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Portland’s Copper Goddess

Guest Post and Photo by Amy Perry Basseches

While we had fun in our midway stop of Sacramento, enjoying wonderful coffee at Pachamama, a great breakfast at Orphan and a tour of the memorable California State House, it was Portland we loved. Drinks at Angel Face and at 23 Hoyt, dinners at Harvest at the Bindery and at the Mediterranean Exploration Company, pie at Random Order Coffee House and Bakery, brunches at Kenny and Zuke’s and JAM, and, of course, lots and lots of books at Powell’s Books. We also spent a long time downtown at the Lan Su Chinese Garden, with its tea house, and had massages at the nearby Fei Long Spa. But the unique highlight today was the Portlandia statue (Portland’s very own Greek goddess). Portlandia is the second-largest of its type in the United States, after the Statue of Liberty. Our local friends insisted we stop and stare. You can read Tom Wolfe’s humorous 1986 Newsweek Magazine piece here.
 

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Miami Transformed

Vertical gardens barricade the Perez Art Museum, providing much needed shade and heat absorption during Miami’s sweltering summers. The massive windows that line the exterior of the building are the largest hurricane resistant windows in the world. It’s as if current-day architects took a good look at the storied Vizcaya estate that edges the water in the southern part of the city and learned how a century of wear-and-tear transformed Tuscan idealism into tropical overgrowth. 
 
The arrival of the Perez Art Museum not only signals a shift in sustainability but also has put downtown Miami back on the map. Three decades after Miami Vice turned this city core into a bloody graveyard at night, museums, hotels, high-rise condominiums, and James Beard-nominated restaurants have arrived on the scene to lure the Miami Beach and Coral Gables crowd back to urbanity. Miami’s Design District and the surprising success of developer Tony Goldman’s vision of a graffiti-saturated Wynwood Walls helped build the foundation for a Miami resurrection. The Perez Art Museum pays homage to the local contemporary art scene by offering exhibitions on design, minimalist art, geometric abstraction, and works by artists of Latin descent. Yet, this is merely the forefront of the recent surge of development. In fact, everywhere you look along the shores of Biscayne Bay are tall cranes and construction.
 
My entire story on the gentrification of downtown Miami can be found in the latest issue of Everett Potter’s Travel Report. 
 
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Winter Carnival Season Begins

If you love Paris in the springtime, then you’ll adore Quebec City in the wintertime, where, for 17 days, the party never stops. Quebec’s Winter Carnival (January 29-February 14) is the largest in the world, attracting more than one million people. I was one of the lucky people to arrive in this fortified city on the first day of the 2015 Winter Carnival. I spent the morning sledding down an ice chute, viewing the impressive ice castle, made from 1600 blocks of ice, eating maple syrup on snow, and playing a human game of foosball. Top DJs from Montreal and Toronto played a mesmerizing mix of hip-hop and electronica, while locals carried cane-like red sticks filled with a potent drink called Caribou, made of whiskey, red wine, and maple syrup, adding to the dancing frenzy. When Bonhomme, the popular snowman and revered host of the festivities started to boogie, the crowd went wild. For those of us who choose to embrace winter in all its snowy charm, there’s no better event than a Winter Carnival. Check out my latest column for Liftopia on "6 Winter Carnivals You Don’t Want to Miss."

 
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Bird Watching in Costa Rica

Just as divers think of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef as that ultimate diving locale, bird watchers flock to Costa Rica. In a small country the size of West Virginia, you can find more than 850 species of birdlife. Take the entire United States and combine it with Canada and you won’t come up with that many birds. And we’re not talking ordinary birds in Costa Rica like the backyard sparrow, but spectacular toucans, scarlet macaws, quetzals, 50 types of hummingbirds, and tall storks. The great multitude of birdlife in Costa Rica stems from its diverse terrain sandwiched into a sliver of Central American terrain. Within a relatively short driving distance, you can be atop 12,000 foot peaks or down at sea level on the Pacific coast, immersed in the dense rainforest or slicing through the hazy cloud forest. Sendero Tranquillo in the Cloud Forest, La Selva Biological Station, and Carara National Park are great places to start.
 

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Driving Avenue of the Giants

It’s been called the finest forest drive in the world, a 32-mile stretch of road that winds through 17,000 acres of old-growth redwood forest. The Avenue of the Giants is the primary reason people from all over the globe visit California’s Humboldt County. After experiencing the route yesterday, I can easily say that you should put it on your travel wish list, without hesitation! As soon as you veer off Highway 101 onto Avenue of the Giants (Exit 674 from the north) and stop to pick up a map, get out of the car and lost on a trail surrounded by these gargantuan patriarchs of the forest. Covered in shaggy bark with trunks the size of a Dodge Ram, you look up and it’s impossible to see the tops of these trees piercing the blue skies. At the next stop, the Drury-Chaney Grove, my brother, Jim, and I climbed atop a fallen redwood, some 15 feet above the ground, and walked a good 50 meters on that same tree. Mind-blowing. It’s hard not to feel Lilliputian dwarfed by these mega-sized giants rising from a carpet of ferns. The tall redwoods hug the road, allowing only a splinter of sunlight into the dark forest as you drive along the route. In Myers Flat, you get to take that iconic shot of driving a car through the roots of a redwood at the Drive-Thru Tree. With an opening only 7-foot wide, it was ideally suited for our Toyota Corolla rental, inches to spare on either side. 
 
Ten miles south of the southern end of the Avenue of the Giants, right off Highway 101, is one of California’s classic retreats, the Benbow Inn. Open in the summer of 1926, the Tudor estate on the shores of the Eel River soon attracted such Hollywood elite as Clark Gable and Joan Fontaine, and other luminaries like Eleanor Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover. Today, it’s still the premier address in the region, ideally suited for folks who made the 4-hour drive from San Francisco. Ask for Room 109 and you’ll get a private patio with two redwoods sprouting up from the deck, and a view of the arched stone bridge, built in 1932. Owner John Porter is a wine aficionado, so expect your dinner of nearby Shelter Cove salmon or locally sourced rack of lamb to be washed down with some of the finest wines coming out of Napa, Sonoma, even Humboldt County. 
 
 
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Say No to SeaWorld

Several years ago, I wrote a story about taking the family on a road trip along the California coast. The trip started in San Diego, where we had the pleasure to “Dine with Shamu” at SeaWorld. My kids were amazed as we had dinner watching an orca whale doing backflips right behind us. So it came as a shock when I recently read that one of my mentors in this travel writing business, Arthur Frommer, wrote, “I am ashamed. I will no longer recommend that tourists patronize the various SeaWorld parks.” In the wake of the death of trainer Dawn Brancheau, Frommer received a letter from PETA’s Debbie Leahy, an expert on captive animal issues. In the letter, Leahy noted that 21 orcas have died in U.S. SeaWorld facilities between 1986 and 2008, and not one from old age. They died from severe trauma, intestinal gangrene, acute hemorrhagic pneumonia, pulmonary abscesses, chronic kidney disease, chronic cardiovascular failure, septicemia, and influenza. She also mentioned that SeaWorld has been responsible for the deaths of numerous dolphins, including three who died last year at SeaWorld Discovery Cove in less than three weeks time.

I’m paid to write travel stories, but some times I’m simply used as a pawn so companies like SeaWorld can make a large profit. I’m reminded of a hotel in Bali that had a spectacular beach. When I learned that the hotel had crushed the coral reef to bring in their sand, I was irate. As I grow older, I get wiser and try to dig deeper so that I’m convinced that what I’m promoting is ethical. Now and again, you make a mistake, but at least I’m not the only travel writer.

I’m leaving for Kenya on Sunday on a 12-day jaunt to pen stories for five publications. Next week, I’ll share those story ideas with you. The following week, I won’t be blogging. As always, thanks for checking in!
 

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A Necessary Stop at Longwood Gardens on a College Road Trip

A word of advice. When going on a college road trip in February, focus on schools in the South. We spent last week with our daughter, Melanie, visiting six colleges in the Mid-Atlantic States and New York. At Penn State, the temperature was 8 degrees with a wind chill of -15. I thought my face was going to get frostbite at one point. But we made the most of the week, stopping at wonderful sights along the way like Longwood Gardens, a 30-minute drive north of the University of Delaware. After dealing with brutal temperatures and a far too snowy winter in Boston, you can imagine the delight we felt walking into a massive conservatorium filled to the brim with palms, ferns, colorful orchids, even a blooming indoor rose garden. We lingered happily in one section of South Pacific palms where the temperature indoors topped 80 degrees. The gardens provided the perfect blend of humidity and color, something we desperately needed during this far too painful winter. I could have easily spent the entire week here. 
 
 

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