ignored; never book a tour with a vendor until you’ve thoroughly, independently, researched them and the specific tour. If not, there is a chance you might be disappointed. In conversation with others on the ferry ride back, it became clear not one of them had even a hint about the culture, let alone the existence of these proud and historic people, the proud and historic people simply known as the Gullah of Daufuskie Island.

By Fyllis Hockman, T-Boy Writer – The Most Difficult Trek We Had Ever Experienced

The eight of us huddled together, warned repeatedly to stay close and keep quiet. A soft cough escaped from one of our group, and the guide looked immediately askance. Coughing and sneezing were very much frowned upon. If you’re scraped by a stinging nettle, don’t even think about screaming – a usually fitting response. Sharing 98.4 percent of our DNA, the elusive mountain gorillas – whom we were seeking at the time – are very susceptible to human-borne illnesses and more gorillas die from such infectious diseases than from any other cause. We were carriers and they had to be protected from us. And this was before the pandemic!

Still, eight humans a day are allowed to visit these gentle giants, as they are known, for no longer than an hour, as we did during a recent visit to Uganda as part of an ElderTreks tour.

This is not exactly a drive-by photo op. With a vigorous (to say the least) trek of 1-7 hours, depending upon where the gorillas are that day, you have to REALLY want to see them. But even with visitation restricted to an hour, it is usually well worth the effort. But more on that later.

There are about 880 mountain gorillas in the world with almost half located in Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, a World Heritage Site clearly worthy of its name, in southwestern Uganda, an 18% increase over the last census due to increased conservation efforts, education and veterinary care. This is very good news.

The prelude to the hike is itself intimidating. Treks range from 1-7 hours according to the promotional material, with a maximum increase in elevation of 500 meters. Wear good hiking boots, don gloves for the nettles, a walking stick is mandatory, bring lots of water, don’t get closer than 25 feet – and remember these are wild animals.

Anticipation mixed closely with apprehension as every person on our tour, whether expressed aloud or not, felt “I hope I can make.” The tale I’m about to tell about my travel-writing husband Vic and myself is not the norm. The tale for the other eight members of our Elder Treks tour, from whom we were separated because of the limit of eight people to a gorilla trekking group, is the opposite extreme – also not the norm.

Boy, were we ever wrong. The trek was somewhat strenuous from the beginning, with steep climbs and slippery descents, traversing narrow ravines, but we were holding our own, feeling pretty good about ourselves. Until we entered the forest. And there was no semblance of a trail at all. The guides were trail-blazing with the help of machetes deep into the clearly “impenetrable” woods, the rocks, roots and brambles beneath our feet not even visible because of the thick underbrush. With walking stick in one hand and the porter’s hand in the other, I tried valiantly to move forward though at times the porter was literally dragging me up the precipitous slopes or keeping me from sliding down sheer declines, twigs and vines attacking from both sides of the non-trail, entangling my feet and arms to further impede progress in either direction. At times, I thought either my arm would be pulled off by the porter or my legs by the vines.

All the while, I couldn’t help but feel guilty for thinking to myself how little at that point I cared about the gorillas and how much I was worried about surviving the grueling trip back. I was seriously considering becoming a modern-day, Dian Fossey and staying with the gorillas, assuming we ever reached them, just to avoid the return trip.

I wish we could say the trip was worth it but by the time we finally dragged ourselves – or more appropriately – were dragged by the porters to the designated area where the gorillas had been, they had left. This is just not what you want to hear after what most of us on the trek agreed was the most difficult thing we had ever experienced.

By James Boitano, T-Boy Writer – Athens’ “Ammonia Square”

Athens, It’s not a terrible place: it’s just not at all that remarkable. It’s a big gritty working city that happens to have become the capital of Greece by default in their Ottoman wars of independence. I remember as breathing in all the auto fumes trying to catch a taxi on Omonia Square, we jokingly called it, “Ammonia Square.” Athens is a busy and charmless city which I rate as the most overrated capital city in Europe. There are many more lovely places to visit in Greece. But I will say it its defense: the view of the Acropolis rising above the city is its finest feature. But I never need to go back after seeing it once.

By Ed Boitano, T-Boy Editor – Beneath the Surface of Coeur d’Alene

The French name Coeur d’Alene when translated into English means, “Heart of an Awl.” Once, when I was traversing the pleasant small city streets, I remembered what “Coeur” meant, but had never heard of such a thing as an “Awl” before. Later I learned, it is a thin, tapered metal shaft, coming to a sharp point.

But then yesterday it hit me, and it hit me sharply to my core; when I read that on March 28, 2024, a Utah women’s college basketball team was seen strolling down Coeur d’Alene’s sidewalks from their sponsored NCAA Tournament hotel. They were there for fun, food and relaxation, in preparation for a NCAA Tournament game to be played later in Spokane, WA. A few passing cars packed with locals shouted obscenities at the University of Utah’s Women’s Basketball Team. But it’s not unusual for a city to mock a visiting team, but was there something more below Coeur d’Alene’s emotional surface? And then, local and national news broadcasts said that it was truly something much more.

SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) – “On Thursday, the Utah team and another women’s team staying at the Coeur d’Alene Resort were walking to dinner at a restaurant on Sherman Avenue when the driver of a truck displaying a confederate flag began yelling the N-word and other racial slurs at members of the basketball teams, cheerleaders, the band and others in the traveling party.”

Utah head coach Lynne Roberts said, “Her team experienced a series of hate crimes after arriving at its first NCAA Tournament hotel in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.”

“For our players and staff to not feel safe in an NCAA Tournament environment, it’s messed up,” continued coach Roberts.

“It’s getting to the point where people of color can’t even travel anywhere,” Spokane NAACP President Lisa Gardner said. “This is starting to be reminiscent of the ‘ 60s.”

And it really did become something much more worse than I had thought…

“Officials in Idaho tried to apologize Tuesday for the racism the University of Utah’s women’s basketball team faced in Coeur d’Alene before an NCAA tournament game at Gonzaga.

Yes, but: “Right-wing disruption shuts down Idaho’s apology for racism targeting Utah during NCAA tourney.” – Axios Salt Lake City.

And, the reason: “They abruptly shut down the news conference when a far-right operative began shouting questions at a human rights advocate.”

Why it matters: “Northern Idaho has become a hub for right-wing extremist groups.”

The latest: “Investigators in Coeur d’Alene are working with the FBI to determine which, if any, criminal violations occurred,” Hammond and police chief Lee White said at the Tuesday news conference. Idaho law forbids “malicious harassment.”

The Ridiculous and the Sad

Coeur d’Alene, like Idaho, is renowned for its recreational components where one can hike, bike and even ski right out your door. But it also has a long history of hate groups, white nationalists and exclusiveness, where realtors often market their properties for “likeminded”‘ transplants who can no longer bear to live a life in urban centers, such as San Francisco, Portland and Seattle. And security is essential, particularly in some cities and towns, for many properties are marketed as “bunker homes.” But, what for: THE pending doom of the Apocalypse? OR Muslim terrorists’ attacks? OR Martian invasions? OR you and me who happen to live in an urban centers outside of the state? I’m still not sure why, but did notice on my last trip to Idaho, that locals, often transplants, are fond of echoing Fox News talking points via Trump News Social, such as “Liberal urban elitists.” I was happy, though, that “Cappuccino Liberal” didn’t seem to work out, for it’s still my favorite coffee beverage wherever I’m about.

Will I ever revisit Coeur d’Alene and Idaho again? My reply is, perhaps not.

Sun Valley Resort: America’s First Destination Ski Resort

I should close and say, none of this applies to Sun Valley Resort, located in the adjacent city of Ketchum. The resort is well-known as a tower for tolerance and acceptance, where many of its employees are guest workers from foreign lands, with the intention for all of us to understand the many different cultures in the world in which we live today.

And if the liberal patriot Hemingway chose to live there, how bad could it really be.

The post The Last Place in the World Where I Would EVER Want to Visit or Revisit Again appeared first on Traveling Archive.

With the Ken Burns and Lynn Novick three-part, six-hour documentary film series, devoted to the life of Ernest Hemingway, much excitement has been generated about the legendary writer and his enduring influence on literature and culture.

So, the time is ripe for Three Things About Hemingway, courtesy of T-Boy writer, Richard Carroll.

Mr. Carroll has been involved with Hemingway his entire adult life, and is a member of The Hemingway Society.

Three Things You May Not Know About Hemingway

By Richard Carroll

With hundreds of books and articles covering Hemingway, his life, and international travels, I’m including a few details that Hemingway aficionados might have forgotten or overlooked.

Hemingway lived in Cuba a total of 22 years of his 61 years in a rambling converted farmhouse on a hill overlooking the small town of San Francisco de Paula. The home called Finca Vigia offered distant views of the lights of Havana and was renowned in the world of international letters.

Hemingway was adored by the Cubans and to this day the Havana Hemingway Tour is the most popular. Hemingway once said in a speech who spoke perfect Spanish with an American accent, that he would give the medal from his Nobel Prize for The Old Man and the Sea, to “Nuestro Senora de la Caridad del Cobre,” who is the virgin saint of Cuba. Throughout his years in Cuba Hemingway and his wife Mary briefly met Castro only once at a Hemingway Fishing Tournament, though Castro was an avid Hemingway aficionado.

Hemingway was not close to his mother Grace, was deep into his cups except when on deadline or composing, never smoked though it was the fashion during his day, and had a great ear for crisp dialogue, and believed that the adjective was the enemy of the noun.

Don’t miss Richard Carroll’s A Magical Walk Through Hemingway’s Paris.

The post Three Things About Ernest Hemingway appeared first on Traveling Archive.

Granted, many celebrity hotel rooms and suites have been refurbished with mementos, books, letters, photographs and furnishings once the artist was deemed famous. So, for the first part of the series, we take a look at the images and history of the Hemingway Suite at The Sun Valley Lodge, the John & Yoko Suite at Fairmont Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, and the Oscar Wilde Suite at L’Hotel in Paris, where he spent the last two years of his life.

Ernest Hemingway:
Sun Valley Lodge, Idaho – Suite 206

“Time is the least thing we have of.” – Ernest Hemingway

Hemingway’s study at the Sun Valley Lodge. Photo courtesy of Sun Valley Lodge.

Hemingway had slept above me. That is one floor up from my own room at the Sun Valley Lodge, while I was enjoying a winter’s vacation at the resort. According to Sun Valley Lodge Press Department, it was love at first sight for the widely acclaimed writer and outdoorsmen upon his first arrival in 1939. The Sun Valley Lodge was new at the time, and executives invited a number of Hollywood celebrities such as Gary Cooper, Ingrid Bergman and Clark Gable in an effort to drum up publicity. Hemingway, an avid hunter and fisherman, was overwhelmed by Sun Valley’s vast great outdoors which he found both recreational and inspirational. Despite his famous face known throughout the world, he enjoyed a sense of anonymity, preferring to be in the company of local people as opposed to the Hollywood elite.

The PR department described the Pulitzer and the Nobel Prize recipient as a quiet, reserved man who spent most of his time writing and enjoying Sun Valley’s terrain, where fall was his favorite season. It is in Suite 206 where Hemingway completed his masterpiece, “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” He would wake up in early morning and start writing, oftentimes standing up. He once commented that he never missed a sunrise. Visitors can stay in Suite 206, decorated with photographs of the novelist as well as a bronze statue of the author at his typewriter.

The Hemingway living room at the Sun Valley Lodge. Photo courtesy of Sun Valley Lodge.

Later in my trip, a PR representative escorted me to Hemingway’s final residence, a two-story house on 14 acres in nearby Ketchum, where he had taken his own life at age 61 years old. Hemingway never published any work about Sun Valley, with the exception of a single 1951 hunting article for True: The Man’s Magazine. But, in 2020, educator Phil Huss wrote “Hemingway’s Sun Valley: Local Stories Behind his Code, Characters and Crisis,” which focused on Hemingway’s adventures in Idaho.

Left: Hemingway posing for a dust jacket photo by Lloyd Arnold for the first edition of “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” at the Sun Valley Lodge. Photo courtesy of Sun Valley Lodge.. Right: Hemingway, Bobbi Powell, and Gary Cooper magpie shooting at Silver Creek, Idaho. Photo courtesy of Sun Valley Lodge.

Perhaps Hemingway’s Sun Valley legacy is best represented by the inscription on his memorial sculpture, which he initially penned as an eulogy for a deceased friend who died in a hunting accident. The eulogy was requested by the man’s widow, but many believe it was about Hemingway himself.

“Best of all he loved the fall
The leaves yellow on the cottonwoods
Leaves floating on the trout streams
And above the hills the high blue windless skies
… Now he will be a part of them forever” – Ernest Hemingway.

For more on Hemingway, read Traveling Boy articles:

• Three Things About Ernest Hemingway
• A Magical Walk Through Hemingway’s Paris
• and Hemingway Trivia Game

For information about Sun Valley Lodge, visit www.sunvalley.com

John Lennon and Yoko Ono:
Fairmont Queen Elizabeth Hotel, Montréal, Canada – Suite 1742

“All we are saying is Give Peace a Chance” – John Lennon & Yoko Ono

The John & Yoko Suite today. Photo by Fairmont Queen Elizabeth Hotel.

The song was written and recorded by John & Yoko during their ‘BED-IN’ advertising campaign for Peace, held in Montreal, Canada at the Fairmont Queen Elizabeth Hotel in 1969. Singing along were Tommy Smothers (also on guitar with Lennon), Timothy Leary, Petula Clark, Dick Gregory, Allen Ginsberg and whoever happened to be present. Much of the group would join in by clapping and singing the chorus. The original recording was cleaned up in a studio and augmented with more voices. The hotel staff and guests were less than impressed with their arrival where they were accompanied by a huge entourage of reporters, fans and Hare Krishna. Complaints were also made from the housekeeping team who had to vacuum the corridors three to four times a day as Lennon was prone to scattering flower petals.

The John & Yoko Suite at Fairmont Queen Elizabeth Hotel in 1969. Photo by Fairmont Queen Elizabeth Hotel.

But why a “bed-in” for peace? Well, as the most publicized couple on the planet, they decided they would use that publicity for something that was important to them: Peace. ”We knew whatever we did was going to be in the papers. We decided to utilize the space we would occupy with a commercial for peace, ” Lennon later commented. ”We would sell our product, which we call ‘peace.’ And to sell a product you need a gimmick, and the gimmick we thought was ‘bed,’ because bed was the easiest way of doing it, because we’re lazy.”

The term “bed-in” also played on the ’60’s idea of a sit-in, love-in or a communal consciousness-raising event.

The John & Yoko Suite 1742 today. Photo by Deb Roskamp for Traveling Boy.

The living room and bedroom now feature memorabilia composed of press articles, framed gold records, stickers on the windows, and pictures of the famous couple.

The John & Yoko Suite 1742 can be rented for parties. Sometimes I will only make a pilgrimage to the room’s exterior, just to see the plaque on the door.

For more on the Beatles, read more Traveling Boy articles:
The Magical Mystery Tour: The Beatles Experience, Liverpool

For information about the Fairmont Queen Elizabeth Luxury Hotel.

Oscar Wilde:
L’Hotel, Paris, France – Room No. 16

“I have the simplest taste. I am always satisfied with the best.”– Oscar Wilde

The Oscar Wilde suite is nothing less than a stunning homage to the brilliant writer. Photo by Elliot Wakefield for L’Hotel.

Irish novelist, playwright, poet and lyricist Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wilde took a basement room in Paris at the L’Hotel, previously known as L’Alsace, for the last two years of his life. Wilde first visited Paris in 1867 with his mother at the height of the “Belle Époque,” which made a profound impression on him and his art. Considered one of the greatest writers in the English language, the Dublin born Wilde achieved remarkable fame and fortune in the early 1890s. His work included “The Picture of Dorian Gray” (his only novel), and the plays, “The Importance of Being Earnest” (subtitled, “A Trivial Comedy for Serious People”), “Lady Windermere’s Fan,” “An Ideal Husband” and “A Woman of No Importance.” His talent was only met by his witticisms and flamboyant lifestyle.

In 1897, Wilde sought refuge in Paris after a two-year sentence (between 1895-1897) of hard labor in prison in London for sodomy and gross indecency – ‘crimes’ considered laughable by today’s standard. After leaving prison, Wilde adopted the pseudonym Sebastian Melmoth upon his arrival in Paris; where he was described as sick, poor and reliant on the few friends he had who had not turned their backs on him.

Oscar The Oscar Wilde bedroom at L’Hotel. Photo by Amy Murrel for L’Hotel.

Wilde died in atrocious conditions… It is something we accept and make sure does not get forgotten, explained L’Hotel’s general manager, Julien Révah. He lived an austere existence, spending his days mainly eating soup and drinking plenty of wine, but not a good quality wine.

The hotel refurbished room number 16 on the first floor in his honor, where designer Jacques Garcia recreated what Wilde’s living room in London might have looked like. The room is decorated with personal details like photos of the author, caricatures, prints of newspaper articles and the last hotel bill which he was unable to pay all on display. The hotel has even kept the original headboard Wilde used during his stay.

L’Hotel is a boutique hotel, the smallest five-star hotel in Paris, and boasts a broad celebrity guest-list which included Salvador Dalí, Luis Borges, and Jim Morrison.

For further information about L’Hotel, or email

st**@l-*****.com











.

The post Celebrity Hotel Rooms & Suites: Part I appeared first on Traveling Archive.

But even recognizing all this, I didn’t fully have a grasp on the essence of the town until I spotted several elderly old men playing Bocce ball. I asked another observer if lawn bowling is popular because many people of Italian descent live in Key West. “Oh no,” she chuckled. “It’s popular because you can play Bocce with one hand and hold a drink in the other.” Welcome to Key West!

Turn a corner on a non-descript street or pass a random restaurant, and strands of guitar riffs assault your receptive ear drums. Either that – or it’s a rooster crowing. Actually a lot of roosters – they’re everywhere.

Many a house bears a plaque dating to the 1800’s – and a number of other historical markers a century earlier. Old Town, the largest predominantly wooden-housed historic district in the country – featuring almost 3000 structures – is deserving of a truth-in-advertising award. There’s a sign near Duval Street, the town’s epi-center, that reads: “On this site in 1897, nothing happened.” That’s probably one of the only spots in Key West where that’s true.

Renovated cigar factories share space with Victorian mansions laced with gingerbread trimming; upscale art galleries reside next to tacky t-shirt shops. Fashion, funk and frivolity define the town; art and shlock and whimsy co-exist on the same bar stool. And yes, those stools are there in abundance – 117 bars on Duval alone, pre-pandemic – many of which claim that Ernest Hemingway, the most famous Key West resident, occupied that seat as well.

And surely, his home is one of the most visited sites in the city. The tiny second-story studio in which he wrote his prestigious novels remains exactly as he left it; photos, books and furnishings recall his life there of more than a decade in the 1930’s. Stuffed heads of animals he shot on safari adorn the walls. You can almost feel the presence of the quirky and fairly disturbed author everywhere. Almost as famous as Hemingway himself was his beloved six-toed cat, Snowball, dozens of descendants of whom still reside there.

An equally notable but very different personality also resided in Key West, but only in the winter. Harry S Truman’s (yes, S without a period is his middle name) Little White House has its own colorful history, with tales of lively poker games and “loud Hawaiian shirt” contests our 33^rd president enjoyed with staff and guests – also chief justices and locals. And oh yes, four other presidents visited there as well.

It’s also rumored that Truman insisted on downing an early morning “shot of bourbon followed by a large glass of fresh-squeezed Florida orange juice,” allegedly on the advice of his doctor. Hemingway, an ardent imbiber himself, would most certainly have approved of his neighbor’s breakfast ritual, which might have made both welcome visitors at Schooner Wharf which boasts the earliest Happy Hour in town, beginning at 7:30 a.m. The theory being that you can’t actually drink all day if you don’t start early.

Hemingway, a hunter of game; Truman, a hunter of humor; Mel Fisher, a hunter of treasure. And his own museum contains treasures – both literal and figurative – for the visiting public. The intrepid fortune hunter spent 16 years seeking the wrecks of Spanish galleons that sank in 1622 off the coast of Key West. The $450 million treasure included more than 40 tons of gold and silver as well as emeralds, Chinese porcelain and other precious artifacts. But even more fascinating than the exhibits themselves is the story of his search for the valuable cache.

So yes, these are the three attractions for which Key West is most famous, but peeling back the proverbial onion proffers many more enticing sites: the always enchanting Botanical Gardens; the Oldest Wooden House with its original furnishings, artifacts and island history dating back to 1829; Tennessee Williams’ small cottage lending insight into another literary giant, and my favorite, the Shipwreck Treasure Museum.

There you get to relive the lives of wreckers – either those brave souls who saved people and ships careening off the dangerous reefs surrounding the island or greedy pirates who pillaged the lost treasures, depending upon your perspective – who played an important part of Key West’s vibrant history. The resulting salvage industry is what Key West is built on.  For a time, that enterprise made the tiny island the richest city per capita in the United States.

But for me, the best way to experience the inimitably funky charm of the town is to just wander the streets, laughing your way from one t-shirt slogan to another, most of which can’t be repeated in a family newspaper. But a few can: “A good lawyer knows the law; a great lawyer knows the judge”; “4 out of 3 people struggle with math”; and “Mermaids smoke sea weed.” Bada boom.

And should you get hungry, be sure to stop at Blue Heaven where, in the 1930’s, Hemingway, an amateur boxing aficionado, refereed matches – yes, he certainly did get around. And even more notable, depending upon your point of view, is that a dance hall and bordello also occupied the same property. But you’d expect nothing less of Key West.

For more information, please visit Florida Keys

The post Key West – Fanciful Funk and Frivolity Wrapped Up in Floridian History appeared first on Traveling Archive.

Curated by Ed Boitano

On the morning of April 22, 2020, the T-Boy Society of Film & Music met via Zoom for the final vote in the Top Five North-American-English language novels where there is a focus or side focus on travel. Could we have been more specific? Well, we did try. Never-the-less, our rather wide-open theme were both eclectic and deeply personal, giving T-Boy readers a chance to see another side of our writers. As can be expected the presence of Ernest Hemingway and Jack Kerouac dominated the lists. Regarded by many as the greatest and most influential writer in the 20^th century, Hemingway’s writing  style is minimalistic, direct, and unadorned, a result of his early newspaper training. While Kerouac termed his style of writing, “spontaneous prose,” which gushed with unedited prose that captured the truth of the moment. Both writers’ work are based on personal experience. John Dos Passos, a Hemingway contemporary, and Mark Twain, whose novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, is considered by many as the Great American novel, are also well represented. Selections ranged from Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, a bleak 2006 post-apocalyptic novel, and Hunter. S. Thompson’s gonzo journalism to Anne Tyler’s The Accidental Tourist, about a travel writer who detests travel.

The members huddled around their laptops in the 11 rounds of voting. Points were given to novels on a sliding scale of five, with extra points for books appearing on multiple lists. Was it scientific? Don’t even ask. –  T-Boy Society of Film & Music

List

1. A Moveable Feast  by Ernest Hemingway

A Moveable Feast is a memoir by author Ernest Hemingway about his years as a struggling young journalist and writer in Paris in the 1920s. First published posthumously in 1964 – three-years after his death – it was edited by Mary Hemingway, his fourth and final wife, from an unfinished manuscript. Paris is the main character in the book, where the city is described in great detail: its districts, trains, streets, hotels, apartments, and cafes; many of which can still be found today, along with specific addresses. Collectively known as The Lost Generation, post-WWI artists congregated at bohemian cafes,  Gertrude Stein’s apartment (serving as a salon), and Sylvia Beach’s bookstore, Shakespeare and Company. Hemingway made new friends and renewed old ones with the likes of Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Max Eastman, Zelda  and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Cole Porter and the young painter, Pablo Picasso. These friendships would be instrumental in Hemingway’s development as an artist. He was married to his first wife, Hadley Richardson (eight years his senior), with whom they lived together for five years, generally in poverty. Hemingway provides a moving description of Hadley and their relationship. She was the love of his life, the mother of his first child, his muse and his hero, who helped him find his writer’s voice. A Moveable Feast is considered Hemingway’s tribute to Hadley. His 1926 novel, The Sun Also Rises, is dedicated to her.

In 2009 a new edition, titled the Restored Edition, was published by Seán Hemingway, grandson of Hemingway and Pauline Pfeiffer. He made numerous changes, but mainly to remove disparaging comments about Pfeiffer.

The title of the book stems from a letter Ernest Hemingway wrote to a friend in 1950: If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.

Read Richard Carroll’s A Magical Walk Through Hemingway’s Paris

2. On the Road  by Jack Kerouac

Jack Kerouac  (Jean-Louis Kerouac) was an American novelist and poet of French-Canadian ancestry. Considered a literary iconoclast, he stood alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, as a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Recognized for his method of spontaneous prose, his writings were highly influenced by the work of his literary idol, Thomas Wolfe. His second novel, 1957’s On the Road, is regarded as the defining work of the postwar Beat and Counterculture generations, with its protagonists living life against a backdrop of jazz, poetry, and drug use. The book describes Kerouac’s road-trip adventures across the United States and Mexico with Neal Cassidy – a charismatic man of unbridled passion – whom Kerouac describes as having lived a third of his life in reformatories, a third in pool halls and the final third at the library. Kerouac wrote the final draft in 20 days, with his wife supplying him with Benzedrine, cigarettes, bowls of pea soup and mugs of coffee.  Before writing, Kerouac cut sheets of tracing paper into long strips, wide enough for a typewriter, and taped them together into a 120-foot (37 m) long roll which he then fed into the machine. This allowed him to type continuously without the interruption of reloading pages. The resulting manuscript contained no chapters or paragraph breaks. Publishers initially rejected On the Road because of its experimental writing style and sexual content that could result in obscenity charges, a fate that later befell Burroughs’ Naked Lunch and Ginsberg’s Howl. When On the Road first appeared in 1957, readers felt the beat of a new literary rhythm; an odyssey that captured the soul and changed the landscape of American fiction forever. It still feels that way for the readers of today.

Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road. – Jack  Kerouac

3. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn  by Mark Twain

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (later Mark Twain) was raised in Hannibal, Missouri on the Mississippi River. It is a river that would help define him.  As a child he would watch passing river boats and dreamt of his own adventures. At the age of 21, Clemens fulfilled his dream to become a steamboat pilot, and then eventually moved out west, earning a living writing for newspapers, and taking  the pseudonym of Mark Twain, a term used on steamboats to signal that the water was 12 feet deep. His most famous books are the two river novels about the adventures of young boys on the Mississippi River. The first was The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and was followed by its sequel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), commonly named one of the Greatest American Novels. Set in a Southern antebellum society, Huck runs away with Jim, an escaped slave, with the plan to raft to the free states of the North, where slavery is prohibited The book is noted for its colorful description of people and places along the Mississippi River and a scathing satire on entrenched attitudes, particularly racism. Huck is in moral conflict with the values of society, while unable to consciously refute them. He makes a moral choice based on his own valuation of Jim’s friendship and human worth, a decision in direct opposition to the things he has been taught. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was widely criticized upon release due to its  use of ‘coarse’ language; a bold stroke made by Twain when he completely moved from pure literary writing to dialect writing, which he called Southern humor.

Twain describe the novel as …a book of mine where a sound heart and a deformed conscience come into collision and conscience suffers defeat.

4. USA Trilogy  by John Dos Passos

John Roderigo Dos Passos was an American novelist, most famous for his U.S.A. trilogy, which consists of the novels, The 42nd Parallel (1930), 1919 (1932), and The Big Money (1936). Dos Passos used experimental techniques in these novels, incorporating newspaper clippings, autobiography,  biography, and fictional realism to paint a vast landscape of American culture during the first decades of the 20th century. Though each novel stands on its own, the trilogy is designed to be read as a whole. Dos Passos’ political and social reflections in the novel are deeply pessimistic about the political and economic direction of the United States, and few of the characters manage to hold onto their ideals through the First World War. The novel reflects the author’s sympathy, at the time of writing, for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and his outrage at its suppression, for which the book expresses a deep grudge for President Woodrow Wilson. Like Hemingway, he was part of The Lost Generation, and, like his fellow writer, a volunteer ambulance driver during WWI. His experiences during the Spanish Civil War disillusioned him with left-wing politics and also ended his relationship with Hemingway. By the 1950s, his political views had changed dramatically, and he had become more conservative. In the 1960s, he campaigned for presidential candidates Barry Goldwater and Richard M. Nixon.

America our nation has been beaten by strangers who have bought the laws and fenced off the meadows and cut down the woods for pulp and turned our pleasant cities into slums and sweated the wealth out of our people and when they want to they hire the executioner to throw the switch. – John Roderigo Dos Passos

5. The Road  by Cormac McCarthy

The Road  is a 2006 post-apocalyptic novel by American writer, Cormac McCarthy. The book focuses on  a father and his young son as they traverse across an America, where the landscape is covered with ash, virtually devoid of any form life due to an unspecified cataclysm. Close to starving, the man realizes they cannot survive the winter, and takes the boy south along empty roads towards the sea, carrying their few possessions in knapsacks and a supermarket cart. It is the only world the son has ever known, and the man patiently explains to him that they are “good guys” who are “carrying the fire.”  The man is suffering from a serious cough and knows he is dying. The pair have a revolver, but only two rounds. The father has taught the boy to use the gun on himself if necessary, to avoid falling into the hands of renegade marauders and cannibals. McCarthy is not interested in the past, but only in the moment. All that matters is their journey and relationship with one another. Like the films of French director, Robert Bresson, who would iron out his images so that not one would have a greater significance than the other,  McCarthy’s prose is  pure and precise, with very little punctuation. His stylistic convictions are one of simplicity, where his minimalist approach works in the interest of maximum clarity.

The things I believed in dont (sic) exist any more. It’s foolish to pretend that they do. Western Civilization finally went up in smoke in the chimneys at Dachau but I was too infatuated to see it. I see it now. – Cormac McCarthy

Members’ Selections

Ed Boitano – T-Boy editor:

Look Homeward, Angel – Thomas Wolfe
A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway
A Moveable Feast – Ernest Hemingway
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
The Call of the Wild – Jack London

Stephen Brewer – T-Boy writer:

Death Comes for the Archbishop – Willa Cather
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
The Goldfinch – Donna Tartt
USA Trilogy – John Dos Passos

T.E. Mattox – T-Boy music critic:

On the Road – Jack Kerouac
Shogun – James Clavell
The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test – Tom Wolfe
The Road – Cormac McCarthy
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S. Thompson

Ringo Boitano – T-Boy Writer:

A Moveable Feast – Ernest Hemingway
On the Road – Jack Kerouac
For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
The Call of the Wild – Jack London

Brent Campbell – Musician & Composer:

News of the World – Paulette Jiles
Fay – Larry Brown
The Stand – Stephen King
Donny-Brook – Frank Bill
Thunder Struck – Erik Larson

Dan King – Film producer & writer:

The Dharma Bums – Jack Kerouac
The Death Ship – B. Traven
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S. Thompson
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre – B. Traven

Richard Carroll – T-Boy writer:

A Moveable Feast – Ernest Hemingway
For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway
USA Trilogy – John Dos Passos
Close Range, Wyoming Stories – Annie Proulx
Hemingway’s Havana – Robert Wheeler

Allan Smith – Artist & T-Boy writer:

Travels with Charley – John Steinbeck
Another Roadside Attraction – Tom Robbins
The Dharma Bums – Jack Kerouac
The Call of the Wild – Jack London
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S. Thompson

Susan Breslow – T-Boy writer:

Wild – Cheryl Strayed
What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding – Kristin Newman
The Falls – Joyce Carol Oates
A Field Guide to Getting Lost – Rebecca Solnit
Eat Pray Love – Elizabeth Gilbert

Alex Brouwer – T-Boy writer:

The Road – Cormac McCarthy
Exit West – Mohsin Hamed

Jim Gordon – Co-host & co-producer Travel Guys TV:

The Weather in Berlin – Ward Just (2002)
That Summer in Paris – Morley Callaghan (1963)
Men with Women – Richard Ford (1997)
A Multitude of Sins – Richard Ford (2001)
The Day of the Jackal – Frederick Forsyth (1971)

Rourke – Film critic & musician:

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
On the Road – Jack Kerouac
A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway

Tom Tapp – Film & music critic:

The Road – Cormac McCarthy
On the Road – Jack Kerouac
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
The Quiet American – Graham Greene
Moby-Dick – Herman Melville

A number of members felt so strongly about their top selection that they preferred to refrain from offering other titles.

John Clayton – T-Boy writer:
Countdown to D-Day. The German High Command in Occupied France, 1944 – Peter Margaritis

Terry Cassel – T-Boy writer:
Lonesome Dove – Larry McMurtry

Skip Kaltenheuser – T-Boy writer:
The Accidental Tourist – Anne Tyler

Fyllis Hockman – T-Boy writer:
The Accidental Tourist – Anne Tyler

Emperor of Oldies – Musicologist:
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain

Chloe Erskine – Educator:
Harley Loco – Rayya Elias

The post The T-Boy Society of Film & Music’s Top Five North-American-English Language Travel Novels appeared first on Traveling Archive.

After the Great War and during the 1920s and ‘30s, Paris was the place to be for artists and the forward-thinking avant-garde looking to etch their mark, while novelists and writers quickly recognized that it was far easier to be acknowledged by the small innovative Parisian publishing companies than to catch an editor’s eye in the States.

During this most exhilarating period in 20th Century American Literature, Paris was the destination for an amazing assortment of international expatriates, including some 30,000 Americans many clutching one-way tickets to the City of Lights.

Some arrived in Paris in search of panache and identity, while others, overwhelmed by the complex and tenacious city, became lost in heart-wrenching dreams of discovery and triumphant achievements.

The French franc was a colossal friend, the exchange rate a whopping 25 to 35 francs to the dollar, while Paris’ free-flowing alcohol was a further attraction as long as hard-line prohibition had the upper hand in the United States. Parisian nightlife, animated cabarets, freethinking ladies, and French wine were all treasures to behold.

On the vibrant Left Bank of Paris, in the Latin Quarter and Montparnasse, Ernest Hemingway and wife Hadley, bespectacled James Joyce struggling to publish Ulysses, and F. Scott Fitzgerald with his flamboyant wife Zelda, both giddy from the publication of The Great Gatsby, had settled in, along with photographer Man Ray, always ready to capture the moment. Pablo Picasso and writers Ezra Pound, Djuana Barnes, Nancy Cunard, Sherwood Anderson, and eccentric John Dos Passos, along with a memorable list of other authors and artists, were also part of the heady Paris scene, and friends of Hemingway.

Bigger than life and significant to the literary and artistic scene, Gertrude Stein, writer, serious art collector, and a remarkable influence on writers and artists, cleverly tagged the exiles The Lost Generation, backed by her jealous lover, Alice B. Toklas, who fiercely disliked Hemingway. The exiles included a cast of street characters with stories to tell, who were lounging at sidewalk cafes often deep into their cups, discussing literature, sharing gossip and jealousies, wondering where life and careers were headed and when the next dollar would materialize.

Mercifully, much of the great city has remained suspended in a timeless bubble, making it easy to relive the Lost Generation, to tread on the ancient stones that Hemingway and friends negotiated, sit at the same sidewalk cafes and restaurants, see the gardens, hotels, churches, cathedrals, and lodgings that once upon a time were their stomping grounds.

The reflective adventure comes together with Oriel and Peter Caine’s prestigious Paris Walking Tours, founded in 1994 and recommended by the Paris Tourist Office. The Caine’s, who are themselves esteemed authors and scholars, engage knowledgeable English-speaking guides whose contributions to the tour include appropriate humor and fascinating encyclopedic insights.

Following the guides through any of the two-hour walks, Hemingway’s Paris, Writers of the Left Bank, The Village of Montmartre or Saint Germain-des-Pres, gives the sense of having moved through time, setting the stage for an irresistible mélange of literary and artistic history.

A magnificent destination of monuments and striking architecture, each turn of a Parisian corner invites a celebration of the senses that embellishes the timeless link to Hemingway, and a city glowing with imperishable splendor and earthiness that can grab your heart and hang on for a lifetime.

Via a touch of imagination supported by the images of Woody Allen’s excellent film, Midnight in Paris, and Hemingway’s memoir recalling his life in Paris, A Moveable Feast, one can envision him strolling along the narrow, winding cobblestone streets, Fitzgerald at his side, Zelda, edging between them wildly dancing the tango and hoping for an open bar.

With Lost Generation thoughts flowing, you might hear a bit of Hot Jazz and pass by Kiki, the classy lady of the night, a favorite artist’s model, who never met a man she didn’t like. You might pick out Josephine Baker’s bluesy voice, floating through the night air from the intensely popular Folies Bergere where Baker, a favorite of Hemingway, often performed in her adopted homeland with Chiquita, her pet Cheetah.

Gertrude Stein’s home and salon at 27 rue de Fleurus, now a private resident, once decorated with priceless Gauguin, Renoir, Matisse, Picasso, and Cezanne paintings and long noted as the most distinguished salon in all Paris, was an important gathering place for a coterie of famous artists, writers, and trend-setters including Hemingway and European Royalty.

Down the street, Malcolm Cowley, famed writer, poet, and critic, lived and wrote at 1 rue de Fleurus. Famous for having reportedly once floored Hemingway in a friendly boxing match, Cowley became the spokesman of the 1920s American expatriates.

Sylvia Beach’s Shakespeare and Company on rue l’Odeon, the only English-language bookstore on the Left Bank, was another celebrated gathering place for writers. Writers could buy or borrow books there, Hemingway often noted for doing the latter.

The bookstore closed in 1941 during the German occupation of Paris and never reopened, but in 1951 another Shakespeare and Company opened in tribute to Sylvia Beach. Steps from the Seine and the Notre Dame Cathedral, the bookstore, featured in Midnight in Paris, buzzes with camera-toting visitors with a literary liking.

After experiencing the famed bookstore, it’s astounding to walk past the Hemingway’s old neighborhood on rue Mouffetard where they rented their first apartment on the third floor at 74 rue du Cardinal Lemoine. A small women’s clothing store on the ground floor is aptly named Under Hemingway’s.

Along Boulevard du Montparnasse are a cluster of legendary cafes; La Rotonde, La Coupole, Le Dome, and Le Select, home to Mickey a 19-year old cat, all within walking distance, all fashionable today, just as they were when they were the center of life in the 1920s with their people-watching sidewalk tables, and churlish waiters.

Reams of material have been written about the significant cafes and their eminent patrons, but Hemingway’s preferred café, also on Montparnasse, was La Closerie des Lilas. He often sat in the corner with a cafe crème, writing some of his finest short stories and working on his brilliant novel, The Sun Also Rises.

Incredibly, the bar retains its period ambience confirmed by a framed black and white photo, circa 1920s. A small copper plaque inscribed with his name is embedded in the bar, along with a small photo of him above the bar. One can imagine Hemingway sitting here chatting with Fitzgerald and Joyce, while in the background Cole Porter is playing the piano to an audience of wistful lovers on the prowl.

Years later, one of Hemingway’s numerous haunts was the famed Ritz Hotel on rue Cambon, where his name is now honored with the intimate Hemingway Bar. Hemingway spent his time in the hotel imbibing aperitifs with the celebrities of the day and observing the carefully coifed, costumed, and accessorized French women, who were undeniably elegant.

Nearby, the mighty Seine, dotted with barges and sight-seeing boats, flows along tree-lined walks where embracing couples shimmer and shake, brusque vendors sell books, prints, and paintings, and old-timers cast for fish.

Parisians remark that the more Paris changes, the more it stays the same. For Hemingway, the City of Lights was an ageless enclave of beauty, style, and history, and where, through much effort, his distinctive writing style developed.

When You Go

Contact Paris Walks; check the five-star Paris Sightseeing Pass offering visitors access to over 60 top attractions including the sightseeing bus, metro, a Seine cruise, and other discounts.

The post A Magical Walk Through Hemingway’s Paris appeared first on Traveling Archive.

Hemingway slept above me. No, not in the same room, of course. In fact, not even in the same century. But room #206 – The Ernest Hemingway Suite – was the room directly above my own at the Sun Valley Lodge. It was a big deal for me. I had always admired him, and now here I was staying at his favorite lodge, walking the lodge’s very same halls, breathing the same mountain air and basking in the very same scenery that he too had experienced. I could see why he liked it here and why he eventually made the Sun Valley/Ketchum area his home. Tucked away in the Idaho Rockies, Sun Valley’s 4,000 acres were not only a thing of breathtaking beauty, but they also offered a peaceful solitude – something that a man like Hemingway, who grew tired of the glare of the camera, would relish. The resort’s vast terrain also offered unlimited recreational possibilities for the true outdoors person. As I wondered around the resort, I saw Sun Valley’s world-famous day lodges, tasteful alpine style walking village with shops and restaurants; and a friendly, courteous staff. It almost seemed too perfect. But then, that was the plan.

The Country’s First Destination Ski Resort

In 1935, Austrian Count Felix Schaffgtosch was hired by Averell Harriman of Union Pacific Railroad to find the perfect location for a grand American resort. After fruitless months of searching the mountains of the west, the Count finally heard about Ketchum, a dying mining town in central Idaho. He quickly made a B-line to this town in the Idaho Rockies, and was overwhelmed by what he saw. He immediately wired Harriman with these words: “This combines more delightful features than any place I have ever seen in Switzerland, Austria or the U.S. for a winter resort.”

“Harriman rushed to join him, and purchased 4,300 acres of what was to become Sun Valley. Harriman was determined to build Sun Valley into a resort worthy of its majestic setting, which would include a timeless four-story mountain lodge, complete with a glass-enclosed pool, world-class cuisine, ice-skating rink, impeccable service and nightly orchestra performances. After only seven months of construction, Sun Valley opened in the winter of 1936.

Harriman shrewdly marketed the resort to the Hollywood elite, and soon local wildlife was sharing the mountain with Hollywood royalty that included Clark Gable and Gary Cooper – who would go hunting with Hemingway – as well as Errol Flynn, Claudette Colbert and Bing Crosby. The resort wasn’t just for relaxation either, as world champions used the mountain for Olympic training. Today, as the Sun Valley Lodge turns 80, it is been updated to include 108 new and larger guestrooms, a 20,000 square foot destination spa, a world class fitness center and yoga studio, a glass enclosed outdoor pool and pool café, and re-appointed restaurants, lounges, lobbies and event space.

Not Just Another Day in Paradise

It’s one thing to experience happiness, but to be aware of it that very moment is a rare thing. Last ski season, I had a day of sublime happiness. It went something like this: A breakfast of homemade crepes with seasonal berries in front of the fireplace at Konditorei, an European-style bistro located in the walking village. The food was outstanding; so was the conversation with the attentive staff. It was tempting not to leave the warm fire, but the Sun Valley Nordic and Snowshoe Center, situated in the backyard of the lodge, was waiting.

About 25 miles of manicured and marked trails begin at the Nordic Center, where gentle terrain progresses to challenging hills. I could see that gliding over glistening meadows of snow at an elevation of 6,000 feet would be a great experience for the cross-country skier, but this would be just too extreme for a lightweight such as myself. I opted for the very pedestrian snowshoeing, which fortunately requires the very same skill level as walking. I was soon on my way. For the next two hours I saw not a soul with the exception of a couple of cross-country skiers far off in the distance, who I had sensed was placed there solely for my own visual benefit. I crossed bridges over pristine mountain streams and watched wildlife  scatter into the brush. Snowflakes filled the sky. Once again, I was so happy with surroundings in which I didn’t want to leave.

But I detected the scent of food cooking, and it was coming from the Seattle Ridge Day Lodge, just on the other side of the river. Another warm fire and friendly smile greeted me as I took off my gear, and soon grabbed a table for some homemade soup and a good local micro-beer. While staring out the window, I could see that it was beginning to snow again. I could have stayed there forever, even more so due to having eaten more than my share of food. Maybe I shouldn’t have ordered the huckleberry pie? The snowshoeing back to the Nordic Center would be long and perhaps a little cold, plus I had an important event on my mid-afternoon calendar. I would have to move fast. I was then informed that a free shuttle comes to the lodge every 15 minutes. I decided to order a cappuccino.

After a quick shower back at my room, I headed over to River Run Lodge to attend a Super Bowl party. As I entered the lodge, the party was already hopping with a festive crowd, an array of big screen TVs, food and drink. The event was welcome to all ages, but I was struck by the attendance of so many 80-year-old-plus skiers, some even in their 90s. Yes, it was inspiring.

Later I took a dip in the resort’s famous outdoor circular pool. It was so cold outside that I felt like I was in an Olympic-size Jacuzzi. You couldn’t even see across the surface due to all the fog. As I sat on the edge of the pool, nursing my aching muscles from the earlier snowshoeing, I thought how I someday want to be like one of those 80-year-old senior skiers at the Super Bowl. After all, age is what you make it. And I decided that I would regularly return to Sun Valley Resort. Besides, I still needed to sleep below the Gary Cooper Suite – #306.

For further information about Sun Valley Resort, contact (800) 786-8259 or www.SunValley.com

The post Sun Valley – The Country’s First Destination Ski Resort appeared first on Traveling Archive.