As every cultured traveler knows, the very nature of travel is to broaden the mind and open oneself to learning about new cultures and destinations. The experiences gathered during the journey are the ultimate reward, not the arrival at a given destination.Many companies cater to learning vacations on various levels. While semesters abroad and summer language classes are popular with students, mor...
Tour Host Review
This company’s "tourism as cultural learning" philosophy insures that each trip introduces travelers to historic sights and native peoples. Covering a wide array of UNESCO World Heritage Sites, the trips focus on fostering an understanding between travelers and destinations while providing a thorough understanding of different cultures’ current and past achievements.
Since ...
Host of the Month
In one of the great ironies of American history, when Thomas Jefferson died on July 4, 1826, it was 50 years to the day since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the immortal political document that he mostly wrote. Yet before his passing, his authorship of the Declaration and his two terms as President of the United States below the accomplishment in his ...
Festival Pick
The travel program at Harvard Museum of Natural History (HMNH) began modestly in 1975 when one of its precursors, Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ), offered a Baja whale-watching trip. That expedition went well and received such good word of mouth it created a clamor among travelers for more.
Harvard’s th...
Museum Pick
The best road to come in on when you first visit Yosemite Valley is Hwy. 41 out of Fresno. The road climbs north, rising from California’s flat Central Valley into rolling, oak tree-studded foothills. By the time you reach the turn-off for Bass Lake, the ever-increasing abundance of pines and firs tells you that you are in the Sierra Nevada.Thirty minutes later you enter Yose...
There’s a new era about to dawn in consumerism. Call it “The Osaka Era,” after a set of small bicycle shops in Japan that created the concept of “mass customizing” in the 1990s. Mass customizing means the marriage of industrialism’s ability to produce lots of relatively inexpensive objects with the post-modern era’s ability to use computers to guide the custom...
As every cultured traveler knows, the very
nature of travel is to broaden the mind and open oneself to learning about new
cultures and destinations. The experiences gathered during the journey are the
ultimate reward, not the arrival at a given destination.
This company’s "tourism as cultural learning" philosophy insures that each trip introduces travelers to historic sights and native peoples. Covering a wide array of UNESCO World Heritage Sites, the trips focus on fostering an understanding between travelers and destinations while providing a thorough understanding of different cultures’ current and past achievements.
My passion for travel and endless desire for new experiences had led me down many wonderful roads in the past, yet my recent trip to France on a language learning vacation was definitely one of the most memorable. Like most people, I had studied French in school and was actually quite good at it, but my career, family and other hobbies always seemed to take priority in what little free time I...
The eyes are equally expectant, although the faces are different. Silent, shy and incredibly polite college freshman in Xian, China; raucous, rambunctious and never quiet high school seniors in Ostuni, Italy; and respectful, mature adults in a social service center in Siedlce, Poland: all wanting to improve their English language skills, and all looking to me to help.
When people think of traveling to or studying in a large South American city, they often think of Santiago, Buenos Aires or Rio de Janeiro first. Many overlook the treasures to be found in other South American cities. Cordoba, Argentina is one such place that’s often overlooked, even though one can find almost infinite attractions in this city at a fraction of the cost of its...
The norm for educational vacations is for large groups of similarly minded people to gather around an array of highly credentialed speakers. This format started when we were kids in school. It was economical and handled masses of people efficiently.
So, why do we as intelligent, financially able, unique adults still go, almost exclusively, to large conferences or workshops? While we might...
In Neolithic times, Chinese culture was clearly visible by 5,000 B.C. in the dry northern plains of the Yellow River Valley. It was only around the time of the Roman Republic, during the Han Dynasty, that the steamy south lands of the Yangtze River Valley were firmly incorporated under Chinese influence, as well as lands far to the south in the West River basin, which reaches the sea near Guangzhou...
In one of the great ironies of American history, when Thomas Jefferson died on July 4, 1826, it was 50 years to the day since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the immortal political document that he mostly wrote. Yet before his passing, his authorship of the Declaration and his two terms as President of the United States below the accomplishment in his life he was proudest of: Architect...
There’s a new era about to dawn in consumerism. Call it “The Osaka Era,” after a set of small bicycle shops in Japan that created the concept of “mass customizing” in the 1990s. Mass customizing means the marriage of industrialism’s ability to produce lots of relatively inexpensive objects with the post-modern era’s ability to use computers to guide the custom manufacture of those same objects.
Last year, in my various travels as Director of Horizons To Go, I spent some time in the American Southwest and another month in Thailand and Vietnam. When we left Vietnam, my husband became totally teary eyed as he embraced our guide, a wonderful young man in his mid-twenties, to say goodbye. The experience of travel has become my passion, I think, because each trip is an education. Each travel...
The travel program at Harvard Museum of Natural History (HMNH) began modestly in 1975 when one of its precursors, Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ), offered a Baja whale-watching trip. That expedition went well and received such good word of mouth it created a clamor among travelers for more.
Harvard’s three research-oriented museums (the MCZ, the Harvard...
From the point of view of the arts, Italy is unique in the world and justifiably promoted as an almost obligatory destination by travel agencies. That’s because it is so easy for most tourists to appreciate that famous country’s towns and magnificent monuments. The artistic richness there is endless and often, to the delight of many, still awaiting discovery. Every day new masterpieces are brought to light. Emblematic of that is case of the Siena Cathedral where a large...
In one of the great ironies of American history, when Thomas Jefferson died on July 4, 1826, it was 50 years to the day since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the immortal political document that he mostly wrote. Yet before his passing, his authorship of the Declaration and his two terms as President of the United States below the accomplishment in his ...
The travel program at Harvard Museum of Natural History (HMNH) began modestly in 1975 when one of its precursors, Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ), offered a Baja whale-watching trip. That expedition went well and received such good word of mouth it created a clamor among travelers for more.