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Quick Escape: Williamsburg, Virginia

Hop on a 2-hour direct flight from Boston to Richmond and drive less than an hour to reach historic Williamsburg. Best known as a Colonial outpost and neighbor to Jamestown, America’s first permanent settlement, Williamsburg now attracts music lovers, foodies, and active travelers. Local Bruce Hornsby is bringing back Funhouse Fest, the 2-day music festival that gathers award-winning artists on the lawn of the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg, June 22-23. Outdoor lovers can rent bikes and hit the Colonial Parkway. This two-lane road transports you back to an earlier time connecting Jamestown, Williamsburg, and Yorktown over 23 miles. Most of the ride is flat and offers vistas of water and woods, of marshes and herons. For an alternative, check out the Historic Jamestown Bike Trail, a 5-mile loop on Island Drive that features 11 interpretive stops including a panoramic view of the James River, archaeological excavation sites, and the nests of bald eagles. Bay County Kayaking offers a range of guided 2 to 3-hour kayak eco tours including trips to Queen’s Creek, a tidal creek that empties into the York River, where you might see otter, muskrat, crabs, and deer. You’ll hear from your guide about its rich history in the Revolutionary and Civil wars. 

Crabs, oysters, shrimp, clams, mussels and a variety of fish, all pulled from local waters, make Williamsburg a seafood hot spot. Waypoint Seafood and Grill celebrates the Chesapeake Bay, featuring York River Oysters, local jumbo lump crabmeat, a fried oyster salad, and market fish of the day. Take a short drive along a country road out of town to Café Provencal, on the grounds of The Williamsburg Winery. The French-inspired cooking features local ingredients in an elegant yet relaxed setting, like a raw plate with marinated amberjack, seared scallops, soft shell crabs in season and roasted black bass. Be sure to ask ActiveTravels about our hotel pick in the area, including the Williamsburg Inn and the Kingsmill Resort.
 

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Why We Love Rick Steves European Guidebooks

In a May/June 2000 story for Transitions Abroad magazine entitled “The Best and Worst Of Europe—with Apologies to None,” Rick Steves writes “the area south of Edinburgh is so boring the Romans decided to block it off with Hadrian’s Wall.” In another section of the piece (still found online and worthy of a download), Steves notes, “Oxford pales next to Cambridge, and Stratford is little more than Shakespeare’s house—and it’s as dead as he is.” Then there’s this juicy tidbit: “A hundred years ago, Athens was a sleepy town of 8,000 people with a pile of ruins in its backyard. Today, it’s a giant mix of concrete, smog, noise, tourists, and four million Greeks. See the four major attractions (the Acropolis, Agora, Plaka, and great National Archaeological Museum) and get out to the islands or countryside.”

 
Best known as the host of the PBS series Rick Steves’ Europe, the man is also a prolific guidebook writer, one who is not in the least bit bashful about sharing his opinion. This is what we want in a travel guidebook, someone with an expert opinion we trust who can break down the destination for us. We don’t want a book the size of Anna Karenina detailing every nook and cranny of that country with little or no judgment (the old Lonely Planet guidebooks come to mind). Most of us have a week or two on vacation, if we’re lucky. We simply want someone to tell us you’d be a fool to miss the Sognefjord fjord in Norway or Burg Eltz castle in Germany, according to Steves. 
 
To see my latest column for Men’s Journal on how to pick a trusted guidebook, click here. 
 
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Top 5 Travel Experiences of 2012, A Culinary High in Caraquet, New Brunswick

Last May, I was fortunate to drive New Brunswick’s Acadian Coast for an upcoming Boston Globe story. Stretching 110 miles from Shediac to Caraquet, the northeastern coast of New Brunswick boasts the warmest waters north of Virginia, the sand dunes of Kouchibouguac National Park, lonely lighthouses on Miscou Island, and the largest lobster processing facility on the continent. Yet, the real reason folks go out of their way to venture to the Acadian Coast is to experience the French Canadian culture. Stop at any of the small towns and you’ll notice a distinctive joie de vivre, with foot-stomping fiddle music, down-home French cooking accentuating the local seafood catch, and festivals that celebrate the Acadians’ 400-year-old history in the Atlantic Maritimes.
 
Yet, it was one day in Caraquet where I experienced my greatest culinary pleasure of the year. In the morning, oysterman Gaetan Dugas took me out on the waters of Caraquet Bay to show me firsthand why these oysters are a cherished commodity in high demand from chefs around North America. Especially the petites, small oysters that are both succulent and briny. Dugas’ ancestors include a pirate who commandeered a ship against the British in the 1750s, but it’s his father who taught him how to oyster farm and his grandfather who taught him the traditional ways of the local Mi’kmaq people. 
 
Just as bountiful as the sea are the forests surrounding Caraquet, ripe with morels, chanterelles, oyster mushrooms, and other goodies like the foot of the cattail. Local Jean Patenaude made a name for himself scouring the countryside for edibles, bringing home laundry baskets full of wild mushrooms on ideal days in summer. In the afternoon, he took me foraging for morels. 
 
That evening, I assembled the goodies I had collected that day and brought them to chef Karen Mersereau, the mother of gastronomy in Caraquet. Mersereau was a food marketing rep in Toronto when she met Gerard Paulin, the third-generation hotelier of Hotel Paulin, a Victorian-era gem perched on a hill above the water of Caraquet Bay. A dozen years later, the couple are parents of a boy, Jules, and Karen is firmly entrenched at the helm of the hotel’s kitchen. She has wisely aligned herself with both Dugas and Patenaude. 
 
Mersereau took my day’s bounty and created a memorable wild mushroom oyster bisque. To ensure that every spoonful was chockful of meat, she throws in the native palourdes clam, similar to a quahaug. Her bevy of local supplies would make most chefs weep with joy. In addition to oysters and mushrooms, there’s snow crabs, tuna, Atlantic salmon, shrimp, and halibut right off the boat, goat cheese and spring-fed lamb found in nearby farms, and blueberries and cloudberries that grow wild along the coast, perfect for making a sublime pie. At Hotel Paulin, the locavore movement has reached its crescendo.
 
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July Newsletter Now Available at ActiveTravels.com

The Oregon road trip my brother Jim and I just returned from is the feature story in the July 2013 newsletter at ActiveTravels.com. We also discuss why Montreal is an ideal quick escape in summer, the rise of upscale properties in Puerto Rico, and a reputable outfitter Lisa uses for trips to Peru. I also bring up the fact that now is the best time to book your flight to the Caribbean or Mexico next winter, especially over the busy school breaks, because nonstop flights sell out quickly. As always, if you have any questions regarding the world of travel, we’re here to help. Enjoy the weekend and stay active!

 
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Fantasy Islands Week: Heron Island, Australia

Looking forward to seeing an ockie (octopus) in the bommie (coral head)? Then Heron Island, on the Great Barrier’s southern reef, is the place for you, mates. You might also dive with giant sea turtles that come ashore to lay their eggs between late October and March, or with humpback whales that skirt the island from June through October. Heron Island Resort, the island’s lone accommodation, has room for 250 nature lovers. The Point Suites offer unobstructed views of the harbor and bay.  Part resort, part wildlife sanctuary, this Robinson Crusoe-like island is large enough for couples to follow their own trail to a nesting spot among the white herons.  
 
We’re off to our own fantasy island next week, Jamaica. Happy Hanukkah and Merry Christmas! We’ll be back on the 27th. 
 
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A Must-Stop at the Miro Museum in Barcelona

While I found the Picasso Museum to be somewhat of a disappointment (it skips from 1901, the last of his formative years in Barcelona straight to 1917 with barely a word about his breakthrough early Cubism works), I found the Fundacio Joan Miro to be an utter delight. Inside the more than 20 galleries, you’ll find many of his whimsical large-scale paintings, sculptures, even a tapestry. Located in Parc de Montjuïc near the 1992 summer Olympics diving venue, we accessed the museum by first walking down to the beach to take a cable car up over Barcelona’s port. It was a wonderful way to view the sailboats and cruise ships plying the waters of the Mediterranean below. Once we arrived in the park, we walked 10 minutes to find the museum. Inside, you’ll find his colorful dots, lines, and familiar symbols, even some anguish-filled works during the time of the Spanish Civil War, all donated by his family and a top collector from Japan. Then venture outside, atop the museum, to see his works of sculpture and the city below. A real joy. 

 
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My Grandfather’s Sketchbooks Still Inspire Me to Travel

Guest Post and Photo by Amy Perry Basseches

My grandparents were inveterate world travelers — and Grandpa, an architect, was always sketching and painting wherever they went. Framed examples of his watercolors have graced every place I’ve lived. In Boston, our home displayed Pisa (1955), Nara (1959), Crete (1960), and Florida (1977). Now, in Toronto, Josh and I have Venice’s Rialto Bridge on the wall (1954). It was not only the sketchbooks, but gifts from afar that entertained me as a child. With Grandma and Grandpa’s help, I gathered a large collection of dolls from other countries, learning early on that the world was a big, diverse place that I wanted to understand more. I suppose you could say my love of travel and exploration was instilled by them. 
 
Recently, in September, I was looking through a pile of Grandpa’s sketchbooks which I hold for all relatives as part of the family archives. Believe it or not, I found pencil drawings and watercolors of places to which I would travel a month later: Grandpa’s "Newfoundland, 1977." Indeed, in early October, I saw the Bonavista Lighthouse he depicted. Further, I found a notebook entitled "Japan, 1959," and, after pausing to wonder what led my grandparents to Japan at that particular time, I decided to ask my niece whether she had been to any of the named sites. She and her partner were on a 2-week trip to Japan last summer when they became engaged. All seven of the great-grandchildren should have Grandpa’s artwork on their walls, I thought, to inspire even more generations to experience the larger world.
 
Grandma and Grandpa were first generation Americans (born to immigrants from Russia and Lithuania as the 1800s turned to the 1900s), and raised in New York City. Grandpa was the youngest of eight. Amazingly, both went on to college and graduate school. 100 years later, their curiosity, pluck, and sense of adventure still motivates me, and lives on through Grandpa’s sketches and watercolors. 
 

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