National Public Radio this morning broadcast yet another piece of depressing climate change news: the integrity of cultural heritage sites from the Tower of London to the Parthenon is being threatened by changes as diverse as desertification, heavier rainfalls, emissions, and rising sea levels.

Dubbed “Noah’s Ark,” a new study of the effects is being undertaken by the European Union. It’s found that drier air will lead to heavier, corrosive salt deposits on ancient stone and newer metal buildings, and heavier moisture in the north will lead to faster rotting of and insect damage to wooden structures.

You can read or listen to the entire piece by following the above link (there are some good photos, too), but here’s a depressing excerpt: “Experts warn that lower humidity levels in southern Europe will lead to an increase in the amount of salts deposited on marble and limestone, potentially weakening and breaking structures such as the Parthenon in Athens and the Colosseum in Rome. In northern Europe, where wood and metals are commonly used, increased moisture could also lead to fractures and rotting from insects and organic agents such as lichen and moss. Monuments like the Eiffel tower could be damaged by corrosion, according to the report.”

Tucked way down the list of my morning National Public Radio news was a tidbit that made it to the top of the BBC’s online headlines: Russia, its finances afloat on a vast sea of oil wealth, has restarted long-range patrol flights by bombers, a practice it gave up (when the country was broke and couldn’t afford the fuel) 15 years ago.

By now most of us have seen far too many effects of geopolitical lumberings on our travels, whether we’re American and wish we could take a beach holiday in Cuba, or if we’d like to follow in Colin Thubron’s steps hiking quietly and alone across Lebanon. The US invasion of Iraq ruined for many years my slow wheedling to get my husband to take a long trip through the Middle East.

While I of course acknowledge Russia’s right to do whatever the heck it wants with its military (and spend its oil money faster than Americans can guzzle it in their SUVs), the statement by Russian president Vladimir Putin that the move was “in response to security threats posed by other military powers” was an obvious waving of the cliched huge red flag (pun intended) in front of the American military-industrial complex, which loves to manipulate the minds of American voters so they can finagle more money out of Congress to “protect us.” (Am I showing my politics? Oh, dear.)

Having grown up in the 80s under the yoke of “the Reds are all coming to kill us so we have to spend lots of money on idiotic, pointless weapons,” while having schoolmates make jokes about my Russian father’s heavy accent and the probabilities of my watch being a KGB microphone, I had hoped that the end of the Cold War, along with increased travel and that master crasher of all cultural barriers, the Internet, would mean that the next generation of children wouldn’t grow up fearing the Bear of the East.

When I was a child, the prospect of meeting my grandparents, or my aunts, uncle, and cousin, much less of ever seeing the city my father had grown up in, were laughable impossibilities. We were in America, they were in the Soviet Union, tough luck. Then the stupidity fell apart, and in 1991, just before the Yeltsin’s coup, we moved to Moscow and I began a relationship that has been a defining factor of my life for over half of it. Year before last I spent two months studying Russian during a bitterly cold winter in Moscow, when it snowed every day and I loved it, and last year I spent three weeks giddily wide-awake during St. Petersburg’s steamy White Nights summer, attending a unique literary seminar and eating regular dinners with a family I had hardly known (the photo above was taken on one of St. Petersburg’s canals last summer, near midnight).

I’d begrudge giving up the opportunity to visit Russia regularly just because politicians and warmongers need to flex their muscles and throw money into their corporate friends’ hungry maws to build weapons. More than that, I’d seriously begrudge it if my soon-to-be-born son had to go through his childhood missing the crucial connection to his world and identity as I did. I hope we’re not headed down the same path, but the Russia-US relationship has hardly verged on friendship since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Having the two countries’ leaders wave their parts — I mean military — at each other to see whose is biggest is not going to help.

When I travel alone (or with Sainted Husband) and have the time/money, I prefer to stay in a hotel with character.  I have no problem sharing a bathroom down the hall if that’s the only way to afford a really unique lodging option.

My kids, on the other hand, are much less tolerant of “funky” than I am. 

When we pulled up to the Shack Up Inn in Clarksdale, Mississippi, a way-funky collection of converted sharecropper shacks in the heart of Delta blues country, the front-seat adults said, “Awesome!”  The back-seat kids said, “Gross!”

Guess they didn’t appreciate the humor in a “Bed and Beer” establishment.

On a recent trip to Virginia, the kids were thrilled and the adults nonplussed by a one-night stop at the Great Wolf Lodge in Williamsburg.  It was an amazing hotel in terms of scale and things to do, but I just don’t have a burning desire to play in a blacklighted video game room or climb a rock wall or play putt-putt or eat in five different restaurants (there IS a spa if you grow tired of all that hollering and activity.)

The enormous indoor water park section of the hotel was spectacular, I must say, and much easier to enjoy than tromping around a spread-out, hot, open-air water park.

Still….I guess I just don’t tend to look for indoor water parks in my hotels.

The kids, naturally, were in heaven.  I don’t think I physically saw my son for about two hours in the water park, as he went from ride to ride and up and down slides.

Sitting in the park, surrounded by screaming, laughing wet children and adults and 300,000 gallons of water, I had time to reflect about getting over myself.  Maybe I need to build a few more of these kid-focused places into our trips, even if they aren’t my cup of tea.

Don’t get me wrong; I don’t spend every waking moment taking my children to museums and finding interesting ethnic food to plop in front of them (they just think that I do.) 

During our recent Midwest road trip, I made every effort to accomodate the last Harry Potter release by arranging for a book for midnight pickup with my teenager in Emporia, Kansas.  I agreed to see the 10 p.m. IMAX Harry Potter in 3-D at Chicago’s Navy Pier entertainment complex instead of taking my daughter to hear some good live Chicago blues.  Sigh.

My point is that I think I should try a little harder to look for lodging, or attractions or eateries that maybe I personally shudder to contemplate but I know that the kids would simply swoon about. 

Within reason, of course….I draw the line at too much time in Chuck E. Cheese.

Technorati tags:  travel, family travel

For those traveling to or through London (unlike people such as fellow blogger Steve, lucky enough to live nearby), there is one bookstore you must visit. Before you hunt down the recently purchased John Donne painting in the National Portrait Gallery, or dubiously buy tickets for The Lord of the Rings musical, or drag your weary feet to Buckingham Palace, every dedicated traveler needs to search out Stanfords. It is, in a word, travel gluttony.

With 3 stories packed with possibly the largest collection of travel guides, travel literature, maps, gear, and travel-related kids’ toys anywhere, Stanfords has catered to some of the world’s most famous travelers (and hundreds of thousands of nobodies like me) since 1901. It’s not just books, not just a place to browse. It’s for map junkies, too, people driving across Europe or trekking through Nepal. The massive map table and specialists allow you to choose Ordnance Survey maps from anywhere in the world, or make your own, to scale. If, like me, you love to hike, this is the place to figure out where you’re going.

If I sound like I’m writing an advertisement, I apologize. But sitting in the sticks in upstate New York, Stanfords calls to me every time I feel like a travel-porn fix. No more scouring that sad little section in Barnes & Noble for an insightful memoir about Labrador — Stanfords has everything you could want out of a travel bookstore. I had exactly 10 hours in London in July, and there was only one place I cared to go. “The new Colin Thubron,” I asked the Polish clerk. She hadn’t heard of him, which was sad, but the woman behind me had, and when I said he was my favorite travel writer, she nodded. “And he’s such a nice man,” she said. “I know him.” Ah, Stanfords. Home. I enter it, and my mouth starts to water. And I’ve never even eaten in the cafe.

I can’t put this better than one of my favorite regular bloggers, Patrick Smith of Ask the Pilot. Today’s column addresses a whole hodgepodge of news and issues, including frustration with our sheep-like acceptance of the Transportation Security Administration’s new security alerts and a rundown of the World Airline Awards. But this one takes the cake: airlines are now offering round-the-world routings that make a point of avoiding the US. Patrick puts it better than I can:

‘ “Air New Zealand Offers Round-the-World Routing Avoiding the U.S.” That was a recent headline from U.K.-based Business Traveler magazine. For the past several years, fliers bound from Australia and New Zealand to Europe by way of U.S. stopovers have been raising a ruckus about security policies that require all passengers, even those merely in transit to other countries, to clear U.S. immigration formalities — a process that includes fingerprinting, photographing and baggage rechecking. Air New Zealand has responded with the launch of a service from Auckland to Europe with a hassle-free transfer at Vancouver, British Columbia, eliminating its long-standing Auckland-Los Angeles-London route. Air Canada is following suit with a nonstop Vancouver-Sydney flight, bypassing its traditional layover in Hawaii, which, in the words of the magazine, “will enable global travelers to avoid the United States.” What have we come to?’

Indeed. Quite a number of the letter responses are from frustrated international travelers cheering their new options. In fact, the post reminded that my own mother, who is meant to come to New York to welcome her grandchild in October, has put her foot down at flying through the US. “I simply won’t do it,” she told me. “I won’t fly here. It’s horrible.” (And unsafe, she feels, and intrusive, and soul-draining.) By which she means that she actually prefers to drive 9 hours from Montana to Calgary, Alberta, then fly or take the train to Toronto, take a train to Albany, and have me pick her up for the two-hour ride home. Of course, my mother’s a bit eccentric, but reading the letter in reaction to Smith’s column tells me she’s not alone.