David Paul Appell's Blog (85)

Call me a masochist (or whatever), but even after sitting through the often cheesy but extremely popular annual song festival that is Eurovision…

There are of course a bunch of Mexican patriotic holidays that come around every year.  But the that's caught on most outside Mexico is Cinco de Mayo – especially in the next-door United States, most notably out on the West Coast, but really, pretty…

There are few animals – and offhand I can’t really think of any birds – with quite the mystique of the iridescent emerald-green denizen of southern Mexico and Central America known as the resplendent quetzal. Since they’re fairly rare (officially “near threatened”) and even more elusive, you’re very…

I’m standing on the deck of a mighty wooden treasure ship, 170 feet long and 495 tons, watching tourists amble and poke about – but I admit, in my mind's eye I’m picturing pirates, sailors, and skeezy, barnacle-encrusted zombies from Davy Jones’ locker slashing,…

In February 2009, Martinique and its sister island Guadeloupe took an unaccustomed turn in the world's headlines with heated general strikes over inequality and the cost of living, resulting in the first ever cancellation of Martinique's Carnival. The poobahs in Paris responded by raising salaries and other concessions, President Nicholas…

Upon turning from apartment building to hotel back in 1971, the Athenaeum

instantly became the latest and greatest in upmarket if buttoned-down hostelry swank in Britain's capital, attracting top celebs of the day. Inevitably, plenty of other properties have …

One of my very most prized travel souvenirs is a vintage kilim, about 75 years old, which I bought more than a decade ago in the otherworldly medina of Fez, Morocco – with its black-and-yellow zigzag motif, it evokes exoticism and the quintessence of travel whenever I look at…

A few months ago I found myself face to face with a school of piranhas, and lived to tell the tale. OK, the little buggers were in a tank at Parque Explora in Medellin, Colombia, whose unusual aquarium is devoted to Amazonian fauna. Common throughout the Amazon and its connected rivers – some of which are in Peru and Colombia but most of…

Haiti tourism, it would appear, is once again on the march.  



Yes,…

One of my earliest travel memories, back in the early 1970s, Cozumel at that time was the Yucatan's biggest (hell, only) beach resort deal. Cancun was still but a glimmer in the eyes of Mexico's government tourism planners and the "Riviera Maya" was little…

I'm one of those people who's got a thing for ancient ruins, especially in the Western Hemisphere - Aztec, Inca, Maya, Olmec, whatever; if it's pre-Columbian, bring it on. So when I was offered a chance by the resort chain Iberostar to pop back down to the…

The crew of Christopher Columbus first discovered tobacco on the island of Hispaniola (today shared by the  Dominican Republic and Haiti), then encountered it again once they got to Cuba. And over the…

I'm something of a language geek, and I'm particularly fascinated by the linguistic patchwork of Europe. I mean, many of us know about Spain's regional languages like Catalan, Basque, and Galician. But when it comes to, say, Germany, Italy, or France, I've found many people tend to assume everybody speaks…

Remember the proverb about giving a man a fish versus teaching a man to fish? That ancient bit of wisdom was well at work in an inspiring documentary I saw recently about three of my favorite topics: Peru, food, and Peruvian food. I even got to meet its stars, both world famous chefs, and…

Ah, Christmas – for many people, there’s no more magical time of the year. But celebrating this holiday extravagantly goes back only to the 19th century, and in many countries the festivities didn’t take place on December 25 at all, but rather today, on the Epiphany, January 6 (the twelfth day of Christmas, with 12 drummers drumming, as the…

If you find should yourself spending New Year’s Eve in a Spanish-speaking country, you may notice that the locals have an interesting tradition of their own for this special night. As the big…

As the Spanish wine industry has grown and deepened in complexity in the past couple of decades well beyond Andalusia’s traditional sherries, oenophiles…

In case you’re wondering where is Montenegro, for starters it’s one of the world’s newest countries – a Slavic land once part of Yugoslavia, then Serbia, and now independent for just five years.  And though small (smaller than the U.S. state of Connecticut, in fact) it’s an up-and-comer indeed on the travel scene, with…

When you think of travel to Bulgaria, what comes to mind first? For me, one of the cool things about visiting this fetching little Balkan country is its touches of exoticism, part of an ancient cultural heritage that stretches back to 5,000 BC, and which I find most noticeable in its Eastern Orthodox churches. As with…