Caskie Stinnett, former editor of Holiday and then Travel + Leisure, once said that it's never a good idea to look at a publication that one was once the editor of.
I ignored his advice Sunday and found, in the Travel section of the Sun-Sentinel, a lead story titled "Welcome to Florida." It included information on where to park for a scenic walk in Boca Raton.
I recently finished Tim Hannigan's The Travel Writing Tribe. He approaches travel writing as both a thoughtful critic and a clear-eyed enthusiast, and through his wide reading – not just of travel literature but also academic studies of it – and his penetrating interviews with a diverse group of practitioners, he shows how this sometimes disparaged genre sparkles and illuminates by borrowing elements from all of the others. It is a scholarly work written for a general audience - the first for travel writing since Abroad in 1980 - but unlike Paul Fussell, Hannigan focuses on the contemporary scene. So it's not just a brilliant book but also a hopeful one.
There was one aspect of the Djokovic visa saga that I found particularly interesting and that was his blunder on his entry form. The question was whether he had visited any countries prior to arrival in Australia and he, or rather ‘his team,’ answered “no” even though he, and his team, had been in Spain. This lie was dutifully described as an “error.”
But entry forms can be tricky. Flying into Vietnam in 1994 I was given a number of forms, per usual for a communist country, one of which asked my occupation. This seemingly straightforward question was made complicated by the fact that I was traveling on a tourist visa. So I didn’t want to write journalist, even though I was then employed by, and traveling to Vietnam for, the Sun-Sentinel. I waffled between “travel writer” and “economist” and finally went with the former. My hope was that the customs officer would see me as the harmless, insignificant creature that my colleagues back in the newsroom viewed me as.
He stamped my passport without hesitation.
We took Brightline to Miami yesterday, using the free tickets we’d received from a company representative during Miami Art Week. (We’d been enjoying a jazz concert on Flagler Street when a woman appeared handing out postcards with a barcode.)
The Fort Lauderdale station was unexpectedly busy at 10 in the morning, and included a lot of children enjoying their school holidays. At least two people were headed to a cruise ship, taking a revived form of transportation to a threatened one.
The train was 35 minutes late, possibly because of the accident a few hours earlier. South Floridians, please stop driving onto the tracks when a train is coming. When we finally boarded, we were told we could sit anywhere. We took two seats on the east side, facing south. (A surprising number of people sat in the first seats they came to, despite the fact that they faced in the wrong direction.) Our car was a little less than half full.
And soon we were gliding past familiar sights – 2nd Street, the New River, Tarpon River Brewing – places I glide past on my evening bike rides. The airport was a disappointment, as we were hemmed in on both sides by stationary freight trains. We saw the back of Dania Beach before getting a three-second view of downtown Hollywood.
Warehouses, a golf course, a tidy neighborhood of ranch houses before another back – this time of the MiMo District. The apartment buildings of Midtown, their balconies only a few feet from the train, reminded me for some reason of Italy. A long exquisite mural – Wynwood – and then the staffs of downtown condos, including Zaha Hadid’s masterwork, rose above a graffitied warehouse emblazoned with the word WOKE.
We exited the station, caught the Metro Mover to Brickell City Centre, had lunch, and took the Metro Mover back to the station, hoping to get an earlier train home. (We’d been to Miami before.) The gates wouldn’t open when we scanned our tickets; a Brightline worker told us that to change our tickets we had to see the representative at the counter.
He told us the next train, the 3:48, was full. But he’d get us on the 4:48. This seemed odd, since the latter was closer to rush hour. “That’s true,” he said. But because the 5:58 was cancelled (we had seen this on the board coming in), people were being put on earlier trains. He studied his computer while the line behind me grew. Finally, he handed me two new tickets, saying “I got you on the 3:48.”
Waiting, we watched as children, sometimes entire families, arrived in brightly colored pajamas. A few of the cars were part of the Polar Express.
Our car, #2, was not one of them. Normally dressed people took their seats. When we departed, half a dozen of them were empty.
I'm picking up our neighbors' mail while they're away, and yesterday it included the January issue of Condé Nast Traveler. Anyone hoping to find the first issue of the new year full of fascinating stories about the world will be greatly disappointed. The issue is thin with generic articles about oft-covered places: Egypt, Napa. It's as though even the editors have lost interest.
The Irish travel writer Dervla Murphy celebrated her 90th birthday this weekend. Jan Morris lived to 94, and Colin Thubron this year published a new travel book at the age of 82. Which begs the question: Is a career of travel conducive to a long life or are people of strong constitutions naturally drawn to such career?