As soon as I learned about the major attraction in Malbork, Poland, I knew I had to take a side trip from my base in Gdansk, an hour to the northwest by train. I couldn’t resist seeing the largest brick structure ever built—Malbork Castle. At the size of about 40 U.S. football fields and with its oldest parts going back to the 1200s, this massive complex had the sudden and significant impact on me that its statistics assured me it would. Read more about Malbork Castle >
Tag Archives: travel
Argentina’s Most Beautiful Churches
Four intranational flights in Argentina took me from Buenos Aires to Puerto Iguazú to Salta to Mendoza and back to the capital. It was a whirlwind trip around the northern part of the country during which I hiked around one of the world’s top waterfalls and around the tallest mountain in the Americas, experienced both Latin and Native American cultures, ate llama cutlets and sucked on coca leaves to stave off altitude sickness, and roamed through some of the country’s best cities, filled with beautiful (and often crumbling) architecture, including fantastic houses of worship. Read about the top five churches in Argentina >
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An Outdoor Museum Experience in Residential Oslo
In the most fashionable residential area of Norway, with the country’s most expensive properties, you can spend a couple of days visiting five terrific museums, a royal castle, and wonderful views of the city and its fjord and harbor. One of those attractions is the open-air Norwegian Folk Museum, a collection of more than 150 buildings relocated from around the country and stocked with exhibits and demonstrations that reveal Norway’s history and culture starting in the 16th century. Read about it >
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Denmark’s Five Best Churches
When it comes to castles, Denmark is one of my favorite European nations, whether they’re watching over the coastline or dropped smack in the middle of the capital city. When it comes to churches, however, Denmark has some serious competition from its European neighbors. Despite that, this little nation of just under six million people has constructed some spectacular churches. Too bad only 3 percent of the population regularly attends services; they’re missing out on surrounding themselves with beauty. Read about the top five churches in Denmark >
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Milwaukee’s Gilded Age Glory
Staying at a hotel in downtown Milwaukee that used to be a Gimbels department store gave me easy access to many of the city’s best attractions, including the remnants of its Gilded Age. Industrious immigrants, including a tidal wave of Germans and other Eastern Europeans, boosted the city’s population so that, by 1900, it was the 14th largest city in the United States. The work of these determined newcomers coincided with America’s explosion of industrial achievements and economic expansion, and they left behind a legacy of fantastic structures in their “German Athens.” Read about the top five buildings in Milwaukee >
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Beloved by All: 1822 –
Some of the world’s best cemeteries—Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York; Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, New York; and Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis, Missouri—are grand rural cemeteries, filled with curving roads, hills, trees, flowering shrubs, and ponds. But one of them, Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires, Argentina, differs completely from the rest—an urban, densely packed burial ground founded in 1822 and crammed with mausoleums and monuments along a city-like grid pattern. It looks like a scale model of Buenos Aires itself, and it’s the final resting place of dozens of influential Argentinians, including one who doesn’t want us to cry for her. Read more about it >
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Bodies of Work
If you feel like the weight of the world is sometimes pressing down on you, imagine if an actual building were doing the same thing. Since the sixth century BC in ancient Greece, stone women have been supporting entablatures on their heads; their male counterparts came along a little later, in the Greek cities in Sicily and southern Italy. These caryatids and atlantids not only served a practical function, as a column or pillar to support the weight of a structure, but they also added impressive panache. Read about the top five atlantids and caryatids >
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No Need to Go Far in Fargo
I was ending my two-week trip around the Dakotas with a one-day stop in Fargo. It didn’t seem a sufficient amount of time for North Dakota’s most populous city, but, fortunately, most of the highlights—including its most beautiful buildings—are located in a fairly concentrated area of one square mile. Read about the top five buildings in Fargo, North Dakota >
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A Festive Day in Lindsborg, Kansas, Is “Lagom”
Festivals are one of the best ways to spend your time outdoors when traveling. You’ll experience a locale at its most joyous, most authentic, and most relaxed, and you’ll have ample opportunities to mingle with the locals. Case in point: a two-day celebration of Swedish culture in the U.S. Midwest called Svensk Hyllningsfest. In Lindsborg, Kansas, you’ll get to meet the friendly residents while experiencing the richness of Sweden that has been the hallmark of this small city since the mid-1800s. At the end of the festival, you’ll say that it was lagom—not too little, not too much, but just the perfect amount. Read more about it >
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Mangia in One of Little Italy’s Best Restaurants
New York’s Little Italy needs help. Slammed by COVID-19 travel restrictions that clobbered its all-critical tourist trade, as well as by neighboring Chinatown’s typhonic expansionism, Little Italy has been shrinking for decades. Now concentrated along Mulberry, Mott, and Grand streets, Little Italy gets littler by the year. But you can still find the oldest cheese shop in the United States (opened in 1892 and now co-owned by actor Tony Danza), the oldest souvenir and gift store in the neighborhood (since 1910), gelato shops and bakeries, a ravioli and pasta store that’s been around since 1920, and a good number of restaurants. I decided to show some love, and financial support, to Da Nico Ristorante, a family business that owns and operates a kitchen where your nonna would be completely comfortable. Read more about it >
Stephen Travels 