ABCDE Travel sunday, august 8, 2010
IMPULSIVETRAVELER Down in Mississippi
From Faulkner’s home to an archive of the blues, this Deep South town is one for the books. F6
Double-Click A new monthly review checks out an iPad travel app. F2 Going OurWay Their over-water dreams may be over the top. F3
Bed Check Happy campers at a Jersey Shore hotel. F5 CHAT We answer reader questions at 2 p.m. on Monday at
washingtonpost.com/travel
SIDE ORDER In a Graceful fashion
The ’50s style icon gets her own dressy London exhibit. F5
Mark Twain’s 1866 journey inspires a modern-day writer
Scampering N across
icaragua F EZ
PASCAL MAITRE/COSMOS/AURORA PHOTOS Mark Twain bypassedOmetepe Island and the volcano Concepcion in his journey across Nicaragua Lake. Today the ferry stops on the island. BY JULIAN SMITH Special to The Washington Post I
n the early morning, San Juan del Sur still looks like a sleepy fishing village. Green hills swell above a crescent baywhere fishing boats bob at anchor.Onthe beach, twomenare busy untangling a nylon net. The rising sun reveals another side of this Nicaraguan town. Iwalk down themain drag,
past surf shops, cafes, clothing boutiques and tanned, bored-looking foreigners. Shiny motorcycles and beach cruiser bicycles start to roll down clean-swept streets. On the hillsides, luxury hotels and gated commu-
“
Two magnificent pyramids, clad in the softest and richest green, all necked with
shadow and sunshine.” Mark Twain, on seeing Concepcion and Maderas, a pair of volcanic mountains in Lake Nicaragua
nities overlook the beach,where a boat bristlingwith surfboards is pulling out into the water. Things have improved in the nearly century and a
half since Mark Twain arrived here by steamship, forced to spend an extra night on board because of a cholera epidemic onshore. I’ve arrived 100 years after the great American
writer’s death to retrace one of his lesser-known journeys. In 1866, Twain crossed Nicaragua on his way fromCalifornia toNewYork.Hewas fresh off his first lecture tour, and his writing career was just starting to take off. He was still basking in the praise that his story “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of
nicaragua continued on F4
Time flies when you’re trying to get to the airport none too early
Why arrive hours in advance when every other passenger is doing so?
BY JOE YONAN I have a fantasy of air travel, and it goes
like this: I cab to the airport with my pre-printed boarding pass in hand, go through an efficiently moving security line and get to the gate just as the flight is starting to board. Clarification: I get to the gate just as the
flight is starting to board my particular zone. Well, who wouldn’t want such a thing,
right? Let me make sure you understand, however. My ultimate hope is that I never have to breakmy stride, never wait around for the boarding to begin, never — God forbid—sit. Since 9/11, we’ve been told to get to the
airport as early as two hours before depar- ture, even for a domestic flight. I under-
standwhy, at least in theory:Going through security certainly takes longer than it used to, in the days before toiletriesmaxed out at three ounces, laptops required their own bins and the most important thing you could do when dressing for travel was to remember to wear slip-on shoes. But in my mind there’s a more pressing
problem: I. Hate.Waiting. So much so, in fact, that a trip to the
airport becomes a heart-pounding adven- ture as I cut things way too close for comfort and rely on far too many un- knowns: A working Internet connection so I can check in online. A working printer (enough ink, enough paper) so that I can printmy boarding pass at home. The ability to quickly hail a cab. Luck in finding a driver who knows the best route; even better, one who drives like a bat out of hell. A quick line at security. It’s dangerous, really, and admittedly
pretty ridiculous. I can’t defend it, can’t recommend it. And I can’t stop doing it, particularly when I’m flying out of Reagan National Airport, where security is usually a cinch and the variablesmoremanageable
than at Dulles, although I confess to a recent down-to-the-wire cab ride there, too. I guess this is in my blood, or at least in
my upbringing. I was only 8 and my sister Julie just 10 when we started flying from West Texas to Chicago to stay with my father for amonth every summer. Steward- esses and other staff kept watch over us once we boarded and on any layovers, but getting to the airport was another story, especially on the return trip south. Our stepmother was so chronically tardy wher- ever she went with us that my most vivid memories of O’Hare involve sprinting. Before 9/11, we weren’t the only ones
sliding into the gate like it was home plate. Nowadays, of course, it’s a different story. And I acknowledge that it wouldn’t be so easy to breeze through at the lastminute if everyone else didn’t seemto allow somuch extra time. I sometimes think of
“If
Everybody Did,” a children’s book that admonishes young readers (in verse, natu- rally) to imagine the consequences if they weren’t the only ones to “make tracks,”
cutting it close continued on F5
J.D. KING FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
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