The Glass Hotel Too Ambitious

The Glass Hotel (2020)

By Emily St. John Mandel

Alfred A. Knopf, 320 pages

★★★

Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven was one of my favorite books of 2014, hence I was excited to score a copy of her latest, The Glass Hotel. Mandel is an imaginative writer, but if I might toss a few pebbles at her glass domicile, imagination alone can’t carry a novel. The Glass Hotel has sublime moments, but it’s also one of those books that the more you think about it, the more its holes become apparent.

The book’s central characters are Vincent Smith, a woman named for poet Edna St. Vincent Millay; Paul, her half-brother; and investor Jonathan Alkaitis, who is patterned on Bernie Madoff.  Each is, in his or her own way, a person adrift. Vincent is beautiful, smart, and adaptive, but also impulsive and, in many ways, carries her blue-haired 13-year-old rebellious self into adulthood. Paul is a composer/musician who might have some talent, but he’s seldom off drugs long enough for it to shine for more than a brief moment.  If you recall Bernie Madoff, you can probably sketch Alkaitis’ character—a smooth operator who can be charming and persuasive, but has the morality of a carrion crow.

The three paths cross at the Hotel Caiette, a glass jewel tucked away in a section of British Columbia so remote that it’s a half hour boat ride to the nearest village. (It is apparently based on Quatsino on Vancouver Island.) Why build a luxury hotel in such an out-of-the-way place? That’s what the first owner ended up thinking before selling it to Alkaitis. If you recall the days after Y2K (which makes a cameo in the novel), high-powered executives occasionally sought solace from their workaholic drudgery in Robert Bly camps, golf vacations, and private retreats. Paul has gone there to escape trouble, Vincent because she sort of drifted there, and assorted guests because they are, hope to be, or keep their distance from Alkaitis.

Paul manages to screw things up, as he always does, but when we move the clock ahead to 2005, Vincent is living with Jonathan, who divorced his wife Suzanne. Business associates assume that the 28-year-old Vincent is Jonathan’s trophy wife, because that’s what older men like he collected. Vincent sees no reason to disabuse them of that notion, as she’s in the phase of her life she calls “a fairy tale.” And so it is—sort of. She meets Mirella, who also has a sugar daddy for a season, a Saudi prince who invests with Alkaitis; and Leon Prevant, an older gentleman, and his wife Miranda. Either at the hotel or later, readers also meet others who circle around Jonathan: painter Olivia Collins, who knew his late brother, also a painter; loud mouthed Lenny Xavier, his largest client; and a swath of others. There are also several who don’t fall for Jonathan’s pitch, psychic Clarissa, and Chicago business woman Ella Kaspersky, who finds the numbers she’s seeing on Jonathan’s investments too good to be true. She’s right, of course; it was all a Ponzi scheme. If this all sounds a bit like a Tom Wolfe or Jonathan Frazen novel, it’s a bit more than that—sometimes in good ways and sometimes not.

Once the house of cards tumbles, the resulting wreckage takes its toll on both investors and Alkaitis associates such as Oskar, Harvey, Joelle, and Enrico. Some will fall by the wayside and others adjust from luxury to life among the lower working class. Vincent takes everything in stride, so for her it’s merely an exchange of a fairy tale for life aboard a container ship—owned by a firm Leon used to control—a job as ship’s cook, and a new lover. As he’s serving an impossible sentence of 170s years in jail, Jonathan begins to imagine his “counterlife,” as do several other characters. At key moments in the book, ghosts appear. Are they actual ghosts, or metaphorical ones?

The answer to that question is left to the reader. It’s fair for an imaginative novelist to offer fodder for imaginative readers. I’m less inclined, though, to overlook other lacunae. There is, for instance, a digressive chapter in which the book jumps ahead to the year 2029, where we find Simone—who, as a newly hired secretary, helped Alkaitis shred documents—tell her secretary about her role in saving documents that brought down her boss. There is also a side tale involving Leon’s temp job: as a consultant investigating Vincent’s disappearance. If you’re keeping score, you’ve surmised that there are a lot of characters in the book. Add a bunch more I’ve not mentioned, the details of various lives in different time periods, ghosts, and explorations of those who invent and reinvent themselves and you have a book with an epic sprawl crammed into around 300 pages.

All of this means that more than ghosts are ambiguous. Credit goes to Mandel for making the book as tight as it can be, but leaks invariably spring along the way. To pick just one missing element, morality gets but a wink and a nod. Perhaps Mandel thinks that it can be assumed, but I’m not sure she really addresses the question by showing angry investors one moment and selected fallout the next. One might, for example, feel some sympathy for post-crash Alkaitis. I came away thinking that Mandel needed either to pare the story or write another 150 pages. This glass hotel exposes frauds like Alkaitis and Paul, but draws the curtains on deeper questions.   

Rob Weir

Valentine One of Best Novels of 2020

Valentine: A Novel

By Elizabeth Wetmore

HarperCollins, 320 pages

★★★★★

Move aside Cormac McCarthy and Larry McMurty, there’s a new gun in town and she looks at Texas with her rose-colored glasses left in the glove compartment. Elizabeth Wetmore’s Valentine is a stunning debut about hard truths and hard living in the unforgiving Permian Basin of West Texas. As one character describes it, it’s “eighty thousand square miles of the same old, same old….”

Lord Byron once wrote, “Love will find a way through paths where wolves fear to prey.” Okay, how does he feel about snakes? Wetmore’s West Texas is a place where everything thing that slithers can be found—often curled up by your kid’s bicycle—and three of ‘em are poisonous. Or five if we add Gila monsters and scorpions. Only pumpjacks and dusty towns break the monotony of a landscape whose human population is dominated by roughnecks, rednecks, sexual predators, drunks, and the desperate. Wetmore sets most of her story on or around Valentine’s Day. The year is 1976; oil and football are about the only reasons anyone would wish to be living in the recession-blasted town of Penwell, a strip of nothing southwest of Odessa and Midland.

The story unfolds when 14-year-old Gloria Ramirez gets in a truck with Dale Strickland. Before the evening is out, he brutalizes and rapes her. When he falls asleep, Gloria sneaks out and walks across several miles of desert scrubland to the nearest house, that of Mary Rose Whitehead. Mary Rose has a small daughter and another on the way. At first she doesn’t want to get involved, as her husband Robert is away tending their cattle and their home is remote. But when she sees what has been done to Gloria, she relents, calls the police, and even pulls a rifle on Dale when he comes looking for his “girlfriend.” Little does she know that her reluctant act of decency will tear apart her life and community.

The men of the area–including Robert–will themselves to believe Gloria deserved her fate; she willingly got in the truck, after all, and everyone knows that Mexican girls are promiscuous. They are sure that she simply had a bad case of buyer’s regret, and that Dale should apologize and everyone should move on. Even women at Mary Rose’s church feel this way. But Mary Rose knows better and isn’t going to play along. Things get so hot for her that she has to move into town as it’s unsafe on the ranch, a decision that leaves her further estranged from Robert.

Mary Rose’s neighbors are an interesting lot. There’s Corrine, a retired school teacher, grieving over her husband Potter’s death by pickling herself with booze; busybody Suzanne who leaves Corrine casseroles that she dumps in the garbage; and 11-year-old Debra Ann “D.A.” Pierce whose mother Ginny took off a few years ago–around Valentine’s Day, natch. D.A.’s dad works long hours in the oil fields and D.A. is practically feral, though she befriends and tries to help Jesse Belden. He is a Vietnam vet from Tennessee who is “skinny as ocotillo branches” and down on his luck. He lives in a drain pipe and appreciates the small gifts D.A. brings him.

To say that West Texas is hard on women–and this is very much a book told from a woman’s perspective–is an understatement. There are snakes, chiggers, tornadoes, sexism, and way too much religion. It’s a place where a girl considers herself lucky if she makes to 12 “before some man or boy, or well-intentioned woman” informs her why she was “put on this earth.” Violence is all around and those who can follow Ginny’s example and get out. Karla, a young waitress with a daughter, poses a riddle with a distressing answer: “What do you call a single mother who has to be up early in the morning? A sophomore.”

Valentine’s Day is harrowing and unforgettable. It is also unusual in that it has several endings, not just one. I’m usually unmoved by book jackets, but that of Valentine’s Day is perfect: sage brush, oil derricks, leaning telephone poles, ominous skies, and vast nothingness. Coyotes dare to prey in the desert, but they are the sinewy, skinny poor cousins of the kind of wolves Bryon had in mind. Wetmore’s West Texas is like a suburb of hell. I ran that metaphor past a good friend who lived in Texas. Her response: “You have no idea. That might be overly kind.”

I will take her at her word rather than checking out the area for myself. I will, however, heartily recommend that you check out Valentine. It is one of the best novels of 2020.

Rob Weir

Valentine One of Best Novels of 2020

Valentine: A Novel

By Elizabeth Wetmore

HarperCollins, 320 pages

★★★★★

Move aside Cormac McCarthy and Larry McMurty, there’s a new gun in town and she looks at Texas with her rose-colored glasses left in the glove compartment. Elizabeth Wetmore’s Valentine is a stunning debut about hard truths and hard living in the unforgiving Permian Basin of West Texas. As one character describes it, it’s “eighty thousand square miles of the same old, same old….”

Lord Byron once wrote, “Love will find a way through paths where wolves fear to prey.” Okay, how does he feel about snakes? Wetmore’s West Texas is a place where everything thing that slithers can be found—often curled up by your kid’s bicycle—and three of ‘em are poisonous. Or five if we add Gila monsters and scorpions. Only pumpjacks and dusty towns break the monotony of a landscape whose human population is dominated by roughnecks, rednecks, sexual predators, drunks, and the desperate. Wetmore sets most of her story on or around Valentine’s Day. The year is 1976; oil and football are about the only reasons anyone would wish to be living in the recession-blasted town of Penwell, a strip of nothing southwest of Odessa and Midland.

The story unfolds when 14-year-old Gloria Ramirez gets in a truck with Dale Strickland. Before the evening is out, he brutalizes and rapes her. When he falls asleep, Gloria sneaks out and walks across several miles of desert scrubland to the nearest house, that of Mary Rose Whitehead. Mary Rose has a small daughter and another on the way. At first she doesn’t want to get involved, as her husband Robert is away tending their cattle and their home is remote. But when she sees what has been done to Gloria, she relents, calls the police, and even pulls a rifle on Dale when he comes looking for his “girlfriend.” Little does she know that her reluctant act of decency will tear apart her life and community.

The men of the area–including Robert–will themselves to believe Gloria deserved her fate; she willingly got in the truck, after all, and everyone knows that Mexican girls are promiscuous. They are sure that she simply had a bad case of buyer’s regret, and that Dale should apologize and everyone should move on. Even women at Mary Rose’s church feel this way. But Mary Rose knows better and isn’t going to play along. Things get so hot for her that she has to move into town as it’s unsafe on the ranch, a decision that leaves her further estranged from Robert.

Mary Rose’s neighbors are an interesting lot. There’s Corrine, a retired school teacher, grieving over her husband Potter’s death by pickling herself with booze; busybody Suzanne who leaves Corrine casseroles that she dumps in the garbage; and 11-year-old Debra Ann “D.A.” Pierce whose mother Ginny took off a few years ago–around Valentine’s Day, natch. D.A.’s dad works long hours in the oil fields and D.A. is practically feral, though she befriends and tries to help Jesse Belden. He is a Vietnam vet from Tennessee who is “skinny as ocotillo branches” and down on his luck. He lives in a drain pipe and appreciates the small gifts D.A. brings him.

To say that West Texas is hard on women–and this is very much a book told from a woman’s perspective–is an understatement. There are snakes, chiggers, tornadoes, sexism, and way too much religion. It’s a place where a girl considers herself lucky if she makes to 12 “before some man or boy, or well-intentioned woman” informs her why she was “put on this earth.” Violence is all around and those who can follow Ginny’s example and get out. Karla, a young waitress with a daughter, poses a riddle with a distressing answer: “What do you call a single mother who has to be up early in the morning? A sophomore.”

Valentine’s Day is harrowing and unforgettable. It is also unusual in that it has several endings, not just one. I’m usually unmoved by book jackets, but that of Valentine’s Day is perfect: sage brush, oil derricks, leaning telephone poles, ominous skies, and vast nothingness. Coyotes dare to prey in the desert, but they are the sinewy, skinny poor cousins of the kind of wolves Bryon had in mind. Wetmore’s West Texas is like a suburb of hell. I ran that metaphor past a good friend who lived in Texas. Her response: “You have no idea. That might be overly kind.”

I will take her at her word rather than checking out the area for myself. I will, however, heartily recommend that you check out Valentine. It is one of the best novels of 2020.

Rob Weir

Pushing the Envelope--in a Good Way

Pushing the Envelope: Art in the Time of Pandemic

PULP Gallery (Holyoke, MA)

https://www.pulpholyoke.com/pushing-the-envelope

Michael Manlese

 

These days, two things strike me. The first is the way creative people find ways to keep their creative juices flowing and (hopefully) make a little money in the process. Actors offer online lessons, musicians hold house concerts for tips, and writers have taken to social media to publicize their works.

I’ve also noticed how I have begun to pay increased attention to small things. To get to the point at hand, I recall that in the 1970s a Montana company called the Wretched Mess News used to sell whimsical envelopes that resonated with countercultural values. Of course, folks also made their own mailers out of glossy magazines and proceeded to decorate them or illustrate a conventional envelope.

Maryanne Benns

These two threads come together in the perfect little exhibit for our times. The PULP Art Gallery in Holyoke has a wonderful display of envelope-sized art—some of it sent under separate cover and others that are literal envelopes delivered via U.S. Mail. COVID-19 has sent us scurrying into isolation, but the PULP Website (address above) is actually a very good way to see the works if you can’t get to Holyoke or are nervous about public spaces. (Holyoke infection rates remain high, so count me among those not ready to venture to PULP’s Race Street gallery.)

Let me return to why online is perhaps a better way to “see” the art. When gallery co-owner Dean Brown announced the idea for the exhibit, he was swamped with submissions from both locals and artists spread across North America. Seeing this much small art cheek-by-jowl in one space runs the risk of overwhelming viewers. It can produce what I call the kaleidoscope effect—bright swirls and shapes that meld into each other in an oh-wow fashion, but which also become indistinguishable. Viewing them online slows us down in good ways. Each work—in alphabetical categories though not alphabetical within them—displays individually. You can linger over those you particularly like, blow them up for detail, and move on if the style isn’t your cup of tea.

Gail G

Scooter fein

As for style, you name it and it’s in evidence. There are plenty that evoke the psychedelia vibe of the 60s and 70s. These (gulp!) project a throwback feel that makes them the “vintage” selections of the exhibit. Others are absurdist, surrealistic, architectural, representational, abstract, geometric, and cartoonish; themes include nature, cityscapes, still life, animals, home–you name it. Quite a few embody themes for the pandemic such as fear and hope; others are literally the work of children with all their charm and naivete. Media include ink, watercolor, crayon, collage, pencil, and more. Locals might see similarity between the work at PULP and that in Northampton’s Anchor House of Arts. Likewise, they might recognize names such as Mark Brown, Amy Johnquest, Tekla McInerney, and Michael Tillyer. (Full disclosure: Tekla is a friend.) But another great thing about an online exhibit is that you need not know a soul to discover those with whom you share aesthetic kinship.

I have posted a few images—mostly chosen at random—to whet your appetite. Enough from me; log on, dive in, and enjoy. If you see something you like, just $70 buys it and all proceeds go to the artist.

Rob Weir

Tekla McInenery 

 

Eliza Lanzi

Occupy Instead of Tearing Down

And what will they do when monuments they care about come down?

If you were a psychiatrist treating a trauma patient, would you chemically induce amnesia in that patient? Of course not! It would be unethical to wipe clean a person’s entire memory in the name of expunging a troubling aspect of it.

For the past several years I have researched and lectured on the phenomenon of removing objectionable monuments. In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, Richmond removed Robert E. Lee from his pedestal on Monument Avenue. The nearby city of Fredericksburg has prised from the ground a slave auction block. It may surprise you to learn that I am (semi-) opposed to such actions.

Before I delve into why, let me assure you that I have never said a kind word about the Confederacy in my life. History books should treat Robert E. Lee the same way they treat another infamous traitor: Benedict Arnold. I also think guys who drive around with Confederate flags on their trucks are lowlife jerks. There are some cases in which monuments with troublesome pasts should be relocated. There is, for example, no excuse for having a statue of a known Klansman sitting outside a courthouse where African Americans register to vote. Whenever possible, though, I think it is wiser to “occupy” objectionable symbols rather than closet them.

Let’s revisit the amnesia analogy. Good historians encourage a dialogue with the past, as in considering two or more perspectives. Monologues are dangerous. Consider that a majority of Americans get no formal history education past high school. Even many college graduates have taken but a single required course. Remove symbols of the past and it will be even more difficult to redress what led to their production in the first place. They need to be occupied and displayed within a historical context for the possibility of learning to occur. I’ve never seen the Fredericksburg auction block, but I have seen the sites of slave markets in Charleston, SC and Savannah, GA. They are powerful and deeply disturbing.

Some, usually younger folks, have asked me why such sites should be preserved. My answer is that we should never forget the injustices and horrors of the past. After all, “lest we forget” is the rationale for erecting war monuments. It is the reason why hundreds of Holocaust museums and memorials are found across Europe. (There are at least 83 in the United States and scores more elsewhere.) There are those who ask why anyone would wish to preserve a concentration camp–until they visit Auschwitz. Then they know why. To understand, we need to look ugliness square in the face, not look away or lock it way.

Why? Because amnesia is too easy. Once we forget the past, lessons go out the window. A good friend of mine is involved in efforts to erect a Kent State memorial. Maybe you know that some college kids were killed. Great. When? Why? What were their names? What happened next? Bonus points if you can name any of the wounded. (My friend was one of them.) To antifa protestors, do you think there might be some lessons in Kent State for today?

You should all answer that last question–especially if you fancy yourself a liberal. There are those in Ohio who find the idea of a Kent State memorial “objectionable.” The great conceit of wanting to tearing down anything is that such decisions are by nature ideological. Why do liberals assume that their ideals will prevail? You can appeal to “justice” or “morality” and I will agree with you, but it’s still an ideological position and we suffer from serious amnesia when we become sure that being “right” is all that matters.

There was a time in the very recent past when Richmond residents objected to a statue of Abraham Lincoln along its riverfront. It was defaced numerous times and was frequently the focal point for pro-Confederacy and anti-civil rights rallies. Does anyone recall the brouhaha over the decision to erect a statue of black tennis pro Arthur Ashe on Monument Avenue? Remember Paul LePage, the former governor of Maine? He ordered the removal of a mural depicting Frances Perkins on the grounds that she was anti-capitalist. Actually, she was the first woman to serve in a president’s Cabinet; she was Franklin Roosevelt’s Secretary of Labor.

If that doesn’t scare you, consider the effort of far-right groups bent upon tearing down a statue of Barack Obama in New Orleans that replaced one of Jefferson Davis. They couldn’t tear it down because it didn’t exist in the first place! More recently such groups expressed their outrage at a life-sized bronze of the former president in the White House. That doesn’t exist either. But you can count on the fact that as soon as there is a statue of the 44^th president somewhere, thousands will object. Then we must ask, who gets to say what is torn down and what stays?

I could cite dozens more examples, but it comes back to the same place: Monologues are dangerous. Even if we are yelling at each other, we are at least talking. And we can add voices to the debate. We have a model of how this can begin to work. Have you been to a Civil War battlefield lately? In the early 21^st century, Congress threatened to deny funding for such sites unless slavery was integrated into their presentation narratives. Battlefields hastily tucked walls of excess muskets into storage and began to grapple with race, the slave trade, abolitionism, and plantation life. Discussions are afoot to add additional voices, including those of reenactors, slavery apologists, and women. There is much work remaining to be done, but battlefield museums are starting to look more like reconciliation than amnesia.

Hold the wrecking ball. To change, we must remember. Occupy. Occupy. Occupy.

Rob Weir 

June 2020 Artist of the Month: John Doyle

John Doyle

The Path of Stones

Compass Records

There is scarcely an Irish music project in the past 30 years in which fretted instrument wizard and vocalist John Doyle hasn’t played an integral part. You’ll find him alongside Liz Carroll, Karan Casey, Eileen Ivers, Kate Rusby, Mick Maloney, and Heidi Talbot; and in bands such as The Chanting House, Solas, Usher’s Island, The Crossing, and the Joan Baez Band. Okay, the last isn’t Celtic but you get the idea.

The Path of Stones is by my count his fourth solo recording, though he’s been so prolific it wouldn’t surprise me to learn I missed one. He opens The Path of Stones with a traditional song, “The Rambler from Clare” in which he showcases his mandolin skills as well as his guitar (and even adds a touch of fiddle to supplement that of Duncan Wickle). His treatment is in keeping with the song’s title and subject in that it musically saunters at a lively clip and the vocals practically skip off his tongue. Doyle sings with a light tenor reminiscent of Christy Moore when he wasn’t rocking out. It’s the sort that has soothing qualities and folds easily into a melody rather than seeking to overpower it, as too many virtuoso artists are prone to do.

The remaining eight tracks–four sets of tunes and four songs–are Doyle originals. His guitar work is an offshoot of the dropped D (DADGAD) fingerstyle playing pioneered by Davy Graham in the early 1960s. On the album Doyle overlays 5- and 6-string guitars and a mandolin to the tune “Elevenes,” but check out the style on the attached live clip in which he sticks to a 6-string guitar. Watch his hands–if you can! The tune title, by the way, is a double wordplay. The time signature is 11/8 and elevens is a British Isles colloquialism for an 11am tea break. Doyle showcases mandola, bouzouki, and guitar on the “Naoise Nolan’s” jig, and builds up to a faster pace on a set or reels that opens with the quite “Coolaney Reel.” “The Winding Stair” turns up the gas; Michael McGoldrick’s flute and Cathy Jordan’s bodhran add to the swell of “Rossagh’s Rambles,” the final tune. He closes off the album with an air, jig, and slip jig in the “Knock a Chroí” set that features fiddler John McCusker, with Doyle playing 5-, 6-, and 12-string guitars plus keyboards.

In between we get some fine new songs written as if they had elderly parents, as it were. This is particularly true of “Lady Wynde,” a paean to an unobtainable beauty. Cathy Jordan (Dervish) adds harmonies that add to the song’s wistful ambience. The title track is a six-minute love song, though it’s mostly of the unrequited sort. (It’s inspired by a Yeats poem, so expect romance tinged with mystery.) You can hear Doyle sing a live version of “Her Long Hair Flowing Down,” an immigrant’s regret song. (Doyle explains the background in his intro to his song.) By the time he’s done, you’ll probably be surprised this is an original, not some reworked selection drawn from the public domain.

I’ve been listening to John Doyle for decades and it’s been an absolute to watch him grow in skill, confidence, and stature. The Path of Stones adds more building blocks to Doyle’s impressive career.

Rob Weir

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