Planning Your Post-Coronavirus Trip

A dead-of-winter rite is ordering a bunch of seed packets and visualizing spring planting. With COVID-19 still ravaging the world, summer travel brochures are the new Burpee catalogues. Another mind game to occupy your mind during quarantine is contemplating an overseas adventure. Here are some places that are beyond the usual.

I once lived across from the playing field!

Tours of New Zealand often bypass its capital city of Wellington because its airport is too small and too windy for today’s big jets. Grab a domestic flight and go there. I’m biased after living there for a time, but it’s a hidden gem. Pack good walking shoes as it’s hilly enough to make San Francisco seem like Iowa. Wellington’s cable car system is actually used by commuters. Take it to the very top and linger in the botanical gardens. Check out the “Beehive,” which is unique among national capitals. Wellington is also the home of Te Papa Museum, often has leaping dolphins in its harbor, and sports neighborhoods catering to all tastes. Cuba Street isn’t as countercultural as it was in the Sixties, but echoes remain. It’s also a cool café town, has a vibrant arts community, and is home to both Victoria University and filmmaker Peter Jackson’s Weta Studios.  

So very Dutch

Thinking of Amsterdam? Go, but don’t forget The Hague, another capital city that doesn’t get a lot of love. The Hague is well worth a day or two. Like most Dutch cities, it is spotless and there are lovely strolls through and around gardens, palaces, ponds, old churches, monuments, and parks. There’s even a beach, though I don’t recommend North Sea sunbathing. Its big draws are its museums, including the wonderful Mauritshaus, where you can feast on Rembrandt, Hals, Vermeer, and Dutch Golden Age painters, but also modernists and surrealists. It also has terrific public art and cultural events. If you wonder why it’s called The Hague, it’s because it’s a collection of towns that fused as a city.

Hidden delight

Portugal is still overlooked among European travelers. If you go—and you should—don’t restrict your trip to Lisbon. Obidos is just an hour away, but this small town (just over 11,000) is a journey back to the Middle Ages. It’s a white-washed beauty mostly contained by thick medieval walls, many of which you can climb. (Be careful. There are few guardrails and often the pathways are narrow.) Scrumptious pastries, a delicious cherry liqueur special to the region, beautiful tiles, and lots of history make Obidos a delightful visit. There are also tourist shops with a higher quality of items than the ordinary.

Crusader fortress

Can you go wrong on any of the Greek islands? Well, maybe Mykonos, which is crawling with pasty British tourists. My favorite, though, is Rhodes, whose Colossus (now vanished) was one of the Seven Ancient Wonders of the World. You can get in touch with your inner Crusader on Rhodes. Other than Carcassonne in France—another to put on your bucket list—you’d be hard-pressed to find a better example of a medieval walled city. Some have said the appearance of this World Heritage site is not “authentic,” but its fortress is as close as you can get without a time machine. Plus, there is ancient, Ottoman, and Jewish history to discover. 

Be prepared to eat

France? By all means go to Paris, but don’t neglect Lyons. It’s where the Rhone and Saone rivers merge, and where terraces of hillside churches and bluffs provide gorgeous panoramas of the waterways at your feet and the Alps in the distance. You will find art, design, ethnic, history, and science museums galore, impressive cathedrals, unusual markets, Roman ruins, and the home where the Lumiere brothers birthed the film industry. Best of all, Lyons is a haven for foodies. Some of its best restaurants are in Vieux Lyons, a Renaissance-vintage section at the foot of Fourviere Hill. Lyons earns its status as a UNESCO World Heritage city.

Tranquility along the Mersey

Unless you’re on a Beatles tour, Liverpool isn’t high on anyone’s must-see list. But Port Sunlight is a reason to venture nearby. This village of fewer than 1,500 souls is where Lever Brothers­–now Unilever–set up a corporate utopian experiment in 1887, named for their popular soap product. Corporate benevolence faded in the 1980s, but Port Sunlight remains a sylvan bubble within an otherwise gritty postindustrial corridor. When you get off the train at Bebington, litter and seediness are all around. Then you walk through a tunnel to the Port Sunlight side and everything is green and tidy as a pin. Lever Brothers built all manner of amenities for workers: parks, wetlands, sturdy brick row homes, free schools, a swimming pool, and even a temperance hotel. The goal was to educate, Christianize, and elevate workers. The crowning jewel is the Lady Lever Art Gallery, which features Pre-Raphaelite paintings of such quality that you’d need to ferry across the Mersey to Liverpool to see anything that rivals it.

Xi Valley

I was underwhelmed by China, a nation hell-bent on obliterating its past in the name of generic modernity. One exception, though, is the Xi Valley. Cruise down the river that cuts through sugarloaf mountains, small villages, and riverside fields tended according to time-honored methods. In no time, you will understand every Chinese watercolor you’ve ever seen. You can also sample snake wine if you can get past the pickled poisonous serpent in the bottle. I didn’t. I couldn’t.

Take that Sydney!

Valencia always staggers visitors to Spain. It’s the place to eat to eat paella, is filled with its own blend of Gothic architecture, has nearly two dozen museums, and is home to vestiges of Roman, Muslim, and medieval cultures. It even has a sunny Mediterranean beach and holds what seems to be some sort of festival every week. But what really grabs the eye is its City of Arts and Sciences. Until 1957, the Turia River periodically flooded the city, leaving swaths of death and destruction. That year, the city diverted the flow of the river around rather than through the city. Twelve kilometers of old riverbed is now a sunken park whose greenery is strategically offset by some of the world’s most innovative architecture. You can see jaw-dropping examples from such masters as Felix Candela and Santiago Calatrava. The latter’s opera house puts the one in Sydney to shame. It’s what you get if you crossed a hooded cobra with a bicycle helmet.

The hills are alive...

Switzerland has many charms, but to get your full Heidi on, head for the village of Gruyeres, as in the cheese. Pig out on raclettes, paving stones of cheese that come with a tableside contraption that melts it for easy schmears on your delivery device of choice. There is a castle, an arts center, loads of eateries, and stunning scenery, including mountainside pasturelands. Plan your visit well and part of the journey involves a narrow-gauge open car train that wends through Alpine villages, where school children and shoppers hop on and off.

Shetlands most colorful residents

If that’s not rural enough for you, try Scotland’s Shetland Islands where you can get up close and personal with puffins at Sumburgh Head near the airport. Rent a car because the Shetlands are all about nature. It lies 110 miles north of the rest of Scotland and consists of over 100 islands, just 16 of which are inhabited. Oddly, its biggest island is called Mainland, where one finds Lerwick, its only sizable settlement whose 7,000 residents make up one-third of those who live in the Shetlands. As you might expect, not much happens on the isles—unless you go in winter for Up Helly Aa, a Viking fire festival. The Shetlands are definitely more Norse than Scottish. Be independent; it can be hard to find decent food, but the pubs and beer are warm, there is amazing music to be heard, and Iron Age culture to explore.

Rob Weir