Top Travel Days of 2025, Seeing the Caillebotte Show at the Getty Center


When I worked full-time as a travel writer, I tried my best to help promote cities after devastating circumstances reduced tourism in those destinations dramatically. I visited New York after 9/11, New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and Nairobi after a horrific mall bombing scared many travelers away. And there I was again in early April, this time in LA after wildfires destroyed the communities of the Pacific Palisades and Altadena. Unless you make a concerted effort to drive to those neighborhoods, you really didn’t see the impact the fires made on those regions of the city. But you certainly felt it when talking to people who live in LA. It seems like everyone knew someone sadly affected by this latest disaster.

The city was a glorious escape from the cold out East, with uninterrupted sunshine and temperatures reaching the upper 70s. We dropped our luggage off in our spacious suite at the Maybourne Beverly Hills, where every room has recently been renovated and its rooftop restaurant, Dante, is one of the hardest reservations to get in the city. We headed over to the Farmers Market, where I used to have meetings as a budding screenwriter, to dine on tasty Trejo’s Tacos, owned by actor Danny Trejo. Then we walked some ten minutes to the LACMA, which housed three excellent exhibitions on Mesoamerican Art, African bead art, and an Asian calligraphy show where the artists used abstraction to create exciting ink-based canvases.

This only whet our appetite for the Caillebotte retrospective the next morning at The Getty Center, the real impetus for making our way to LA. On its first stop before heading to the Art Institute of Chicago this past summer, the show was a mesmerizing look at the changing boulevards and bridges of Paris through the eyes of this gifted painter. Under clear blue skies, the Getty looked better than ever, especially walking around the gardens in bloom, before viewing the Getty’s permanent collection and its bounty of riches. The weather was so sublime that we next headed to Santa Monica Pier, rented bikes, and cruised along the ocean on the bike trail to Venice. Heavenly!

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Roots on the Rails Finally Heads East

Vermont might be gearing up for the fall foliage crowds, but the real party starts on Saturday, November 7th. That’s when Roots on the Rails, known for its train rides out West that feature live music performances, is staging its first Vermont trip. The round-trip train ride, which is four-hours each way, will climb over the Green Mountains, past covered bridges, villages, farms and gorges while guests listen to folk and indie rock artists perform 45-minute sets. The line-up includes Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Syd Straw, Winterpills, and the Meadow Brothers. The rest of the weekend package includes performances and receptions off the train at locations in Bellows Falls and Saxtons River, with lodging at the Saxtons River Inn. Packages for the weekend run from $429 to $889 per person and space is limited to 60 patrons.

 
 
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Art From Maine’s Top Museums On Display at Portland Museum of Art

The rugged and raw beauty of Maine has been a lure to many of America’s foremost landscape artists. Thomas Cole, founder of the Hudson River School, first visited Mount Desert Island in 1844. When he returned home to New York with a bounty of canvases, Cole’s affluent patrons were astounded by the mix of mountains and sea. Man versus the chaotic forces of nature, particularly fishermen struggling against powerful nor’easters, kept Winslow Homer busy on the boulder-strewn shores of Prouts Neck for more than two decades. In the 1920s, Georgia O’Keeffe, Marsden Hartley, and other early American abstractionists from Alfred Stieglitz’s 291 Gallery joined John Marin to work at his summer cottage in Deer Isle. 

 
This summer, the Portland Museum of Art is taking full advantage of this bevy of work to present Directors’ Cut: Selections from the Maine Art Museum Trail that includes signature pieces from Maine’s most-renowned art museums. On view from May 21 through September 20, the show will bring the best art Maine has to offer together for the first time. All of these museums are part of the Maine Art Museum Trail. To celebrate the exhibition and the route, Summer Feet Cycling, who I biked with on my 50th birthday, will present a weeklong ride along the coast that visits all 8 museums on the Maine Art Trail. This includes stops at Homer’s former art studio in Prouts Neck, a visit to Andrew Wyeth’s Olson House in Port Clyde, and a requisite day on Monhegan Island, where Robert Henri, Edward Hopper, George Bellows, and Rockwell Kent all painted the island’s cliffs, meadows, and quaint fishing communities. The dates are June 21-27 and September 6-12. Cost is $2595 per person, including lodging, bike rental, guides, van support, museum admission, and most meals.
 
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A Must-Stop at Philly’s Magic Gardens

I finally made it to Isaiah Zagar’s monumental mosaic masterpiece, the Magic Gardens, on my latest visit to Philadelphia two weeks ago. Spanning half a block on South Street (between 10th and 11th Streets), Zagar started working on these vacant lots in 1994. Using folk art, found objects like bicycle tires, colorful glass bottles, and thousands of handmade tiles and glittering mirrors, Zagar created one of the most unique public artworks in America. Stroll in and out of the stairwells looking at the dramatic colors, reflections, and figurative works. You’ll be thankful that the neighborhood stood up for Zagar and his work once the landlord of the property found out what he had done and wanted to dismantle the massive sculpture in 2002. The nonprofit is now used for mosaic workshops, community outreach, and talks with the 79-year-old artist. Magic Gardens is open to the public Wednesdays through Mondays 11 am to 6 pm; cost is $10 for adults, $8 for students. 

 
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Wish You Were Here

Having spent half my childhood listening to Pink Floyd on my headphones, I’m incredibly excited by the following news. Starting tomorrow at London’s V&A Museum is a blockbuster exhibition on the band titled “Pink Floyd: Their Mortal Remains.” The show traces Pink Floyd’s origins from the 60s London psychedelic scene, when they were house band at the UFO nightclub, through landmark albums like “The Dark Side of the Moon” and “The Wall.” On display are scores of instruments, letters, items of clothing and other artifacts, as well as some impressively large installations, like a replica of London’s Battersea Power Station, the structure that appears with the flying pig on the cover of the band’s 1977 album “Animals.” Yes, the pig is also on display. There’s a hint of nostalgia to the show, which comes 50 years after the release of Pink Floyd’s first album, “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn,” recorded at Abbey Road Studios the same time The Beatles were creating “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” in the next room. The exhibition will be at the V&A through October 1st. 

 
‘Animals’, album cover art, Roger Waters, 1977. © Pink Floyd Music Ltd
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Seeing the Art of Cape Town

On our first full day in Cape Town, Lisa and I took the sage advice of a South African art collector and hired Stephen Long as our guide for the day. Stephen is well known in the Cape Town arts community (and to the shaman of the Eastern Cape) as one of the most renowned bead dealers in the region. Many of the beads you find in the beadwork of South African art is actually imported from Venice, the Czech Republic, and now China. Our first stop was the South African National Gallery, where we viewed activist art created during the oppressive apartheid regime. One of the most disturbing pieces is the three life-sized figures with horns and no mouths called The Butcher Boys, created in plaster by Jane Alexander.

Then it was time see some of the impressive local crafts found in the city. The Gallery Shop, on bustling Church Street (48), is a gem of a small store selling colorfully beaded jewelry, sculpture, wall hangings, pillowcases, and more. Owner Lorin Strieman used to run the gift shop at the Natioanl Gallery and she has a great eye for contemporary South African craft. It’s hard not to purchase all the whimsical beaded animals at Monkeybiz. The pieces were created by impoverished, HIV-positive women who were trained as artists to make a living. It was wonderful to walk upstairs and see all these women sitting together and laughing while creating art. Just as alluring is the work at Streetwires, where sculpture of all sizes is created by wire and bead. Like Monkeybiz, you can walk upstairs to see the large group of artists at work. Bags in hand from all the goods we purchased, we visited the colorful houses and mosques found in the nearby Bo-Kaap neighborhood still home to a large Cape Malay population. All of our purchases are now back at our house, cherished from our memorable day with Stephen. We’re happy to pass along his contact information to anyone who’s interested in hiring him for the day. 

 
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My Grandfather’s Sketchbooks Still Inspire Me to Travel

Guest Post and Photo by Amy Perry Basseches

My grandparents were inveterate world travelers — and Grandpa, an architect, was always sketching and painting wherever they went. Framed examples of his watercolors have graced every place I’ve lived. In Boston, our home displayed Pisa (1955), Nara (1959), Crete (1960), and Florida (1977). Now, in Toronto, Josh and I have Venice’s Rialto Bridge on the wall (1954). It was not only the sketchbooks, but gifts from afar that entertained me as a child. With Grandma and Grandpa’s help, I gathered a large collection of dolls from other countries, learning early on that the world was a big, diverse place that I wanted to understand more. I suppose you could say my love of travel and exploration was instilled by them. 
 
Recently, in September, I was looking through a pile of Grandpa’s sketchbooks which I hold for all relatives as part of the family archives. Believe it or not, I found pencil drawings and watercolors of places to which I would travel a month later: Grandpa’s "Newfoundland, 1977." Indeed, in early October, I saw the Bonavista Lighthouse he depicted. Further, I found a notebook entitled "Japan, 1959," and, after pausing to wonder what led my grandparents to Japan at that particular time, I decided to ask my niece whether she had been to any of the named sites. She and her partner were on a 2-week trip to Japan last summer when they became engaged. All seven of the great-grandchildren should have Grandpa’s artwork on their walls, I thought, to inspire even more generations to experience the larger world.
 
Grandma and Grandpa were first generation Americans (born to immigrants from Russia and Lithuania as the 1800s turned to the 1900s), and raised in New York City. Grandpa was the youngest of eight. Amazingly, both went on to college and graduate school. 100 years later, their curiosity, pluck, and sense of adventure still motivates me, and lives on through Grandpa’s sketches and watercolors.