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Saturday, September 26, 2009

World Tourism Day -- A Day to Celebrate Travel for Travel's Sake

Today is world tourism day--the 30th commemoration of this day celebrated by The United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) every year since 1980. As a passionate leisure traveler, I dedicate my blog today to the sheer joy of leisure travel. Having just deposited a good deal of my discretionary currency into the world economy on my recent journey, I can personally attest to the economic benefits of tourism.

World Tourism Day, hosted this year in Ghana, coincides with the anniversary of the date (September 27) in 1970 when the UNWTO Statutes were adopted, a milestone in global tourism. According to the UNWTO website the purpose of the day is to raise awareness of the role of tourism within the international community and to show how it affects social, cultural, political and economic values worldwide. This year’s theme "focuses on the world’s cultural wealth and the important role sustainable tourism plays in revitalizing local traditions and making them flourish as they cross other cultures".

England is credited officially as the first country to promote tourism as an activity. With the Industrial Revolution and growth of the economy in England and other parts of Europe, leisure travel became popular among the rich and eventually the middle class began to spend some of their income and leisure time touring. Over time many forms of tourism have evolved including adventure tourism, cultural tourism, heritage or historical tourism, eco-tourism, medical tourism, war tourism, wildlife tourism and sustainable tourism. According to the World Tourism Organization, in 2008, there were over 922 million international tourist arrivals with world tourism receipts reaching $944 billion. By 2020, the number of international tourist arrivals is expected to reach 1.6 billion.

I sometimes think that many people view travel as a necessary burden for business endeavors or as a thing to do for vacation or retirement. Obviously, travel is much more vital to our world than this. Tourists are discovers learning about new places, terrains, and most importantly people. They are jolted from the everydayness of the life they are comfortable with. They see and hear new things, smell new smells, taste unique and sometimes bizarre new foods and meet people very different from those they associate with in their day-to-day life. They come in direct contact with the diversity of their world, and yet in that same foreignness discover the similarities in their universe in a child's play, a mother's smile, a stranger's kindness. As this happens the world becomes a closer place, a better place.

I first witnessed travel through the eyes of a soldier returning from war...despite the hardship of conflict, he came home with stories of adventure and awe at places and things he saw, he gave to me what my mother called my "wanderlust." May it be in the future that more of us wander first as tourists...so that the children of the world will first learn about travel through a tourist's eye.

Happy Tourism Day!

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Seduced by An Enchanting Hotel Above the Hills of Florence -- Villa San Michele















It was a hot Sunday in Florence...very hot... but high above in the hills of Fiesole a pleasant breeze blew and birds tweeted incredibly entrancing songs. I had decided to visit Fiesole on my next trip to Florence after having read "Loving Frank," the fictionalized story about Frank Lloyd Wright and his mistress, Mamah Borthwick Cheney. The descriptions of Fiesole and its appeal to Lloyd Wright and Cheney drew me there.















Some travel advisors say "skip it"...well perhaps if you only have a very short time in Florence. But for me, it would have been a mistake not to have seen this magnificent view and experienced for a few hours what attracted people like Lloyd Wright, Gertrude Stein, and other artistic people here. For afterall, you don't go to Fiesole for Fiesole, you go to see Florence spread before you in all its magnificance.

The tourbooks advise that one of the best places to enjoy the view from Fiesole is the small Parco della Rimembranza on Via di San Francesco, public gardens with benches, shady trees and a panoramic view. But I also wanted to visit the well-touted Villa San Michele situated on the site of a monastery founded in the early 15th century.

So we took a taxi from Florence and stopped by the Villa for lunch to sip cokes and nibble on lovely sandwiches on the terrace of one of the most beautiful hotels I have ever visited. The present building with its facade attributed to Michelangelo dates from 1600 when it was enlarged and renovated by Giovanni di Bartolommeo Davanzati. The property was owned by the Franciscan monks until 1818, when Napoleon dissolved monastic orders returning the Villa to secular use. One can imagine the monks walking the loggia of the then monastery and wandering through the now public rooms of the hotel. Inside the hotel, antique chairs, altars, stone walls, frescos and other religious artifacts all come together to create a sense of spiritual retreat somewhat at odds yet strangely compatible with the current purpose.















One of the public rooms that is used now as a lounge and informal dining space off the interior restaurant was the refectory of the old monastery. A magnificent fresco, completed in 1642, and later restored by Orient-Express Hotels, the current owner of the hotel, adorns the back wall in a three-part alcove. This is only one of the many interesting public spaces where you can sit quietly and read or write (as I noticed several hotel guests were doing.)














The guests rooms are either in the main building of the old monestary or in the new space blended into the setting in the garden area. There are also junior suites on the hillside between the garden and the pool and in the old Limonaia. The most coveted room I was told is the one situated in the former chapel with perhaps some of the most magnificent views.


I climbed up the hill near the small 17th century building to take some photos and get a glimpse of the view the hotel guest in the chapel might have. Ah I thought, some day I will stay here. From here I truly knew why Mamah Cheney and Frank Lloyd Wright loved Fiesole so much.

Some tweeps I followed for Florence:

www.twitter.com/toscanamia -- for Italian Cooking Lessons in Florence
www.twitter.com/tuscanyvillas -- for Information on Florence
www.twitter.com/aroadretraveled for Information on Florence


Another interesting blog article about Villa San Michelle.

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Arriving in Venice

There is nothing as special as arriving at a travel destination....especially when it's Venice, Italy -- one the world's most beautiful cities. Here is a slide montage of photos I took while on a vaporetto on the Grand Canal.





The Clock at Musee D’Orsay