If you stay in vacation rentals, and especially if you fly in, you often buy food and also items that are then thrown away before you fly back home. But what if it were easy and convenient to donate most everything? That’s where Vacation Donations comes in! It’s a nonprofit in Indian Rocks Beach, Florida, that serves as a local resource for donations, reuse, recycling and repurposing. But beyond that, it can be used as a model for any vacation/resort community anywhere. I hope you’ll check it out and let me know what you think, especially since I’m the founder! Thank you!

Casa Vicens, Barcelona. Photo by Pol Viladoms

Exciting news out of Barcelona! You can now add another stop to the list of Antoni Gaudi buildings to visit. After years of repairs, Casa Vicens, the first house designed by the city’s defining architect, has opened to the public for the first time.

While Gaudi is most famous for Sagrada Familia, his unfinished swirling cathedral, he designed many buildings in and around the Catalonian capital, from relatively standard works to the more asymmetrical, organic, even surreal buildings he became known for. Casa Vicens, a Unesco World Heritage Site since 2005, fits into the latter category.

The four-story eye-popping building was designed as a summer home for a stockbroker as Gaudi’s first notable commission when he was in his early 30s. Built between 1883 and 1888, it boasts fanciful turrets, brightly colored tiles, and wedding-cake ceilings.

Over the years, various property owners had altered the space. After decades of being in the hands of the same family, Casa Vicens was sold to MoraBanc, which has spent millions on the building’s restoration and transformation into a museum complex.

In Casa Vicens, Gaudi experiments with concave and convex spaces, lights and shadows, and colors and textures typically found in Moorish architecture. Natural shapes and elements also influence his work, seen here in such touches as a cast iron grill entrance depicting a palmetto leaf and ceramic tiles adorned with marigolds. More nature-themed decorative arts, including wrought iron, painting, ceramic, woodworking, intricate molding, and murals, fill the interior.

The restoration created several spaces for visitor activities and exhibits, including a welcome area, bookshop and café. Also accessible are the property’s gardens and walkable rooftop.

CASA VICENS Carrer de les Carolines, 20-26, Barcelona, http://www.casavicens.org. Open daily excluding major holidays. General admission is $19; for people 65 and older, students under 25, and children 7 to 18, admission is $16.50. Children under 7 are free.

She’s not alive, this is true. But she’s with me and all the people she connected with in ways small and large. I see her in the sky and in the earth, when the flowers bloom and when those blossoms fade and decay. Judy soaked up everything in the natural world, through thoughts, writing and actions.

Here’s part of what she wrote to me two days before she died, surrounded by her family. “I sleep outside on a cot in a screen room — it’s beautiful.  I will leave from there, looking at the stars and with my palm in the grass.”

I imagined her there, in her little house in Durham, N.C., with her hand pressing the grass, feeling the earth. It made me think of the times, while hiking or walking, I would stop to touch moss or lichen and maybe a lovely piece of bark or a satiny blossom. I understand that need to feel, to caress.

Few people I’ve encountered embrace humanism and nature the way Judy did, even while battling cancer. Few people I’ve encountered are OK with saying, I don’t believe in God. I worship what is here and now, in front of me and natural. Beauty everywhere. Amen.

I was reading some emails Judy sent me over the past few years, since I moved from Durham to the Netherlands. She was the person in Durham I kept in closest touch with. In the course of relating some interpersonal stories, she called someone “batsy,” which is the most negative I’ve ever heard her talk about another person (politics excluded). That’s as low as Judy goes. I love that.

I was planning to stay in Judy’s spare room in August, though we knew that was becoming unlikelier by the week. Instead I’ll drive by her little house, I suppose cleared out by then, and see where she physically left this life. I’ll meet with a friend of hers I’ve never met and hear details about the gathering for Judy that I missed in July.

Judy’s death did not make me appreciate her more. I’ve been filled with appreciation for her specialness for a long time. What her death did was allow me to ponder how I can instill more Judy-ness into my life. I could say this is to honor Judy, but it’s really for me, to allow myself to be closer to the way I want to be. That’s Judy’s gift – the ultimate in paying it forward – inspiring those of us she touched to look into ourselves, to feel the grass, whatever that might mean to us.

With gratitude and love, my dear friend.

Stilt house in Pasco County

I’ve known about the stilt houses in Pasco County, Fla., for years, but didn’t write about them because they were hidden in plain sight — no one but locals knew. Sometimes it’s nice to keep special spots on the down-low. But once I started seeing a few mentions here and there, it was time to spread the good word on these lovely vestiges of old Florida.

Stilt house at sunset

So I wrote about them for VisitFlorida.com. The article also contains information on how to access them via boat. Alas, you cannot enter or stay on one unless you’re invited by an owner, but just seeing them dotting the Gulf of Mexico is something special indeed. Don’t you think?

Statue of Hieronymus Bosch in Den Bosch

One of our favorite places to take visitors is the charming Dutch city of ‘s-Hertogenbosch, locally known as the much-easier-to-pronounce Den Bosch. This year is HUGE for Den Bosch, as it celebrates the virtual return of its native son, famed medieval painter Hieronymus Bosch, who died 500 years ago. Though the city isn’t fortunate enough to own any of the artist’s paintings, this year it will present the largest retrospective of Bosch’s work ever, with all the pieces on loan from several leading museums. “Jheronimus Bosch – Visions of a Genius,” displaying 20 paintings and 19 drawings, runs from Feb. 13 to May 8 at Het Noordbrabants Museum. In addition, seven other museums in the province of North Brabant will present complementary shows. Timed tickets are already on sale, and the museum has expanded its opening hours.

Saint John’s Cathedral in Den Bosch

But, wait, there’s more. In its elegant baroque center and along its small canal system, Den Bosch is pulling out all stops for visitors, with special events throughout the year, including nightly light shows on the market square, projected 3-D images of diabolical Bosch characters, themed tours of the canals, and rare climbs outside Saint John’s Cathedral, which is covered with fantastical gargoyles and sculptures. I hope to do one of those climbs myself, as soon as they’re available. Can’t wait!

Ran Sept. 27, 2015

By Diane Daniel

Fading light on Terschelling around 11 pm

It was nearing 10:30 at night on Terschelling, but still not dark as my wife and I cycled through rippling sand dunes, their colors gradually muted by the fading light. Wild rabbits, a frequent sight on this largely undeveloped island in the Wadden Sea, hopped here and there, sometimes darting across our trail. A steady wind pushed us forward, blessedly, payback for earlier head winds – what bicyclists call “Dutch hills.” Atop the highest dune, a few hundred yards in the distance, we saw the silhouettes of a person and a dog. Only as we neared town and signs of civilization did we have to finally click on our bike lights, giving warning to the few people passing in the other direction.
We’d been nearly alone until we reached a main road.

I’d visited Terschelling, part of a barrierisland chain north of Amsterdam, before, and been captivated by its vast, windswept beaches, empty dunes and more than 170 crisscrossing miles of nearly empty cycling and walking trails, which seems an impossible tally for one of Europe’s most densely populated countries. But this time was different.

Every June, some 50,000 visitors of all ages arrive by the boatload

Selina and I had signed up for five days of performances at the 10-day arts gathering called Oerol. (Say “OO-ral” and you’re close enough.) Every June, some 50,000 visitors of all ages arrive by the boatload, literally, to view theater, dance, performance art, live music, installations or simply partake in the communal vibe. Oerol, the word meaning “all over” in the local Frisian dialect, stages professional performances throughout the island – on the street, in barns and, most memorably, in woods, fields, dunes and on the beach. The festival exemplifies site-specific theater, where art and environment meld, each illuminating the other.

I had been concerned about the crowds on an island measuring 18 miles long and 2.5 miles wide and with a year-round population of 4,800. Would the Oerol faithful overrun the place, ruining my fond memories? As it turned out, not at all. Save for the main thoroughfares and gathering spots, not only did Terschelling retain its sense of otherworldliness, the arts events took me to pockets of the island I probably wouldn’t have explored on my own.

We had pre-ordered tickets for a handful of performances, because many sell out. I had the advantage of a Dutch spouse who could research the offerings, but the program also includes summaries in English and handily notes the best options for non-Dutch speakers.

Cafe de Stoep in Midsland

By happenstance, we had chosen to stay in a rental cabin strategically situated just outside Midsland, the charming historic village in the middle of the island where Oerol got its start. In 1982, Joop Mulder, then-owner of the still-hopping Cafe de Stoep and now the festival’s artistic director, held the first event on a much smaller scale. During Oerol and the regular tourist season, from late spring to mid-fall, both Midsland and the harbor town of West Terschelling, about four miles west, are lively, their streets filled with visitors who pour into the many shops, restaurants and cafes. During the festival, both locations also house rollicking gated-off areas where wristband-wearers can eat, drink, view art, watch bands, buy tickets and compare notes.

Our second day on the island began with a scenic 30-minute wake-up ride to see “Dead End” by the Amsterdam theater troupe Via Berlin. (The official Oerol map gives cycling times, with the longest ride being 80 minutes, so it’s best to plan events strategically.) The production was held on a stage erected on the beach, the sea unfolding behind it. As we watched from bleachers, a man dressed as a border guard hammered out an eerie melody on an electric xylophone. When the sound was interrupted by heavy breathing, the source was at first unclear.

“Dead End” by Amsterdam theater troupe Via Berlin

“Look, there,” Selina whispered, pointing toward the sea. Not far from an actual fisherman, an actor, playing a fresh-off-the-boat refugee, zigzagged from the shore toward the audience. What followed was a haunting, percussion-fueled duel between the panting immigrant and the guard, who banged on drums lining the stage. As the wind picked up and it began to drizzle, the man’s despair became all the more palpable. In the end, he fled into the dunes, not even returning for a rousing standing ovation.

A woman at my side, a 10-year Oerol veteran, told me she always buys tickets for the shows on the beach, regardless of content. “Those are always the most special” she said, advising me to bring a seat cushion next time, like the one she and many others carried. “You’re either sitting at a performance or sitting on your bike all day, so your rear hurts.”

As we left, we checked out the improbably named “Heartbreak Hotel,” a restaurant, not a hotel, that specializes in Elvis paraphernalia as well as sandwiches and burgers. Sitting atop stilts on the beach, its view is unparalleled and it’s enough of an island destination to remain open year-round.

Bike path on the island’s eastern side

Later in the week, on a very welcome warm and sunny day (most were cool and cloudy, with intermittent drizzles), we headed out past the Elvis shrine and cycled as far as the trail would take us. The bike paths that cut through the island range from dirt tracks to wide paved paths, all easily navigable. At the end of the path, we walked into the sugary white dunes for a rest, counting only a handful of people. Terschelling’s beaches are said to be the widest in Europe, measuring about 500 yards from dunes to shore, so it’s a hike to the water’s edge, especially if you’re carrying beach gear.

The remainder of the island’s eastern side is taken up by the 11,000-acre national nature reserve Boschplaat, where a network of walking trails lead visitors around high dunes, sand planes, swamps and marshes, and the island’s only natural forest. Not only do thousands of waterfowl regularly reside here, the area is a stopover for migrating birds.

Here and many times throughout the week, the scenery reminded me of Cape Cod, in southeastern Massachusetts, with the more windswept areas feeling like Wellfleet and Truro and the Cape Cod National Seashore, and the villages recalling Eastham and Chatham, with less car traffic. Other things in common with the Cape: stands with homemade ice cream and even cranberry production.

Cyclists on path flanking the dike next to mud flats

On this day of exploring, we cycled back toward West Terschelling on a wide paved path flanking the dike that runs along the island’s south side. Our pace was slow enough to enjoy watching flocks of gulls, plovers, spoonbills and more birds feed on the vast mud flats. Along the way, we stopped to view a few installations erected for Oerol, most with nature at their core, including kiosks set up in fields for viewing and listening to birds and insects and giant mirrors reflecting images on the other side of the dike.

On the island’s western end, a favorite gathering spot for visitors, especially on the terrace of the popular bar and restaurant Paviljoen De Walvis, we found even larger installations. “Zeven Streken,” by Marc van Vliet, was a wooden structure with seating for dozens, reached by walking a 100-meter pier built over mud flats. When the tide came in, water surrounded the piece, its parts moving with the rushing tidal current. On land, artist Arjen Boerstra erected “Camera Batavia” in the top of a wooden tower on a high dune. With the help of lenses and a rounded mirror, visitors could view a large swath of the island in all directions at the same time.

Some of the installations are part of an ongoing arts initiative called Sense of Place, a collective term for numerous efforts carried out in and around the Wadden Sea that marry public art with landscape. Headed up by Oerol’s founder, the project will also play a significant role in 2018, when the Frisian capital of Leeuwarden takes the spotlight as a European Capital of Culture.

“Lutine” by Amsterdam theater troupe Orkater

On our final day on the island, we attended the play we’d chosen expressly for Selina, because it was in her native Dutch. I figured I’d go for the tunes and the scenery, but “Lutine,” by the Amsterdam musical theater troupe Orkater, captivated me. The production explored the wreck of the Lutine, a Royal Navy frigate that sunk in 1799 after hitting a sandbank between Terschelling and the neighboring island of Vlieland, with 269 lives lost. The ship is said to have carried a treasure trove of gold, which so far nobody has managed to salvage, although plenty have tried.

From our perch only a couple miles from where the disaster took place 216 years earlier, we could hear the pounding waves and survey the vast sea while the actors shared tragic and comic stories of cockamamie schemes devised to unbury the bounty of Terschelling. Thankfully, the island has plenty of other riches, much easier to access.

Restaurant Kazerne amid Dutch design

On paper, the plan for Kazerne must have sounded pie-in-the-sky: renovate a beat-up, cavernous building in the center of Eindhoven, a southern Dutch city in the midst of a reawakening. Transform it into a restaurant-slash-showcase for design and technology. Throw in meeting spaces, a design shop and lodging.

To the delight of locals, that dream, concocted by a Dutch couple, was realized late last year when Kazerne opened its doors in an industrial space. Improbably, the 8,000-square-foot main room, in dark hues illuminated by moody lighting, manages to convey both cool and cozy, aided by a smallish dining area in the center. (The remaining element, seven guest rooms, is planned for 2016.)

Designer Annemoon Geurts [photo Mike Roelofs]

The idealists behind Kazerne are the designer Annemoon Geurts and her partner Koen Rijnbeek. Like many of the designers whose work Ms. Geurts spotlights, she graduated from Design Academy Eindhoven. The idea emerged from a pop-up restaurant they ran during Dutch Design Week.

”We wouldn’t have started Kazerne if it was just a place to eat,” said Ms. Geurts, who runs the business through two nonprofits. ”It’s really our mission to bring the added value of the creative industries to people, to add a layer to the experience.”

Layers is more like it. The art enveloping Kazerne’s diners ranges from kinetic sculpture to mesmerizing lighting in exhibits rotating every few months.

Part of a recent exhibit at Kazerne

With such emphasis on design, I feared that the food would be an afterthought. Not so. The Mediterranean-influenced menu from Roger van de Loo, the chef, changes weekly (atypical in these parts), offering four starters and main dishes. During a recent visit, we began with a crisp cold octopus, eggplant and tomato salad and a hefty portion of beef pastrami with a zesty tomato chutney. Enticed by aromas from a neighboring table, I ordered the eggplant Parmesan, which was flavorful and not too cheesy, while my partner dug into a healthy portion of spicy chopped lamb, accompanied by basil mashed potatoes and crunchy asparagus.

Before leaving, we peeked into a back room to admire a flowing, glowing sculpture of LED-powered dandelions by Studio Drift, artwork Ms. Geurts describes as ”the DNA of Eindhoven — technical and emotional, and together they make a beautiful thing.”

Kazerne, Paradijslaan 2-8; 31 40-30-41-388; kazerne.com. An average meal for two, without drinks or tip, is about $80.

By Diane Daniel

Bikabout founder Megan Ramey with daughter Annika Ramey on Plum Island, Mass. [photo Kyle Ramey]

Megan Ramey’s first bike-related vacation with her husband and their daughter, now 5, partly inspired her to start Bikabout, an online travel resource for everything bicycling, with information on bike-friendly lodging, traveling with bikes, renting them, and where to ride them around town along with tips on culture, etiquette and safety.

“When our daughter was nine months we took our Burley trailer on the Chinatown bus from Boston and had the most amazing five days biking around with her in Brooklyn,” said Ramey, who lives in Cambridge, Mass., and volunteers with several bicycle advocacy groups. “Our next trip was to the Netherlands, where one out of every two people bike, which was totally eye-opening. If I can help get the US halfway to where the Netherlands is, then I will have accomplished a great thing.”

The site, which launched last year, is this spring rolling out new guides on Washington and New York City, soon to be followed by Atlanta, Milwaukee, San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, adding to the 13 cities already available.

Bikabout founder Megan Ramey with daughter Annika in Madison, Wisc. [photo Kyle Ramey]

The downloadable homegrown local rides, provided by Bikabout “ambassadors,” have proven to be the most popular part of the service, she said.

“You can of course go on MapMyRide and find rides there, but most of those are for people going 60 miles a day. Ours are for everyone and are less than 20 miles. They’re designed to have people really see and support the real city, to get off the beaten path and into the nooks and crannies.”

For example, the 7-mile East Van Brewery Tour in Vancouver visits six craft breweries and a few food stops, while the 13-mile Charleston (S.C.) Coastal See Food Tour includes key dining spots and expansive water views. Ramey also has partnered with several Kimpton Hotels, including those in D.C., and will supply them with themed routes starting from each location to give guests.

“Someday I’d like Bikabout to represent every major city in the U.S. that can accommodate bike tourism,” she said. “I don’t have the goal of making tons of money on this. I’m doing this more as a change agent. I want there to be a direct correlation between the amount of money that cities realize in bike tourism and how much they invest in bike infrastructure and safety.”

]]> https://bydianedaniel.wordpress.com/2015/05/22/a-new-resource-for-cycling-routes-and-services/feed/ 3 didaniel Bikabout founder Megan Ramey with daughter Annika Ramey on Plum Island, Mass. [photo Kyle Ramey] Bikabout founder Megan Ramey with daughter Annika in Madison, Wisc. [photo Kyle Ramey]