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BREAK AWAY!

TAKE TEN MINUTES OR TAKE TEN DAYS. YOU NEED A VACATION.
By D Magazine |

Why do we travel? Some to sell Pepsi to Russia, others to seek a particularly favored place, perhaps the endlessly picturesque Venice, or grand earth features such as deserts, rivers, mountains. The first real travelers, those other than traders, marauders, and missionaries, tended to leave their homes for only one reason-to save their souls in pilgrimages to Mecca, Rome, or Jerusalem. (Thus the first travel book, The Canterbury Tales.) Mrs. Amelia B. Edwards, who was one of England’s leading Egyptologists, made her first visit to that country in 1873 for one single reason: she wanted to get away from rain.

The motivations for travel are endless: sport, self-discovery, sex, art museums, adventure, escape. You can “travel” without leaving home or you can venture into Brazilian jungles never seen by modern man. Our wandering begins in Dallas, and like a stone thrown in a pond, ripples out across the globe, from a Greenville Avenue flotation tank to one of the world’s great hotels in Bangkok. Take as your credo the words of Robert Louis Stevenson: “For my part I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.”

2 MILES FROM DOWNTOWN DALLAS

TAKE ME TO THE WATER

Float Center proprietor Susan Klemons has a theory: “Floating for an hour is the equivalent of eight hours of rest, Some of my clients say that it’s the equivalent of a week’s vacation.”

I was ready to test her hypothesis.

It was the Monday after a weekend of continuous debauchery. I looked like forty miles of bad road and felt that I was ready to meet my Maker. Over the course of the next twenty-four hours I had a blind date, an appointment with the 1RS to chat about my 1983 tax return, and two deadlines at work. The thought of these rendezvous brought a most unattractive twitch to the corner of my left eye.

Here is what happened, post-float: the date was great. I got back $800 from the 1RS. I stopped twitching. Yeah, well, so I didn’t make the deadlines. But I felt great about all of it. I had spent thirty dollars and one hour and felt more relaxed than after any vacation I’ve taken.

“Relaxed” isn’t the right word, actually. Smoothed out, recharged, and “grounded” (as the metaphysical crowd terms it) come closer.

Since I started floating regularly, these are the things inquiring minds have wanted to know:

Is it anything like the movie Altered States?

No. I did not emerge from the tank with a taste for live gazelle.

What do you wear?

Nothing, unless you’re a model in a flotation tank advertisement, in which case you wear a bathing suit.

What’s it like in the tank?

1. Wet, because of the high concentration of salt in the tank; the water feels wetter and more slippery than plain H20. 2. Dark. You can’t tell if your eyes are open or not. 3. Quiet. You hear your heart beating and your breathing, and that’s it.

Do you feel claustrophobic?

I didn’t, although the first time I did periodically test the door, just to be sure. (Some people leave it open throughout their float.) The tank is about five by eight feet, which is plenty roomy for those of average dimensions.

What if you can’t float?

With 800 pounds of Epsom salts in the tank, nobody can’t float.

Wouldn’t you drown if you fell asleep?

Getting salt solution in your mouth or eyes would wake you up.

How do you know when to get out?

Soft music is piped into the tank.

How often do you float?

I’d like to float on a daily basis, but my cashflow situation won’t permit it. Besides, 1 doubt if my acquaintances would recognize the blissed-out result. Therefore I wait until I start twitching to hit the tank. This works out to be every week to ten days.

What are the benefits of floating?

Reduced stress, heightened sensory awareness, improved concentration, increased creativity, mind-altering sex, and the removal of writer’s block are some of the benefits reported by regular floaters. I can attest to five of these six benefits.

How to get there: The Float Center is at 3404 Greenville Avenue, Suite 103. Hours by appointment. Telephone: 82-RELAX. -Liz Logan

BEER:

J.R. Ewing’s Privait Stock

BOOK:

Dallas. U.S.A., A..C. Greene

BITES:

Texas Hill Country wild boar with smoked vegetable tamale, Rooth Street Cafe

55 TO 120 AIM MILES

NORTH TEXAS: AIR HOPPING



For thousands of Texans who fly small private airplanes, the Southwest is a delicious patchwork of small-town airports and nearby roadside diners bound together by the lure of travel’s unending charm. Within a couple of hours’ flight-time from Dallas, dozens of destinations offer good hospitality for an hour, an afternoon, or a weekend.

The choices range from all-you-can-eat catfish twenty air minutes north of Addison to the irrepressible charm of the Red Barn Restaurant at the Waco airport (complete with pickup service) to what may well be the world’s best soft ice cream dispensed alongside a pine-studded roadway deep in the East Texas woods.

Rudolph McGehee included 2.500 feet of grass runway when he developed his McGehee Catfish Farm on the edge of the Red River in Marietta, Oklahoma. McGehee’s has become a flying traveler’s delight with its crusty chunks of fresh. deep-fried catfish, perfectly spiced hush pup-pics-and a final approach that generally stimulates (or totally destroys) the appetites of uninitiated passengers. Just across the Oklahoma/ Texas border, McGehee’s is open all summer, except on Wednesdays.

Smack on the Victor Airway that points south to the charms of Austin, Waco is the home of the Red Barn Restaurant, a cavernous eatery that has the good sense to plunk down appetizer portions of fresh soup in front of menu-perusing travelers. They also collect flying customers from Madison Cooper Airport less than a mile away. Available with a phone call on landing, the Red Barn’s shuttle service sports a late-model Lincoln chauf-feured by a hostess or bartender anxious to hear the traveler’s latest tale of valor in the sky. The Red Bam serves an array of Southern-style selections including chicken, steaks, and the occasional stuffed bayou crab. And, though pilots are usually low-ticket customers due to drinking-and-flying taboos, the Lincoln always takes them back to the waiting family Cessna.

A hundred and twenty nautical miles southeast of Dallas, the ground transportation is a little more independent, if no less glamorous. Nestled at the edge of a tarmac swath cut through acres of sweet-smelling pines, Nacogdoches’s NAC-Aero offers visiting airmen an aging Plymouth that may well be the jewel of the Texas airport “courtesy car” fleet. Equipped with four totally inflated tires (as opposed to the usual three and a half) and a gas tank well past the empty mark, NAC-Aero’s Detroit- built Fury could be a junker elsewhere, but in Nacogdoches, it’s a chariot to adventure.

The oldest town in Texas and host to an annual Heritage Festival (June 5-8), Nacogdoches offers sweet attractions that can bring smiles to the faces of citified travelers. There are restaurants named Bubba’s, Rita’s, the Catfish King, and the Koun-try Kitchen. Shepherd’s Restaurant serves a better-than-okay $3.95 fish luncheon special and. just down the road, an aging Dairy Queen reigns supreme. It’s a castle of tradition, a monument to times when North Street had a little bit less traffic and when folks eschewed complicated combinations in favor of simple, well-churned soft ice cream. Unheeding tourists, their thoughts preoccupied with reservations and schedules, stream by the Dairy Queen in search of Big Macs down the street. But for the flyer in search of a cool confection on a sultry day, die choice is simple: small, medium, or large? -Richard Chase



BEER:

Shiner premium Bock

BOOK:

The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

BITES:

chicken Creole gumbo, sweet potato pie, hush puppies, iced tea

1,189 MILES

FLORIDA RACE CAR DRIVING

On some hot summer weekend, as you find yourself sitting in an air-conditioned room watching televised car races at someplace like Indianapolis or LeMans. you might say to yourself, Hey. thai looks easy… I can do that.

Trust us. You can’t. Bui the next best thing is to sign up for a professional racing school. On the surface it seems illogical: fly an hour in order to get in a car for one to three days. Yet one of the great escapes we made this year was to the Skip Barber Racing School.

You’ll spend approximately $1,200 to learn how to deliberately slide and drift a car at speeds that heretofore terrified you. You haven’t lived until you approach a turn in your Formula Ford at 140 mph, downshift, brake, downshift, brake, slide, slide, drift, and accelerate out-all in less than two seconds.

The hardest part of auto racing is knowing when to go slow, Slow into the turn, fast out. You must be taught how to think behind the wheel of a racing car. Skip Barber’s three-day courses (at Lime Rock in Connecticut, Road America at Elkhart Lake in Wisconsin. Sebring in Florida, and Willow Springs in California) qualify you to drive in several legitimate race series, including Formula Fords and Saabs.

For the less competitive, there is the BMW/ Skip Barber Advanced Driving School, designed to teach the limits of vehicle performance, particularly in emergency situations. Past instructors and students include eleven of last year’s Indy 500 starting field. The instructors are experienced, patient, and skillful at tutoring these ten-person classes.

How to get there: for information, call or write: Skip Barber. Rt. 7, Canaan. CT 06018. (203) 824-0771. -Undo Murphy

BEER:

flscher’s old German Style

BOOK:

Up for Grate: .4 Trip &NE Time and Space in the Sunshine State. John Rothchild

BITES:

pompano I’ll papillote or slime crabs; Key lime pic

TRAVEL TIDBITS



“Travel.” from the English travail, meaning labor, especially painful or of an oppressive type; “travail,” from the Latin tripalium. a torture device consisting of three stakes designed to rack the body.



The secret police of Paraguay are called “pyragues”” (people with hair? feet).



America’s first travel agent, Howard Curtis of Albany, Mew York, struck a bargain in 1831. importing Irish laborers at fifiy dollars a head to work in thin country and sending I Hudson River Valley gentry to Europe on return sailing.

1,285 MILES

WHERE WERE YOU IN ’52?

Think of it: picnics in altitudinous patches of wildflowers, the easy sway of a chairlift through silent pines, bittersweet night sounds of jazz spilling out of clubs, healthy lungfuls of cool-really cool-mountain air. It’s summer in the Rockies, or the Wasatch, or the Sierras. Can there be a better time to be in Colorado? Ski resorts cast a wide net for summer tourists and it’s the willing vacationer who is amply repaid. Crowds are few, spirits are high, amenities are plenty, fares are low. Consider the crème de la crème of ski destinations-Deer Valley, Utah. In the winter, Deer Valley woos the well-heeled skier with pampering touches like valet parking for skiers and sushi for lunch. In the summer, this full-service resort puts away the skis and piles the sushi even higher.

And to get the good times rolling, D.V, is staging a three-day bash from the be-bop era: The Festival of the Fifties, destined, according to resort owners, to become a “world-class event.” Beginning on June 20, there will be Wolf-man Jack, The Shirelles, Bobby Vee, vintage automobiles. Fifties flicks, and of course, The Kingston Trio. But that’s just for starters. Check out these other selected options from Colorado ski resorts:

June 8-20: Keystone Brass Institute; free concerts on June 14, 19. and 20, Keystone.

June 20-22: Aspen-Snowmass International Wine Classic, Aspen.

July 12-13: Third Annual Festival of Arts, Vail.

July 19-20: “Day of the Bicycle” tour. Breckenridge.

August 16-19: Jerry Ford Invitational Golf Tournament, Vail.

August 30-September 1: Dixie Fiddlers Contest and Jam Session. Breckenridge.

-Ruth Miller Fitzgibbons

BEER:

Coors

BOOK:

Centennial, James Michenrr

BITES:

buffalo tnirfiers

1,791 MILES

THE STORES OF SAN FRANCISCO

Dallas is a city that shops, and even when the city gets hot, the tough still go shopping. But why endure sweaty armpits and scalding car seats? Try a shopping trip in San Francisco, where the mercury hovers around sixty degrees during the summer months. And the fabled Fisherman’s Wharf, with the innovative Pier 39, is just the place for a spree by the sea.

A 200,000-square-foot shopping attraction, Pier 39 began as an effort to revitalize part of San Francisco’s waterfront but has since become a nationally acclaimed retail complex that is visited by more than 10 million people every year. It houses two levels of restaurants, shops, a 350-berth marina, a waterfront park, a cruise fleet, family amusement theater, and a hand-painted double-deck carousel from Riggio, Italy. Pier 39 also serves as an outdoor stage for local musicians and street performers. The specialty merchandise includes fine woolens and crystal, games, toys, stuffed animals, hand-woven sweaters, items for left-handers, chocolates, colorful kites, music boxes from around the world, and custom-designed jewelry.

One of the pier’s more unusual spots is Music Tracks, a small recording studio. For ten dollars, you can cut your own version of a standard or recent hit record. You sing along with the artist, whose voice is erased from (he cassette. If spend ing makes you hungry, try one of Pier 39’s thir teen restaurants-Italian, Continental, French, Chinese, Swiss, Mexican, Japanese, American, and seafood, the San Francisco specialty. The Eagle Cafe, an earthy establishment with a rep utation for topflight breakfasts, is said to serve the best pancakes in the West. -Eric Miller

BEER:

Anchor Strain

BOOK:

The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett

BITES:

pizza topped with bacon, fennel root. Inks. goat cheese

TRAVEL TIDBITS



Of the more than 10,000 varieties of flowers in Europe, more than half are found in Spain.



Panama hats are made in Ecuador.



The streets of Khartoum, Sudan, are laid out m die pattern of die Union Jack.

1,900 MILES

VERMONT: SUPER CYCLING

The first piece of good news about Vermont Bicycle Tours is that there is no peer pressure to wear those embarrassing black stretch bicycler’s shorts that wrap around the waist like a tourniquet. There are few “professional” bikers around to intimidate the casual cyclist. The second piece of good news is that a Vermont bike tour doesn’t mean you have to ride 200 miles a day or be left behind on some lonely road as the sun sets and the animais make primitive noises in the forest.

Even those who can’t stand the idea of tooling around on a ten-speed with one of those hard little rupture-inducing triangular seats can find bliss soaring down those beautiful Vermont roads, filled with the adventurous spirit of that legendary bicycler and director of the VBT, John S. Freiden. His program has somehow drawn 40,000 people since 1972 from every state and many countries.

Part of the reason for VBT’s success is that it’s an all-inclusive vacation. AH you have to do is show up, and they provide the bike, the picturesque inn, the breakfasts and dinners, and the maps. It’s all very boisterous and summer camp-ish, except that the whole group doesn’t have to share one bathroom, and if you really feel sore, you can say the hell with it and sleep late the next morning without getting in trouble.

During the VBT season (May to October), there are two-day tours, five-day tours, and for the first time, a “Champlain Sail ’n’ Cycle” tour, in which participants will eat and sleep aboard a 110-foot windjammer schooner, then go ashore daily to ride in a different part of the Champlain Valley.

Two-day tours range from a “supersaver” rate of $135 (but only in May and parts of June and October) to $269 for the standard rate. The five-day tours go from $389 to $519. and the “sail ’n’ cycle” is from $535 to $595.

How to get there: write Vermont Bicycle Touring. Box 711-LF, Bristol, Vt. 05443 or call (802) 453-4811.

-Skip Hollandsworth

BEER:

Pilgrim’s Pride Special Reserve Beer

BOOK:

Contrary Country, Ralph Mading Hill

BITES:

Shelburne Farms Farmhouse Cheddar from a angle herd of brown Swiss cows; Cabot Farmers Cooperative Creamery’s uncalled butter-; maple syrup

2,336 MILES

VANCOUVER: THE LAST EXPO

The world is waiting to see if Expo ’86, Vancouver’s bold gamble on the beautiful north shore of False Creek, will be a boon or a bust. Only four world expositions out of the last twenty have made money, and three of those were in Japan. Recent Expo history is clouded by die costly flops of Knoxville in ’82 and New Orleans in ’85.

But the Canadian planners of Expo ’86 are confident thai the last scheduled North American World Exposition in this cen-tury will stay profitable from May 2 through October 13. More than eleven million of the projected 13.75 million tickets had already been sold as D went to press.

For the first time, the U.S., the U.S.S.R., and the People’s Republic of China will all be together on a North American site. All three are vying for the largest exhibit on the main site and are united under Expo ’86’s dual theme: transportation and communications. More than forty other international players have thrown their hats into the ring.

Among the eighty pavilions, attention so far has been focused on the Russians’ replica of the Soviet space station and the North American debut of France’s SK People Mover and Japan’s high-speed surface transport.

How to get there: Vancouver International Air port is twenty-five minutes from the Expo ’86 grounds. -Teena Gritch McMills

BEER:

Labatls 50 Canadian Ale

BOOK:

Notts from the Century Before: A Journal from British Columbia, Edward Hoagland

BITES:

king crab

3,315 MILES

ALASKA : GRIZZLY BUSINESS

The bus passed countless black lakes of strange, disorderly Rorschach shapes and steaming ponds and shaggy continuous forests hooded in fog or Easter yellow where the sun hit. On this 121-mile trip from Fairbanks south to Denali National Park and Preserve (formerly Mount McKinley National Park), the road follows the Tanana River until it joins the great Yukon, pouring out of Canada and crossing all of Alaska until it finds its outlet in the Bering Sea.

I had come to see wildlife, magnificent scenery, and North America’s mightiest mountain. One hundred miles inside Denali’s 5.6 million acres is Mount McKinley (20,320 feet), rising 17,000 feel above the Alaskan plain and more than 20,000 feet above sea level. To see the mountain takes some luck. McKinley creates its own weather because it is so high and cold; more often than not it’s invisible, smothered by cloud-bergs and rain. It appears six or seven times during the three-and-a-half-month season. A familiar Alaskan conversational topic is speculating about when “die mountain will be out.”

Those who have seen it say it’s worth the wait. The Alaska Range elevates with a rapidity rare in the world. Its top is about two-thirds as high as the top of the Himalayas but the Himalayan uplift is broad and extensive. Forty miles from McKinley you can stand and see a rise of 20.000 feet. It doesn’t climb so much as it fists up into the sky. The best chance for spotting the peak is on an early August morning at the Eielson Visitor Center, about sixty-six miles from the park entrance and thirty-three miles from the summit.

The mountain remained shrouded this August day, so I joined a packed motorcoach and driver/tour guide for an all-afternoon wildlife tourup into the park, a bus-as-game-blind. After lunch, we left the Denali National Park Hotel (one hundred comfortable rooms, one of the world’s tackiest gift shops, surly breakfast service), and began absorbing flora-fauna data: only six species of trees in almost six million acres; plants green only two months; the park has 300 grizzlies, 3,000 Dall sheep, 2,000 caribou, 1,800 moose; like Ireland, there are no snakes in Alaska.

Our guide pointed to five Dall sheep under the gray sky, white dots high on a hillside. The creatures were still, yet they gave life to the whole mountain. We continued up the dirt road past a meadow of stark, denuded spruce destroyed by porcupines in the Twenties but still erect. In the tundra, decomposing takes a long time. Then we spotted, down in the valley of the Toklat River, wallowing along the delta of boggy, tundra streams of gravel bars and fallen willow trees, a huge blonde grizzly and her three cubs.

The most feared beast in North America is Ur-sus arctos horriblous, with five-inch claws and a fifty-five-inch neck. The female grows to 450 pounds, while males can move their 600 pounds of muscle at race-horse speeds. People attacked in treeless areas have survived by jumping down a short cliff or setting fire to grass around them. Our guide said grizzlies had injured two campers this year, one critically. If confronted, she said, you should not run. Speak in a calm voice, wave your arms, and drop to a fetal position if all else fails. Mmm-hm. We were glad to be several hundred feet above the bears.

The cloud curtain never opened to reveal McKinley so I had to be content with gazing in its direction, paying the invisible mountain ritual homage. But there was much else to see and do. Alaska has seventeen of the country’s twenty highest mountains (nineteen peaks over 14,000 feet), their soaring razory summits dappled with shadows and loaded with snow. I saw a salmon so big you needed a hatchet to cut its throat; endured a “Dog’s Nose,” an Alaskan miner’s drink of beer and gin; took an all-morning Yukon River cruise aboard the brand-new “Klondike” from Dawson City to Eagle, Alaska, where once from late December 1917 until early February 1918 it never got warmer than forty-six below; and enjoyed one of die world’s most beautiful drives from Anchorage along Turnagain Basin to Portage Glacier.

How to get there: Denali National Park, Alaska 99775 or Holland America Westours. 300 Elliot Avenue West, Seattle, Wash. 98119, (206) 281-3535.

-Richard West

BEER:

Mohan Ale

BOOK:

Coming into the Country, John McPhee

BITES:

King Salmon, the stale fish, and sourdough bread, followed by akutak, “Eskimo ice cream” I whipped berries, seal off. .snow)

4,750 AIR MILES

ENGLAND: THE RESTORATION



The moment I knew they were really serious about this whole project-the re-creation of an entire I7th century English village in the shadows of one of the country’s most magnificent estates-came when one of the principal directors, a dear gentleman named Nigel Massey who looked as if he had never needed to work a day in his life, stood in a mud puddle and marveled over a pig.

“My God, the Gloucester Old Spot Pig,” Massey murmured, nearly swooning. “There are very few left in the world, and we have one!”

Indeed. Littlecote, an estate seventy miles west of London built four and a half centuries ago, is attempting to reflect every aspect of British life from the 17th century. If you ignore the miniature steam-engine train that takes you around the place, you can get a fairly good idea of what life was like in the Cromwellian Days-from a fully operating village, complete with such craftsmen as weavers and leather-makers, to a working farm. (“Bloody heavens!” cried Mas-sey. “I nearly forgot to show you the Wiltshire Hom Sheep.”) There is also a fully armed garrison of soldiers who joust each day from Easter to September 30, a falconer, a petting zoo for the kids, and, of course, a tavern for the adults. The cost is about $4.50 (3 pounds) for an adult and S3 for children.

Littlecote, which opened to the public this past spring, is owned by English financier Peter de Savary, who also owns the exclusive St. James Club in London, He’s sunk more than $4 million into buying and restoring the home (including $70,000 on the flower garden alone), all because he says he loves the English tradition and hates to see these stately English mansions quietly rot away. When I was there, the Englishman was still trying to raise funds, bustling cheerfully out of his private study to announce that one banker was a son of a bitch, then puffing on his cigar with a smile and disappearing back through the door,

De Savary’s house is, indeed, a treasure-a grand hall filled with armor used by Cromwell’s troops; a room covered from ceiling to floor with Dutch paintings; the only example of a Cromwel-lian chapel in existence (the pews were constructed on a downward angle so that if anyone should doze off, they would literally fall to the floor); a gallery mat nearly runs the length of the house; a library of rare books; and six upstairs bedroom suites that can be booked for $250 a night and up. The staff expects the waiting list to be long, since every tourist wants to stay in a home that has been visited by nearly every British monarch since Henry VIII in 1520 (he stayed there while he courted Jane Seymour, who lived nearby). Littlecote even has an allegedly haunted bedroom, where a former owner’s newborn baby was thrown into the fire because it was illegitimate. Nigel Massey refused to step into this room. 1 told him he was being silly. “Gentlemen do not go into haunted rooms,” he said.

I thought Littlecote would turn out to be something like Six Flags Over England. But there is a commitment here to bring a once-lively piece of English history back to life. Few of these great old homes are left for the public to see in such faithfully restored detail. Littlecote is certainly worth a day trip from London.

How to get there: British Caledonian has daily flights to London from Dallas. Take the train to the town of Hungerford. Littlecote is two miles away. By car, take the M4 straight from London and exit at No. 14. Open 10-6 daily. Littlecote Ltd.. Hungerford, Berkshire RG 17 OSS (0488) 82509/82170. -S.H.

BEER:

Samuel Smith’s Old Brewery Pate Ale

BOOK:

Life in the English Country House, Mark Girouard

BITES:

angels on horseback (oysters wrapped in bacon, seasoned with pepper, shallots, parsley, and lemon juice); Stilton cheese

TRAVEL TIOBITS

The father of the guidebook usiness, Karl Baedeker, h bustling Koblenz bookseller, published his first volume, Guide to rite Rhine. in 1836. J le was the first to use he asterisk as a symbol of quahlity md went on to publish forty local guides running into 950 editions.



Alaskan pioneers say lynx tastes like turkey, wolf like canned beef.



5,220 AIR MILES

TASTING THE BEST OF BURGUNDY

One of the sweetest pleasures of a trip to France is a trip to the heart of Burgundy. For a speedy trip from Paris, take National Highway 6 as far as Auxerre. Here, on two-lane country roads, you’ll enter the gateway to the vineyards of Burgundy.

You’ll arrive first in Chablis, an area that is a good introduction to the wine-growing villages of Burgundy. Today, Chablis is confined to the Aux-errois region and nearly all the wine produced here is white. Then, plan on going to Dijon via Tonnerre and Montbard before turning south. For nearly 125 miles and as far as Lyon, vineyards dominate the picturesque landscape that is dotted with Romanesque churches and villages.

A novice wine connoisseur should begin-or happily expand-his education in the quiet village of Beaune, in the middle of the valley. In addition to the best red wines, the Cote de Beaune also produces the best white burgundies. The Cote de Beaune stretches from Aloxe-Corton to Santenay, but you don’t have to wander from village to village, wine cave to wine cave to sample the best of the local product. Beaune’s Marche Aux Vins (sort of a medieval Wines R Us) makes it all very simple to do. Here you will descend into the catacombs of one of the oldest churches in Frankdom, The eerie tunnels are lit only by candles, and within these deep, dark confines the eau-de-vie of the Burgundy region is yours for the tasting. For novice connoisseurs (like us), it’s oenological heaven.

How to get there: American Airlines Hies direct to Paris. Rent a car at the airport, buy a road map, and go. –T.G. M.

BEER:

Jenlain

BOOK:

A Link Tour In France, Henri James

BITES:

boeuf bourgulgnon

5,328 AIR MILES

MONACO: TRIP TO BOUNTIFUL

I first noticed him in the European Room of the Casino de Monte-Carlo, a tall, slender gentleman in a white sport coat watching the Baccarat table. When he caught me staring at him he extended his hand. “Bond” he said. “James Bond.”

Can you blame a guy for daydreaming a bit? After all, this is the stuff of which movie sets are made: a classy crowd wrapped around green felt tables inside a smoke-filled casino. Anyway, if it wasn’t Bond stacking chips at the table that evening, it just as easily could have been Cary Grant, Peter O’Toole, Jean-Paul Belmondo, or Tony Curtis. If the lady by his side wasn’t Pussy Galore, she might have been Sophia Loren, Jane Birkin, or Catherine Deneuve. to mention just a few of the frequent real-life visitors to the one-mile-square French-speaking principality of Monaco. Monte Carlo remains a playground for the rich, replete with a fairy-tale royal palace, yacht-filled harbor, and world-famous hotel and casino. In short, this is a place to spend money and look good while doing it.

Monte Carlo is a favorite vacation spot of Americans. About one of every four visitors comes from the U.S., which means most of the locals are forced to communicate in English with those who can’t speak French. By far the most popular hotel with American visitors is the Loews Monte-Carlo, a 640-room establishment that also features the only hotel casino on the Riviera offering American games: slot machines, roulette, blackjack, and craps. It might seem ironic, but Loews sends its Monegasque croupiers to Las Vegas for eight-week training sessions on the intricacies of craps with an emphasis on odds, chip-stacking, stick-work, and American terminology.

Since the sun shines here 300 days a year, Monte Carlo is a pleasant vacation spot almost any time. Obviously, it is busiest during the “très haute saison’-July through October-which is also the most expensive lime to visit. Hotel rates are slightly lower during the “haute saison” in April, May, and June, and the lowest during the “saison” between January and March. Most of the world’s attention is focused on the principality each May, when Formula One race cars roar through the city’s narrow, twisting, hilly streets in quest of the Gran Prix de Monaco.

But for those who can drag themselves out of bed after a long night at the casino, there are a number of year-round points of interest. Be sure to stop in the Casino de Monte-Carlo, The beautiful vintage 19th-century building is bustling with activity nearly any time of the day. Right next door is the Hotel de Paris, one of the world’s most beautiful old hotels. Don’t miss the Océanographie Museum, which features an interesting exhibition of Mediterranean sea life, much of it captured during the missions of the Calypso, commanded by world-famous French oceanog-rapher Jacques Cousteau, the museum’s curator. Also, be sure to visit the Place du Palais, the royal palace and residence of His Serene Highness Prince Rainier III and family (who include Prince Albert and Princesses Caroline and Stephanie), to watch the changing of the guard each day at 11:55 a.m. Even if you aren’t a doll collector, you’ll be fascinated by the National Museum and Collections of Dolls, which includes a daily exhibition of automated dolls.

How to get there: Monte Carlo is not a non-stop destination from Dallas. We flew Air France to Paris and transferred on a flight to Nice, which is thirty minutes from Monte Carlo by taxi and ten minutes by helicopter.

-EM.

BEER:

Morett Pilsener

BOOK:

Casino Royale, Ian Fleming

BITES:

pistore, which is H form of minestrone soup with white beans. tomatoes, summer squash, and its namesake,a pesto sauce

TRAVEL TIDBITS



Thomas Cook’s first Nile tour in 1869 necessitated preliminary peace treaties with the Bedouin chiefs of Palestine and Syria so sixty tourists, sixty-five saddle horses, eight y seven packhorses. and twenty-eight donkeys could proceed.



Nepal, in a masterly gesture of one-upmanship, keens its docks ten minutes ahead of India s.



The traditional shot of whiskey in Ireland held as much whiskey as half an egg shell.



Russian! call Indian summer “babye lyeto” (grandmother autumn).

8,736 AIR MILES

KENYA: PHOTOGRAPHER’S PARADISE

It was still dark as we climbed into the jeeps for our early morning game run; the driver, as usual, seemed to know exactly where he was going. Ten minutes later as the sun started to peep at us we came upon six adult lions with eight cubs tearing away at the large carcass of a topi antelope. They had only just killed him so we watched for forty-five minutes as the male kept picking up the whole body and dragging it a few yards away so that he could have it all to himself. The females, however, kept a firm hold on their catch as the cubs clambered over the carcass to find their breakfast, sometimes falling into the vanishing topi. Every few minutes they would back out to lick the blood off their face and paws.

So we began our day at Governors Camp in the Masai Mara Reserve, which offers the finest game viewing in all of Kenya. Much of Out of Africa was filmed here, as are most of the wild-game documentaries seen on television. Governors is set among the trees, overlooking a river populated with hippos. Breakfast and lunch are served in the open; dinner is taken in a large tent. Sleeping under canvas, listening to the hippos grunt and the lions roar through the night, you can almost forget you’re in the most luxurious tented camp in Kenya, with concrete floors, showers, and flush toilets in each tent. Three game runs per day (at 6 a.m., 10a.m., and 4 p.m.) will bring you within telephoto range of all of the larger mammals and cats: leopard, lion, giraffe, elephant, and more.

Lewa Downs, a 45,000-acre camp in the mountainous range of the Aberdares, is smaller and more rustic than Governors. Lena Downs offers game runs by truck, horseback, or on foot. Of course, the horses will take you much closer to the animals than you will get in (lie truck, and actually walking among herds of giraffe and the skittish eland can yield some unforgettable photographs.

One morning James Robertson, the camp manager, and I drove out to look forelephant, not such an easy task as it sounds. After two hours we saw a lone bull ambling toward a wooded area; we raced ahead of him and then walked near where we thought he should emerge, expecting some great shots, After about fifteen minutes we heard tremendous crashing and trumpeting as about 120 elephants of all sizes emerged from the woodls into a clearing forty feel in front of us. James whispered to keep very still and keep my fingers crossed that they didn’t get our scent. One large bull came within twenty feet of us, his trunk sniffing wildly; luckily the wind was with us and they have terrible eyesight. Afterwards James told me of two experienced hunters who had been killed by these massive animals.

All of Kenya is a photographer’s paradise, but one other spot deserves to be singled out: Mount Kenya Safari Club, once owned by the late William Holden, looks out onto Mount Kenya, the second largest mountain in Africa after Kilimanjaro. The club offers horseback riding, tennis, golf, and swimming; or you can sit in the observation lounge for afternoon tea and watch the top of the mountain vanish into the clouds, then appear again. For Holden fans (like myself), this is a must. Holden memorabilia are everywhere, and if you are lucky you’ll catch a glimpse of the star’s pet cheetah waiting on the roof of his master’s house for his return.

How to get there; for more information on the guided photo learning tours, call White Heron Travel at 692-0446. -John Tilley

BEER:

Tusker

BOOK:

West With the Sight, Beryl Markham

BITES:

kima (stew of chopped bref and red peppers);

fish lingers of Nile perch

5,768 AIR MILES

RUSSIA: QUEUE TIPS

One of the most alien aspects of Russian life, and a great propaganda target, is the shopping line. But there’s method in the monotony: understand the queue, and you understand something of Russia itself.

First, one rarely buys the goods that are displayed in Russian stores. You look at the item, and after careful appraisal indicate to the salesperson that you want it. Then you are given a handwritten bill to take to the cashier. After you pay you take the receipt back to the salesperson and you are handed the merchandise that has been taken from storage and wrapped for you. The process could be even slower, but Russians are rabid bargain-hunters in a country that doesn’t produce enough goods, so they shop with a constant sense of urgency. If you don’t make up your mind about a purchase you can easily be knocked out of position by a fourteen-year-old girl grabbing for a garment.

Hence the long lines. Russian store owners know how tough it is to manage a crowd of frenzied shopping commandos, so they only let so many in at one time. If the store can handle twenty customers only twenty are allowed inside. If one person leaves, one new person may enter. In major stores this is accomplished with a red and white striped stick; nobody enters until the stick is lifted, Everyone understands this, however, so there’s little grumbling. Lines become social events. If a line looks promising a Russian will automatically get in it just so he won’t miss a bargain. As a test, a few in our group stood together in line. Sure enough, we were quickly joined by a couple of women looking for a deal.

Of course, there are few legal “deals” in Russia, since prices are fixed to prevent decadent competition. A hat that cost eighteen rubles in Moscow will cost eighteen rubles in Leningrad, Kiev, or Odessa. One of the results of this policy is the black market, a perk that Via sure is unofficially “allowed” to exist. Walking down a Moscow street, you might see a steady flow of people carrying shampoo bottles with a shiny top. That’s a tipoff: you’re about to come to an outdoor stall and the shampoo must be fairly good. Or you sit on a bench near a bus stop that’s void of activity. You sneeze, look up, and suddenly there’s an old woman there with a table and six crates of something. Like a swarm of locusts, a crowd appears, A blink later the area is empty again. Zip, bam, instant business! Everybody knows what’s going on, and the sense of getting away with something is enjoyed by all.

How to get there: Simiro Travel International, (212) 838-2490. –George Toomer

BEER:

Does not apply. Try cold vodka instead.

BOOK:

When Sights Are Longest: Travels by Car

Through Western Russia, Colin Thubron

BITES:

borsch, beef Sroganoff, Beluga caviar

8,178 AIR MILES

AGRA: THE TAJ MAHAL



As most of the world knows, the Taj Mahal in Agra is the world’s most perfect man-made object. It is the supreme love offering, a mausoleum built by the Mogul emperor, Shah Jahan, in memory of his beloved wife, Mumtaz Mahal, who died giving birth to their fourteenth child. Begun in 1632 by 20,000 workmen, the main building was completed eleven years later. The whole complex took twenty-two years to finish. Legend has it that, upon completion, Shah Jahan ordered the stonemason’s right hand cut off so another Taj would never be built.

I left my hotel before dawn to make sure I saw the first rays of the sun strike the Taj. Thai morning, the peace-disturbers demanding rupees, the beggars and guides, the touts selling plastic Taj Mahals that light up, and the professional photographers had not yet gathered as I entered the outer gate. The Taj was not yet in sight. Turning south through the manicured gardens, I looked through the main three-storied gateway and saw it, or saw at least the center of the tomb, pure white, “the lustrous pearl,” its minarets sticking above me arch and walls. It was a superb appreach, the perfect prelude for what is a total experience, not just a building, because your appetite isn’t spoiled by any premature glimpses.

Hidden by trees and a walled garden, with only the sky for a backdrop, the Taj Mahal makes an unbelievable first impression. You enter die garden as you enter a church, from the back. The formal flowerbeds form a straight nave (hat leads the eye to die great raised marble sanctuary on which sits, or floats, this most perfect of buildings.

As we stared in silence, watching the first rays of sun turn the cast side of the Taj pink, our guide told us that the great building was neglected for more than 200 years and fell into disrepair. It was saved by the late Lord Curzon, viceroy to India from 1898 to 1905. who took an interest in Indian monuments. Perhaps you know the verse about Lord Curzon:



My name is George Nathaniel Curzon lama most superior person. My cheek is pink, my hair is sleek I dine at Blenheim once a week.



Undoubtedly an arrogant man, but he saved one of die world’s greatest monuments.

How to get there: Travelworld (toll-free 800-421-2255) or Abercrombie & Kent (toll-free 800-323-7308), both lead excellent tours. R.W.



BEER:

Golden Eagle Imager

BOOK:

Tim Jewt in the Crown, Paul Scott

BITES:

chicken tandoori or rogban josh (deep-red mutton dish with almonds and looted spices)

8,986 AIR MILES

ONE NIGHT IN BANGKOK



As generations of visitors have commented, Bangkok is the happiest of cities, the pace of life relaxed (except for the horrendous traffic), the flavor of life sensual, benign, live-for-today. The city’s symbolic fictional character is Sadie Thompson, the temptress in Somerset Maugham’s “Rain.” Maugham loved Bangkok and wrote many of his short stories while staying at the exquisite Oriental hotel on the Chao Phraya River.

He used the hotel’s Bamboo Bar as the setting for his novel, Gentleman in the Parlour. You can use it to try a rumored Thai aphrodisiac, Guinness mixed with Benedictine, while gazing out at the garden and trying to decide whether to spend $480 for a night in the Somerset Maugham, Joseph Conrad, James Michener, Noel Coward, or Graham Greene suite, or choose one of the 402 less expensive rooms.

The Oriental gives you Bangkok-by-River, a blessedly different place than the snarling madness of its city streets, crowded with pushcarts, motorcycles, tricycle taxis (called “tuk-tuks”), buses jammed to the gunwales, the constant cacophony of horns, whistles, brakes, and bells.

In Bangkok you are never far from the water’s edge. The klongs or canals of the city stretch away from the main river like narrow alleys and meander through the city of seven million people as others do in Venice. Boatmen at the Oriental’s dock can be hired to take you on a leisurely tour up some of the remote klongs or upriver to the city’s grander wonders, such as Wat Arun, the “Temple of Dawn,” its 260-foot-high central spire rising from almost river-edge, its tiers covered with encrustations of broken Chinese pottery and all of it surrounded by sculpted figures.

Farther upriver sits the Kings’ Barges Collection, gilded and lacquered fifty-foot barges with dragon prows and huge figureheads; then the one-mile-square Grand Palace of the Thai Kings; and nearby, the Royal Chapel of the Emerald Buddha, surrounded by twenty-foot-tall demon sentinels, stone elephants and cows, painted giants and monkeys, and the soft clink of wind-bells.

After a day’s strenuous touring and guide information overload (“Sacred elephants must have twenty toes, not eighteen”), the best night in Bangkok is provided by the Oriental. Show up at the hotel terrace at dusk, and a shuttle ferry takes you to the Oriental Sala Rin Nam, a luxurious Thai restaurant featuring the country’s best cuisine: rich curries and soups; fresh-water fish with crisp-fried vegetables; deep-fried chicken in pandanus leaf; carved fresh fruits.

After 8:30, classic Thai dances are performed by members of the Fine Arts Department of Thailand. What better after a bowl of torn yum talay thong than the “Dance of the Bamboo Basket”? In the hot equatorial night with its hint of nearby jungle, marsh, and teak forest, Bangkok glitters, capable of both suggestive, eye-winking salaciousness and exotic, demure Oriental grace. How to get there: Thai Air, 1-800-426-5204.

-R.W

BEER:

Singha

BOOK:

The Collected Short Stories of Somerset Maugham

BITES:

une krob (rice noodles, egg, pork, shrimp), lot nom pla (fish dumplings)

NEWSLETTERS



Consumer Reports Travel Letter-Like its parent. Consumer Répons, CRTL is no-nonsense and accurate on price comparisons, airline reporting, destination joys and pitfalls, details like rent cars and tour packages. CRTL, 256 Washington Street, Mount Vernon, New York, 10553, Published monthly. $37.



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