One for the Road: Ghost Hunter’s Guides

by Kelly Amabile on

Calling all paranormal adventurers — ready for a Halloween ghost hunt?
Cardiology specialist and ghost hunter Jeff Dwyer’s latest guide reveals details about over 70 haunted hangouts around the Crescent City. The Ghost Hunter’s Guide to New Orleans provides historical background on the spooky stories that have made these locations legendary.

But no fears or frets if NOLA is not on your Halloween travel agenda. Ghost-lovers in Los Angeles and San Francisco can do hunting as well, using Dwyer’s guides to those cities. Folks who might be up for hunting goblins in between sips of chardonnay will want to pick up his Ghost Hunter’s Guide to California’s Wine Country, due out next year. (A guide to haunted locales in Seattle is forthcoming as well.) Whether or not you believe in the paranormal, these guides might be fun to have if you are traveling to these cities this Halloween season, or on any family vacation when you want to spook the heck out of your Aunt Martha.

Bonus for California residents: You can actually join up with Dwyer for ghost hunts taking place on Saturday, Oct. 13 at Acres of Books (1 pm) and Under the Bridge (5 pm). And he’ll be signing books at the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose on Oct. 27 (6 pm). Boo!

Submit Your Story for the Solas Travel Awards – Soon!

by Kelly Amabile on

The deadline for entry into the Second Annual Solas Awards is fast approaching — October 15 is the last day to submit your travel stories to be included for consideration by the team at Travelers’ Tales. This is the second year that the California-based travel publisher has sponsored the awards. We told ya about them when the awards were first announced last year, and want to be sure not to forget to remind you about this year’s competition as well.

Here is how it works: The Travelers’ Tales editors will choose winners in 21 categories ranging from adventure to humor, from destination to memoir, and everything in between. The grand prize category has cash awards of $1,000, $750, and $500; all other category winners receive a certificate and a copy of the most recent edition of Travelers’ Tales The Best Travel Writing or The Best Women’s Travel Writing. There are award entry fees and other rules, so check out BestTravelWriting.com for details of the awards and more.

One final related travel writing tidbit — If you live in San Francisco, you may be interested in Travelers Tales’ Executive Editor Larry Habegger’s advanced travel writing workshop. A new offering of the course begins this week (October 10), and there are two slots left. For more information go to LarryHabegger.com.

North Beach: San Francisco’s Best Neighborhood

by Neil Woodburn on

Outside of my hometown of Los Angeles, my favorite American city is San Francisco. And within San Francisco, my favorite neighborhood is North Beach.

North Beach is an eclectic blend of everything that is San Francisco. It’s loaded up with great restaurants, fantastic bars, turn-of-the-century architecture, and the very best bookstore on the planet: City Lights. Sure, there are also lots of homeless people and a few strip joints, but the resounding character of this neighborhood is so overwhelmingly fantastic that it is easy to overlook the few downers one comes across.

At the very minimum, an entire day should be reserved for North Beach when visiting San Francisco. Less than a mile wide, it is easily walkable and thoroughly enjoyed on foot.

But, what to see?

You can’t go wrong just wandering, but if you want some more direction in your meanderings, pop on over to the San Francisco Chronicle website where they have an extremely detailed write-up on this fine neighborhood that covers sights and culture, events and festivals, shopping, restaurants, nightlife, and even includes a slide show.

And while we’re on the subject of San Francisco, the Chronicle has an equally extensive coverage of all San Francisco neighborhoods worth visiting. This, folks, is a great resource that is far more accurate, detailed, and up-to-date than any guidebook you might happen to have.

Tracing the Steps of On the Road

by Neil Woodburn on

Literary pilgrimages, in which one shadows the adventures of a fictional character, is some of the most rewarding travel around if you are a bibliophile.

Certainly the most famous example of such travel is Bloomsday, a national holiday where intoxicated fans of James Joyce’s Ulysses reenact a 24-hour jaunt through Dublin.

While there are many other literary journeys across the globe, the American version of disturbed, lost souls wandering about can be found within the classic, On the Road.

In celebration of the 50th anniversary of Jack Kerouac’s seminal work, journalist Christopher Reynolds thoughtfully updated and modernized the journey of Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty as they gallivanted from coast to coast.

Revisiting sites from ‘On the Road’ is the perfect guide for such a journey. Reynolds breaks down the article into sections titled “In the book” in which he describes the places Sal and Dean visited. He then follows up with a “Now” section in which he directs the reader to these same places today. Naturally, a few have disappeared. There are, however, a surprising number of restaurants and hotels which are still standing and awaiting the Kerouac faithful.

Restaurant Menus Available Online for Major American Cities

by Neil Woodburn on

You know the drill. You’re in a strange city, someone gives you a restaurant recommendation, but when you get there, there is nothing on the menu that looks interesting to you.

Well, a new website plans to alleviate that culinary nightmare. MenuPages.com is a database of thousands of menus covering restaurants in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, Washington DC, and South Florida.

The site is organized by regions and cuisines. Simply find the restaurant that’s been recommended and click on the online menu or download the printable PDF file.

The listings are long and impressive–pretty much every restaurant I searched for in Los Angeles popped up. The one disappointment is the rather lackluster review section. Few of the restaurants feature reader reviews. Hopefully this will change in the future as the site catches on.