Cultural Heritage
Serene white sand beaches. Tropical cocktails garnished with slices of fresh fruit. Catamarans floating through turquoise water. Images like these tend to be the first to come to mind when thinking of the Turks and Caicos Islands. But this tropical destination, which has stringent COVID protocols, has much more than luxury resorts to offer travelers.
Hint: You won’t find it in Louisiana. “We really cherish all our Mardi Gras traditions here. We’re very proud of them.” It was that sentence uttered by the woman at the museum’s front desk that got my attention. I had certainly never thought of anything about Mardi Gras as a cherished tradition. This gave me an inkling that I was about to get a serious education for my $8.00 admission. To find the truth about Mardi Gras and its traditions, travelers need to visit the Mobile Carnival Museum in downtown Mobile, Alabama. Street view of the Mobile Carnival Museum. Photographed by Scot Terry. (Public Domain) My guide went on to say, “New Orleans has the larger Mardi Gras. Theirs is five times the size of ours, but ours is family friendly. You’d get arrested in Mobile if you tried half the stuff that they get away with on [...]
The small village of Cemoro Lawang is perched on the fringes of an undulating stretch of fine volcanic sand. This is Laut Pasir which, in Javanese, means Sea of Sand. My hotel, Bromo Permai, has a charming lobby that overlooks this unsettlingly unearthly territory.
The Lunar New Year is celebrated across Asia by gathering with family, decorating the house with red couplets and giving red envelopes with money to friends and colleagues. Also known as Spring Festival in China, this 15-day celebration starts on January 22nd and ends with the Lantern Festival on February 5th.
Culture can be explored in many ways — through conversation, clothing, dance, music, and more. As a recipe creator and food photographer, I’m a firm believer that food is one of the most intimate ways to connect with another culture.
Amelia Island is a blend of cultures that lived under eight flags. It was a haven for pirates, con men, and hardworking settlers from many countries. From the Timucuans who met the first French and later Spanish settlers, to the Jim Crow era and the founding of American Beach, where African Americans could frolic freely, it has a unique history and offers a perfect vacation spot with fewer crowds than better known Florida beach towns.
Raised and educated in Spain, Pablo Picasso moved to the French capital in the early 1900s. Here he experienced decades of inspiration as part of the city’s buzzing Modernist art movement and bohemian atmosphere.
In his sleek and self-illustrated volume ‘Jakhan Choto Chilam’ (When I Was a Child), the great Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray vividly portrays kaleidoscopic cameos of Calcutta (now Kolkata) of the interwar years, a city where he grew up.
With spectacular mountains good for hiking and bicycling, dramatic castles, charming architectural cities, and a vibrant contemporary arts scene, Slovakia has much to offer tourists.
Our Creole cultural exploration takes us just outside New Orleans to the Old Mississippi River Road where we'll share the story of a Creole family and a plantation named Laura--voted "Best history tour in the USA" by Lonely Planet Travel and a top travel attraction in Louisiana.
Since 2008, when the main city George Town was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, tourists flocked to Penang to savour the food, see the sites, and indulge in ‘heritage tourism’. Every day, you can see walking tours searching for the Insta-famous street art peppered across the Heritage Zone. However, heritage tourism is a double-edged sword; what they think is cultural heritage is, in fact, a brilliant tourism campaign promoting the historic image of Penang at the cost of the locals who live it.
A block from Havana’s famous Malecon, I found myself standing on a curb, sharing a bottle of rum with my good friend and traveling companion Sandra, and three strangers. We’d all met earlier at a nearby salsa club tucked in an alleyway between the Centro and Old Havana neighborhoods, a local joint.
