Preparing a trip to China is no easy feat. The country is roughly the same size as the United States, and, for many of us, it is a much less familiar place. It stretches from the Himalayas to sprawling coastal cities, from the Gobi Desert to subtropical jungle. Where do you begin?
Heading to Paris? Explore the city like a real Parisian with these new audio walking tours for your iTouch, iPhone or mp3 player. The app includes five neighborhood tours (Latin Quarter, St-Germain-des-Prés, Bastille, Marais, Montmartre), each with over 45 minutes of insightful audio content, an expert guide and audio soundscapes and excerpts from the BBC Archives. If you don’t have an iDevice, you can also download the tours from Amazon as mp3s.
It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men’s hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air that emanates from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit.
–Robert Louis Stevenson
To learn more about the International Year of Forests, visit the United Nations dedicated website. If you liked the video, you also might want to check out the related book, Forests and People, which contains essays by Gisele Bündchen, Don Cheadle, and Wangari Maathai.
And don’t forget to turn off your lights – and maybe even the basketball game – tomorrow (Saturday, March 26) at 8:30pm local time to mark Earth Hour.
Before The Da Vinci Code and The Lost Symbol, the most famous literary thriller involving coded manuscripts, secret societies, and a gruesome sacrifice was Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum. An investigation into conspiracy theories and the Templar Knights, a meditation on symbols and language, a serious poststructuralist joke, there’s no doubt that Eco beat Dan Brown to the punch.
But what does any of this have to do with the Musée des Arts et Métiers?
Ah, the joys of Paris on a budget. Yes, you read that right. Paris may be an expensive place and the five-star indulgences are many, but it’s still possible to enjoy its unique pleasures without draining the kids’ college funds. Stop number one? Notre Dame, the spiritual and symbolic heart of France.
Explore Shanghai’s historic waterfront, the Bund, with this great new audio walking tour. The tour covers the recently restored “Back Bund” area, as well as providing in-depth background on iconic sights such as the Customs House and Peace Hotel. Make sure to upload it to your mp3 player (it’s free) before your next visit to Shanghai.
A note on the map – use this one and not the one on the BBC website, which is incorrect.
It’s gigantic, incredibly crowded, and overwhelming. But that doesn’t mean that a trip to the Louvre has to end in tears of frustration – for you or your children. It’s all in the planning.
Wuyuan backcountry
There are lots of opportunities to go hiking in China, but what if you won’t be straying far from Shanghai and need a little downtime after the push and pull of the city’s megacrowds? Well, if you can pencil in two free days, hiking the rolling countryside around Wuyuan County is doable. Here’s how.
With a catchy name like Dragon-Tiger Mountain (龙虎山), you would expect a historical Daoist site like Longhu Shan to be pretty popular. This is, after all, where the nonbeliever Marshal Hong (“you Daoists are always making up stories to make a penny off the common folk”) accidentally set free the 108 demons in the 14th-century classic Outlaws of the Marsh. This is also where the founder of religious Daoism (Zhang Daoling) is said to have attained the Dao in the 2nd century CE. Those are pretty major cultural markers, even if you don’t care a whit about Chinese history.
(Im)mortal contemplation
Pass through La Pinacothèque (www.pinacotheque.com) during the weekday lunch hour, and you will soon realise that if there is one thing that rivals a Parisian’s obsession with food, it’s art. Although French lunches can be famously long, many of the daytime visitors to La Pinacothèque had apparently sacrificed their midday meal in order to find a different type of satiation.
This passion for art, and culture in general, is reflected in the vast number of museums in Paris.
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© 2012 Christopher Pitts. / Contact: christofino [at] gmail [dot] com
