Search results for

A journey into the ethnic neighborhoods redefining the City of Light

Overview

If there’s one thing Florida is known for, it’s the amazing beaches, spread across more than 1,300 miles of coastline: from north of Jacksonville all the way south to Key West, wrapping around the Gulf of Mexico and up through the Panhandle. All the sunset action takes place in the west, while the Atlantic coast beaches are where you’ll find the best scuba diving and surfing. If one place can claim to have a beach for every taste, it’s Florida.

CATCH (Do): You may have heard of the Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo Texas: the series of painted Cadillacs, rear up and situated in a line in the middle of a field. But you’ve probably never seen VW Beetle Ranch in Conway, Texas, just a short distance down the road from Amarillo. In fact, as I was traveling on I-40 and headed back towards Dallas, I was trying to find the Cadillac Ranch but ended up missing it somehow, as well as my exit. I found the next closest road to get me headed in the right direction. As I pulled off at the exit, I spotted these VW Beetles right alongside the exit ramp. Laughing, I stopped to take some pictures. How creative, eh? This was way better than Cadillac Ranch - still unique, but less photographed, not advertized and totally deserted. THAT is what makes a real travel story - something you happen to stumble upon while lost in the Panhandle of the Lone Star State. So if you’re headed east on I-40 out of Amarillo, stay on the interstate till you find Conway. You’ll spot this beetle graveyard right off the exit.

In the idyllic Florida Panhandle town Seaside where The Truman Show was filmed, you can fuel up at Raw & Juicy with a Green Goddess drink for breakfast (opens every day at 8:00 a.m.), then walk or bike around Seaside and the beach. Raw & Juicy is housed in a vintage Airstream. On the door is a chalkboard menu of juices, smoothies and raw food. Seaside is a lot like it appears in the movie...pastel cottages, a gourmet grocery store, a park and an amphitheater, an iconic chapel, and people saying hi as they pass by.

Dilli Haat is an open-air market with 62 stalls that features both permanent and transitional vendors, allowing original items to be introduced regularly. The space, designed to resemble a traditional village market, was created to showcase products from across India. There is an application process to determine the temporary vendors who generally stay for 15 days. Items include textiles, crafts, clothing, shoes, beads, gems, and art, as well as a food court with specialty items from across the country. The small entrance fee and gated exterior keep unwanted panhandlers at bay, allowing for a leisurely shopping experience. Though prices are reasonable, bargaining is still encouraged. Dilli Haat is a favorite jaunt for locals and tourists, adding to the diversity of the experience.

Nopalito’s fried garbanzo beans are simply addictive. After frying them in oil, the kitchen spices them with chili dust that’s been roasted and ground in house.

From the same people that brought Nopa to the Divisadero community comes Nopalito, serving up traditional Mexican cuisine with a commitment to using local, organic, and sustainable ingredients.

Serving lunch and dinner two days a week, Nopalito has two San Francisco locations: the original on Broderick Street at the Panhandle and a second on 9th Avenue in the Inner Sunset (grab a table on their back garden patio).

All menu items are available in the restaurant or from the adjoining takeout window; make sure to get an order of totopos con chile: fresh tortilla chips with salsa, cotija cheese, onions, cilantro, crema, and lime. All seating is first come, first served; call up to two hours ahead of time to place your name on the wait list.

At the restaurant Nopa in San Francisco‘s Western Addition, the long bar and communal tables are perfect places to perch on a weeknight. Go early, order an elderflower gimlet or a sparkling, minty Old Cuban (both off-menu). Don’t miss the Mission School-style mural painted on the wall.

If you want to discover Haight Ashbury from a true “insider,” then consider the Flower Power Tour created and given by the ebullient Izu Interlandi. Izu is not a native to the hippie district of Haights Ashbury in San Francisco, but she could very well write a book about it. Her love for the area and the joy of meeting and personally connecting with the legends of the area –including the Grateful Dead, Allen Ginsburg and Janis Joplin — bubbles over like champagne. She will take you through it all--from the Grateful Dead house to where Janis Joplin lived, and leave you feeling sad you are not from that era. She’s an original and one of San Francisco’s best. I discovered Izu through Trafalgar’s distinctive insider experiences guided vacation of San Francisco and Napa Valley, and have been a fan ever since. Walking tours don’t get more fun or memorable than this!

Sail into the protected waters of Glacier Bay National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, for spectacular front-row views of the park’s massive rivers of ice—including the Johns Hopkins and Margerie glaciers—where they meet the ocean. Along the way, National Park rangers board the ship to impart their knowledge of the region, and with any luck, you may hear the thunderous snap and witness the Homeric splashes of house-size icebergs as they calve into the sea.

Golden Gate Park was formed out of an expanse of sand dunes to the west of the city in the nineteenth century—a history that is still discernible in the rolling topography of much of the park’s more than 1,000 acres. Over 13 million people visit the array of gardens, lakes, trails, museums, and monuments each year. Some of the most popular attractions are clustered to the east, including the de Young art museum, the California Academy of Sciences, and the Japanese Tea Garden. A little farther on is Stow Lake, the largest body of water in the park and a good spot for boating and strolling. Just past Spreckels Lake is a bizarre sight: a herd of American bison. Generations of these iconic beasts have been kept in the park since 1892; they mostly stand around the paddock like idling, hairy bulldozers. Children enjoy seeing the Dutch Windmill at the west edge; they may not be so fussed about the nearby Tulip Garden, but they’ll like the waterfowl pond in the Botanical Garden and the carnivorous plants in the Conservatory of Flowers. There are three playgrounds, too; the Koret contains a colorful working carousel from 1914. Active visitors can tour the park by Segway or check out the golf course, the disc golf course, or the archery field. Festivals take place throughout the year, and the Music Concourse hosts free concerts on Sundays in the summer.

Watch for British Columbia’s craggy, rain-forested 138-island archipelago, part of which is designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This area—once known as the Queen Charlottes—lies along the Pacific Flyway, so look for seabirds and migratory species. On the mainland, the rugged Coast Mountains rear up, their fir-fletched slopes often wreathed in mist (these slopes number among North America’s rainiest places). They stretch from the Fraser River Lowland near Vancouver all the way to Alaska’s panhandle.

In this week’s episode of Unpacked by AFAR, we examine an age-old travel quandary: the ethics of interacting with panhandlers.