Travel Articles
Iceland’s Culture of Folk Tales
By Meg Pier
VIE&VOY Publications, July, 2010
On March 20 Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull erupted several times in a row and caused major disruption to air travel across western and northern Europe. Our writer Meg Pier went there last May and found out firsthand why the Icelandic people have such a healthy respect for the power of Mother Nature, and how the mystery of the country’s landscape has led to a culture steeped in folk tales.
In a 2007 survey conducted by the University of Iceland, 64% of those polled had some belief in huldufolk or hidden people, and alfar, or elves. Almost two-thirds had some belief in guardian angels, or fetches. I found out why during a four-day, 400-mile round-trip jaunt from Reykjavik, Iceland’s capital, to its southernmost point of Vik.
One of the newest land masses on the planet, the sweeping vistas here are alternately eerie, majestic, playful, and even frightening, giving rise to some of mankind’s oldest emotions. Goosebumps, gasps, giggles and even tears are among the gamut of reactions that Iceland’s landscape elicits. Within an hour’s drive, a visitor can walk on lava fields and glaciers, across black beaches and verdant fields, and under waterfalls and rainbows. In our trek across southern Iceland, my husband Tom and I experienced the magic of an otherworldly geography that has inspired long-held folk traditions.
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Tradition guides the lights in Oak Bluffs
Boston Sunday Globe, June 13, 2010
By Meg Pier, Globe Correspondent
OAK BLUFFS — The spotlight often shines on the Vineyard because of its visiting luminaries. But residents of the Camp Meeting Association here have long basked in the glow of bright lights. Since 1869, for at least one night a year, these campers take center stage.
The association first celebrated Illumination Night 141 years ago to welcome the governor of Massachusetts. Residents have continued the tradition every summer since, with owners adorning their pastel-painted cottages with Chinese and Japanese lanterns, many of them family heirlooms.
The camp, a collection of concentric circles of tiny Victorian gingerbread houses, is a National Historic Landmark. Still, one can forgive a visitor’s perception of the campground as a movie set, an open-air museum, or a seasonal dollhouse display.
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Nature is the connector on Vancouver Island
Boston Sunday Globe, April 4, 2010
By Meg Pier, Globe Correspondent
VANCOUVER ISLAND, British Columbia — We had driven for some time on Highway 4 without seeing another car, in a wilderness more vast than anything I had experienced. I checked my cellphone. No reception. A bank of clouds moved in above tall, densely packed trees and long shadows reached across our path. I envisioned grizzlies appearing from behind the trees.
My husband, Tom, and I were making a 100-mile trek to the west coast of Vancouver Island, through Pacific Rim National Park Reserve, traversing old logging roads that weren’t paved until the 1980s.
Suddenly, Tom slammed on the brakes.
Courting legends, inspiration in Lynn Woods
Boston Sunday Globe, January 24, 2010
By Meg Pier, Globe Correspondent
LYNN – I had lived in Nahant for more than a decade when a friend told me about the 2,200-acre park in neighboring Lynn.
“From the first day I went, I was hooked by its beauty and it’s been a sanctuary for me ever since,’’ Maria Manning said. “One of the most tranquil memories I have of winter was two years ago. My year-old son was asleep in the stroller and our dog Molly was on a leash. In the middle of our walk, it started to snow. It was so quiet we could hear a pin drop. Suddenly, Molly and I heard something off in the distance. It was
two beautiful white-tailed doe. They stared at us with their sweet brown eyes, and then quickly galloped off. That was right before Christmas. It certainly put me in the spirit.’’
The ninth biggest city in the state, Lynn is largely known as home to industries like General Electric and manufacturers ranging from those that have shod Revolutionary soldiers to putting marshmallow in your sandwiches. But perhaps its best-kept secret is Lynn Woods Reservation, a forested park encompassing one fifth of the city. Hiding in plain sight, the reserve is by some accounts the second-largest municipal park in the United States.
Malta: Colorful Boats Tell The History of an Island Civilization
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VIE&VOY Publications, October, 2009
By Meg Pier
Taking the strong arm offered to me, I was the last to board the small boat. I plopped down at the rear of the craft, next to the man who helped me on. During the next half-hour, he navigated my journey into a remarkable world of a hundred shades of blue and green.
A boatman in Malta’s Blue Grotto, Carmel D’Amato has the sea in his veins—his family has been plying these waters for over 80 years. He is a third-generation captain of one of 77 boats that bring visitors into the gaping caverns that rise out of the aquamarine waters here. The vessel Carmel and his fellow boatmen use is a frigatina, one of several kinds of traditional Maltese boats.
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Time Traveling in Gozo
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VIE&VOY Publications, October, 2009
By Meg Pier
“If you do any digging in the Maltese islands, you’re bound to find something—it’s all just one big museum,” said my guide, Amy Pace of Sliema. “When the streets of M’dina were being repaved about four years ago, they discovered they had hit a buried column of an old Roman temple.”
Indeed, the list of artifacts found in this archipelago could be longer than the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the variety of cultures that have called the island home perhaps considered more diverse than membership in the European Union. This island nation lays claim to a treasure trove of history and mystery, swashbuckling and secrecy.
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Fall Might Find You
. . . in an exotic place, Ybor City or Ann Arbor, Berlin or Bordeaux, savoring this sweet season.
Boston Sunday Globe, Aug 30, 2009
From film festivals and street parties to football games and balloon rides, our writers find there is more to celebrate in fall than pumpkins and foliage.
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Salton Sea: A Mix of Misfit Attractions
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VIE&VOY Publications, August, 2009
By Meg Pier
With easy access from L.A. and San Diego, and more than 125 courses, Palm Springs, California, is a golfer’s paradise, attracting armies of tan, fit, and well-to-do who enjoy America’s favorite pastime here.
Yet 43 miles to its south is the quirky Salton Sea, a controversial mass of contradictions with a history steeped in myths, and an eclectic mix of misfit attractions around its circumference that can make you laugh–and cry. It’s hard to find a more offbeat, thought-provoking, and moving way to spend a day than prowling around its perimeter. But you better get there soon–according to some, it may not be there long, despite having a history that goes back eons.
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A Magnificent Island for Many an Odyssey
On Malta, discover ancient salt pans and the stuff of legends
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Boston Sunday Globe, July 26, 2009
By Meg Pier, GLOBE CORRESPONDENT
GOZO, Malta — Edward Lear, the Victorian-era nonsense poet, was a six-time visitor to Gozo. He termed the island “pomzkizillious and gromphiberous, being as no words can describe its magnificence.’’Today tourists and locals alike are taken with the tiny Mediterranean isle.
“I go every year to Gozo with friends; sometimes we hire a farmhouse or stay at a hotel. The sea in most places is fresher and cleaner, the air is cooler at nights, and the picturesque countryside and the beaches are a treat for us,’’ said Joe Pisani of Birkirkara. “We seek the tranquillity, an escape from the dense cities of Malta. All in all, Gozo is considered as a haven for Maltese, even in winter.’’
As for me, I had come in hopes of lightening a heart made heavy by the poor health of a family member. I was in the right place.
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Madeira’s Waterworld: Walking Along A Mountain Paradise Pathway
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VIE&VOY Publications, May, 2009
By Meg Pier
MADEIRA, Portugal – After hugging cliffs, walking through waterfalls, and admiring an outcropping of wild orchids, we emerged from the ravine, ravenous and ready for lunch. You would be too, after a morning trek through cumulus clouds, five ecosystems, and a Tertiary Period forest. All just another
walk in the park in Madeira, where two-thirds of its land has been set aside as just that.
Madeira is a subtropical volcanic island that is closer to Morocco than its motherland of Portugal. Pico Ruivo at its center is more than a mile high, with radial ridges reaching down to the island’s 90 miles of Atlantic coastline, off northwestern Africa. This dramatic difference in altitude means a lot of biodiversity on a little island just 14 miles long and 34 miles wide. The isle’s north gets about five feet of rain annually; the south, two feet.
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Home values only grow in these exchanges.
Boston Sunday Globe, November 30, 2008
By Meg Pier, GLOBE CORRESPONDENT
Condoleezza Rice and Bono grab the headlines for their diplomatic efforts, but there are others fanned out across the globe, everyday ambassadors quietly dispelling myths about their own and other nationalities.
Their movement, at least 45,000 strong, began with a few people posing a new idea for the barter system: home exchanges.
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Looking for light and comfort with the Danes
Boston Sunday Globe, November 23, 2008
By Meg Pier, GLOBE CORRESPONDENT
SKAGEN, Denmark — Disembarking from the 30-minute flight from Copenhagen to alborg Airport in North Jutland province, I saw a wiry gent with white hair holding sign with my name. I had splurged on the services of a driver for four hours on each of the two days I was to be at the northernmost tip of the country and Kaj pronounced ‘‘ky’’) proved an able guide.
As we made our way to Skagen, about 50 miles north, I asked him about ‘‘hygge’’ (pronounced ‘‘hue-ga’’).
‘‘Well . . . it’s the family, around the table, having wonderful conversation,’’ Kaj said.
‘‘With a fire in the fireplace. And candles lit, lots of candles.’’
‘‘I see . . . so warmth is important in hygge?’’ I said.
‘‘Noooo . . .,’’ he replied. ‘‘A snowball fight can be hygge.’’
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Guatemala treasures Maya ruins and their rich history
Boston Sunday Globe, July 6, 2008
By Meg Pier Globe Correspondent
TIKAL NATIONAL PARK, Guatemala – On the road to the Maya ruins we sat in our guide George Hernandez’s van, waiting for him to complete the paperwork in the concrete immigration building at the Guatemalan border. As he jumped in and shifted gears, he warned us it would be a long, bumpy ride with no facilities en route, suggesting we stop at the gas station just ahead. My heart raced as I watched my husband, Tom, get the men’s room key from a uniformed soldier with a rifle. A few miles down the dirt road, we passed an army barracks and saw armed men in camouflage fatigues looking out over the horizon.
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An exotic Portuguese garden in the ocean off Africa
Boston Sunday Globe, December18, 2005
By Meg Pier Globe Correspondent
MADEIRA, Portugal — ”The floating flower pot” is how people sometimes refer to the Portuguese island of Madeira. Sitting 530 miles from the mainland and 378 miles off the coast of North Africa, it is a volcanic subtropical island, part of an archipelago in which only two islands are inhabited, with an alluring median year-round temperature of 68 degrees.
Everything grows here. Two-thirds of the 13-by-35-mile island is a national park, ornamental gardens abound, and someone with a green thumb resides in virtually every home.
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A Scenic Base for Touring Italy’s Ankle download pdf to read article
Boston Sunday Globe, October 31, 2004
By Meg Pier, GLOBE CORRESPONDENT
SORRENTO, Italy — Fall is lovely on the Cape and islands, but if its allure has
faded with the waning daylight and you’re willing to venture farther afield, you might consider a peninsular community, on a different continent: the Amalfi coast of Italy and the island of Capri.
The Amalfi Coast, in the Campania region, the ankle of Italy’s famous boot, stretches 43 miles from Sorrento on the Bay of Naples to Salerno on a gulf bearing its name. With a Greco-Roman heritage dating to 1000 BC, about 250 years before the founding of Rome, this stretch of shoreline abounds in rugged natural beauty and picturesque cliffside villages, with dwellings in shades of spice, sky, and sea, amid fragrant expanses of olive groves and lemon trees. Sorrento is an ideal scenic base from which to rest, relax, and explore.
find something—it’s all just one big museum,” said my guide,
Amy Pace of Sliema. “When the streets of M’dina were being
repaved about four years ago, they discovered they had hit a
buried column of an old Roman temple.”
Indeed, the list of artifacts found in this archipelago could be
longer than the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the variety of cultures
that have called the island home perhaps considered more
diverse than membership in the European Union. This island
nation lays claim to a treasure trove of history and mystery,
swashbuckling and secrecy.
Malta’s sister island of Goz