To see ourselves as others see us. Always useful fun, even if the gushy words are a guilty pleasure.
Here’s Suzanne MacNeille in the New York Times undergoing smitification during her 36 Hours In Vancouver.
Photo by Robert Leon, New York Times
For locals, it’s no surprise or even a point of interest that the article’s lead illustration shows a bike rider on a bike path. But it’s a big deal to visitors. The city is becoming well-known for its broad and growing bike culture and safe infrastructure. Judging from the busy bike rental shops popping up everywhere, and the earnest material by Mobi on how to
decide between Mobi or a rental shop — the tourist bike thing has serious legs.
Other highlights and cultural touchstones for Ms. MacNeille: nature, coastline, multi-ethnicity, public art, especially indigenous art (including murals), the eclectic food scene, architecture and neighbourhoods (like the West End).
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Happy to see Dan McLeod’s bookstore mentioned!
Have you ever read a travel feature where the writer wasn’t smitten?
You can usually count on Paul Theroux to give and honest and detailed account of the reality on the ground. His 1993 book èT
Theroux doesn’t write travel features. I’ve read pretty much all of Theroux’s travel writing.
A NYT 36 hour piece or other newspaper travel features are mostly puff pieces. Often the writer travels as a guest of the city’s tourism organization, gets toured around and then writes it up. Sort of like the real estate section in the Vancouver Sun.
‘The Happy Isles of Oceania’ describes his encounters with the people living in various South Pacific archipelagos when he paddled around them in an inflatable kayak. He was brutally honest and quite humourous about their poor diets featuring Coke and Cheezies while the healthiest diet on the planet consisting of marine protein and tropical fruit swam a few minutes’ paddle offshore in calm lagoons and growing just behind the treeline lining white sand beaches.
He chose an inflatable kayak because it was easily transportable when deflated. He was the object of derision by locals when caught in the act of inflating it. There was no comparison to their old outrigger canoes and modern aluminum skiffs.
Vancouver’s a great place to visit. Wouldn’t want to live there though!