I drove A1A to Miami Beach yesterday, at rush hour. I hit 15 red lights, a third of them while trying to get out of Fort Lauderdale. Gliding through Hollywood, Golden Sands, Sunny Isles, I found the closest thing there is on South Florida roadways to a green wave. And when I stopped, there was always something to look at: condos, shops, people in scarves, the scent of mothballs almost penetrating through my closed windows. The only thing close to a tie-up came as I entered Surfside, but it lasted only a couple of minutes, and soon I was going too fast to notice the shops and restaurants (but not the menorah in front of the Police Station).
I parked in the lot next to the Eden Roc 55 minutes after leaving home. Tourism representatives from Quebec were up on the penthouse level, standing at little round tables in geographical order, starting with Montreal and moving east. About halfway around I was told by a woman from Baie-Comeau that my French would be tested by the time I got to Isles de la Madeleine.
There is nothing like spending time with Quebecois to put your cold spell into perspective. Martin Lachance showed me pictures of his departure that morning from Montreal, the blanketing snow, the de-icing machine that his plane availed itself of twice. But it took off. Monsieur Lachance a eu de la chance.
The young man from Iles de la Madeleine was not difficult to understand. He showed me a map, and pointed out two nearby islands - Saint Pierre & Miquelon - that he said were territories of France. France had kept them, initially, for fishing rights; now, he said, there were fewer fish, but France held onto them anyway. My travel writer wheels started turning.
The December issue of Conde Nast Traveler is devoted to luxury. I know, I too thought every issue was devoted to luxury. (This is National Critique Travel Publications Week.)
A number of people - writers, designers, restaurateurs, TV personalities - tell what luxury means to them. Paul Theroux is not among them. "Luxury," he writes in Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, "is the enemy of observation, a costly indulgence that induces such a good feeling that you notice nothing. Luxury spoils and infantilizes you and prevents you from knowing the world."
Joan Juliet Buck notes "the presence of books." Frederick Vreeland suggests enthusiastic and expert guides. Matt Lauer, not surprisingly, says lack of surprise.
Pico Iyer, characteristically sane and against the grain, writes: "simplicity," echoing, in his own unabrasive way, Theroux. Patrick Symmes claims that the highest luxury is "the kind that follows traveling in hardship."
No one said: speaking the language of the country you're in. Being able to understand, and to be understood, is to me the greatest luxury. But that takes work, and time, and a willingness to be embarrassed. And in the world of five-star hotels and sumptuous spas and celebrity chefs - Conde Nastland - everybody speaks English anyway.
I've been reading Paul Theroux's Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, the book in which he revisits the scene of The Great Railway Bazaar. That book, about traveling by train through Europe and Asia, was published in 1975 and it not only made Theroux famous, it created a craze for travel books that lasted through the 80s. Then, as we all know, the memoir came along.
In Ghost Train, Theroux is 33 years older than he was when he took that first train trip, and quite a bit more introspective. But he hasn't lost his boundless curiosity, his delight in life's absurdities, his brilliant descriptive skills, his gift for maxims ("Luxury is the enemy of observation."), his I'm-here-and-you're-not love of being alone in a strange place.
But the book, while well-received by critics, has not sold nearly as well as the first one. This is sad and a bit confounding. A book that promises the story of a man who boards a train and just keeps going - especially a man like Theroux - is going to be more enlightening - and probably entertaining - than a book about someone who had a rough childhood or overcame an addiction. For most people, sure, it's not as easy to relate to, but isn't the whole point of reading (as of travel) to be transported?
The refrigerator repair man is coming this morning and I'm bracing myself for the trauma of having to buy a new fridge. It's not just the cost but the massive redecoration.
Our fridge is a global collage, postcards overlapping in such scenic profusion that sometimes I just stand and stare (and don't even bother opening the door). There are photos of friends and family ("Jim Swick for Surrogate"), but most of the images (a few attached by luggage magnets) are mementos of trips from the past decade.
There are traditional postcards (Venice, the Canal du Midi), nostalgic black-and-white ones (Vilnius, the Bristol Hotel in Warsaw), a few group shots (farm workers in Cuba, Mayan girls in Merida, masked revelers in Ecuador). There is an animal section heavy on porkers (Iowa, Arkansas) but with illustrated exotica like kangaroos and kualas (Australia).
The illustrated cards are my favorites, vintage travel posters reduced to postcard size: Napier, New Zealand; Bern, Switzerland; San Sebastian, Spain; Frisco (with beams shooting from the top of the Ferry Building tower); Acadia National Park. There are four classic Holland America cards, one in Dutch, sent by a friend in Amsterdam.
And there are two cards of paintings: one, which I bought in Brussels, shows well-dressed people sitting at a cafe; the other is of a man walking with purpose over the hills outside Dubrovnik (Ragusa). I bought it in October of 2000 and still remember what I wrote on the back: "Your humble travel writer in pursuit of his story."
Yesterday morning, two days after the U.S. Navy dropped crates of Spam onto the disabled Carnival Splendor, I drove to Fort Lauderdale beach to watch the arrival of Allure of the Seas.
When I arrived, it sat out in the ocean, seemingly motionless. In front of the Point of the Americas condos, more than a hundred people were gathered; some had climbed the jetty where a few of them had set up tripods. The channel was busy with pleasure craft, police boats, tug boats, and one lone kayaker bobbing back and forth on the waves.
Helicopters buzzed overhead, and a small plane trailed a message: "Fort Lauderdale (Heart) Allure of the Seas. Somebody obviously didn't read my blog. A formation of pelicans flew low, focused on fish.
After the departure of the Discovery, around 8:45, the blob on the horizon came into focus. About a hundred yards offshore it let off a blast of its foghorn, and the tugs - looking like chihuahuas at the feet of an elephant - shot up plumes of water.
Slowly, it filled the channel, its multi-story windows reflecting the Point of the Americas condo. Balcony against balcony. The people on the beach cheered and waved, while passengers and crew - lining the prow and leaning on railings - waved in return.
As the ship made its way into Port Everglades its stern was revealed, with its great gash of an opening into the atrium. It was such an odd sight at the back of a ship, eliciting something of the strange feeling you have walking through a stadium tunnel and finding the outdoors contained indoors. The tall opening looked to be bordered by rock climbing walls, though no one was climbing.
Slowly, the people on the beach drifted away, back to their offices, hotels, homes. At mine I showed Hania the pictures I'd taken.
"That's a lot of Spam," she said.
Tomorrow morning the Allure of the Seas will sail into Fort Lauderdale with its self-referential name (as in I'm Your Allure of the Seas, Baby). Because no one drawn to the ocean would ever book a cruise on a 16-deck ship that contains an amphitheater, cantilevered whirlpools, and a facsimile of Central Park. The whole purpose of Allure of the Seas is to get passengers to forget the sea.
Royal Caribbean really didn't need to go to so much trouble. In the early 90s - long before floating rock climbing walls (what an odd sounding four words) - I went on a cruise in the Caribbean. One evening, standing outside and watching the sunset, I noticed that I was the only spectator. Walking down to my cabin a few minutes later I passed the entrance to the dining room, where couples stood waiting to have their pictures taken in front of a painting of a sunset.