We visited Alexandria on a day trip from Cairo during our multi-day ‘Jewels of the Nile’ tour of Egypt, and after more than a decade of researching and writing first-hand travel guides, it is a trip we’d happily recommend to the right traveler. Founded by Alexander the Great around 331 BC and nicknamed the Pearl of the Mediterranean (locals just call it Alex), Alexandria is Egypt’s second largest city and its main port on the Mediterranean coast. In its Hellenistic heyday, Alexandria was home to the Great Library and the Pharos, the lighthouse that ranked among the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and it was the setting for the story of Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, and Mark Antony. Modern Alexandria has lost a lot of that grandeur, and today you’ll find concrete apartment blocks and traffic filled streets sitting right alongside the history. But with a little patience, the Greco-Roman… Read the rest
Archives for July 2016
The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park Colorado: History, Hauntings, & Whiskey
The Stanley Hotel is best known for being the inspiration for Stephen King’s bestselling novel The Shining and the subsequent film starring Jack Nicholson as the slowly driven mad overseer. The Stanley Hotel is located in Estes Park Colorado, the gateway to one of the most visited national parks in the United States: Rocky Mountain National Park. Set amidst the beautiful mountain scenery of Colorado, The Stanley Hotel was built in 1909 as a grand summer resort that catered to wealthy travelers from the East Coast. The Stanley Hotel has a storied history that begins well before Stephen King stepped foot on the property, and the hotel once hosted guests like Molly Brown, John Philip Sousa, and Theodore Roosevelt. Today the hotel is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is a member of Historic Hotels of America. Visitors to Estes Park flock to the hotel to take… Read the rest
Visiting the River Road Louisiana Plantations
We’ve visited 12 Louisiana plantations along Louisiana’s River Road between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. Louisiana’s River Road parallels the east and west banks of the Mississippi River for about 70 miles (about 100 miles of actual road) through the Louisiana parishes of St. Charles, St. John, and St. James. Prior to the American Civil War, this river road was lined with approximately 350 antebellum plantation homes, from relatively simple farm houses to grand Versailles-like mansions. Many early Louisiana plantations grew rice, indigo, or tobacco, but by the mid-nineteenth century the majority were growing sugar cane, which became the most profitable cash crop in the state. By per-capita wealth at the onset of the Civil War, Louisiana was the second-wealthiest state in the country (after Mississippi), made possible only by the forced hard labor of thousands of enslaved people who worked at these plantations. Not surprisingly, the Civil War and… Read the rest