More than once I have found myself in a foreign place with the wrong book. I’ll have brought History of the Arab Peoples to Russia, or an Emma Lathen mystery novel to Britain. Or Proust to a beach holiday on Grand Cayman (that was a huge mistake). Wherever it is, I get there and realize that the only thing I want to be reading is something that echoes the place and people I’m seeing around me.

So I was excited to be sent the Whereabouts Press Traveler’s Literary Companion to South Africa. Not that I’m going to South Africa anytime soon, but it served as an introduction to a series of books that focus on giving travelers a deeper sense of a place through its best writing, both past and present.

In this collection, the names of Nobel Prize-winning authors Nadine Gordimer and J. M. Coetzee will be familiar to readers with a literary bent. But, as promised by the Traveler’s Literary Companion Series, the South Africa collection introduces us to a wide collection of South African writers most of the world might not have heard of: Ivan Vladislavic, Es’kia Mphahlele, H. C. Bosman, to name just a few of the 18 contributors.

I particularly enjoyed Mphahlele’s “Mrs. Plum,” with its careful treatment of servant-master race relations through the voice of a black maid. And Ronnie Govender’s “1949″ was a painful depiction of the effort to preserve one’s humanity among a populace gone insane with hate.

These stories and excerpts brought me into a world I know little or nothing about. Sure, I’ve read Nelson Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom and am early in line whenever J. M. Coetzee comes out with a new novel. But I’ve never been to South Africa. The flavor of its history, countryside, tensions, beauty, and rhythm come through, as they should, at their best through the stories of the country’s best writers.

It surprised me, however, to find that I felt the lack of a travel writer’s voice. Although I’ve always maintained that novelists are often better writers of “place” than travel writers are, reading this collection made me realize that travel writers can give a deeper sense of context than a native essayist or novelist. Context is so often what the traveler needs.

Reading the stories, I kept thinking of Calcutta, by Simon Winchester, which begins with long travel essays both by Winchester and his son, incorporating scene, character, and history for the reader. I now realize that I needed those essays to get myself into the mood for reading stories about Calcutta, to get into the flavor of the place. I found that harder with the South Africa literary companion because the introduction gave the briefest of historical background enmeshed in an introduction to the writers themselves. Although I thoroughly enjoyed the stories, and would like to search out more of the writers’ works, I didn’t feel, as I had with Calcutta, that I was breathing the place as I read the fiction.

The Companion, then, showed me that I have been right in maintaining that, to really know a country you need to read its literature; but it also showed me more clearly than I’ve seen before how very necessary travel writing is for understanding. The collection could have been improved by one excellent essay from an outsider, Jan Morris perhaps, or even a native South African describing the passions and difficulties of his or her country for an outsider who might find it all very foreign.

The only other flaw was one of purely personal preference. Some of the short stories were abridged, which always gives me a feeling that I’m not actually reading the story I’ve been given. For space, of course, the collection can only include excerpts of novels and longer works, but personally I’d buy a slightly fatter book if it could guarantee that the stories in it were as the writers penned them.

Aside from that, however, I highly recommend picking up this or any other of the Traveler’s Literary Companions, to introduce yourself deeply to a place before you go. Whereabouts Press so far produces over 20 of these collections, all compact for your suitcase and rich with literary gems. Next time I travel, I’ll read one of these books first, and then know what kind of author to bring along on my journeys.

There are many who decry the “Starbucks on every corner” dominance of the Seattle-based coffee shop chain, but I would submit that they’ve sure done a great job of elevating the average American’s sophistication about coffee.

I mean, Folger’s, anyone? Maxwell House?

I didn’t think so.

So, in homage to their influence, after a divine salmon taco lunch I visit the original Starbucks store (established in 1971) in Seattle’s Pike Place Market.

It looks much less perfect and corporate than the average franchise shop, with dark, worn wooden floors, a big wooden counter/bar and older light fixtures suspended from the ceiling.

I liked it a lot, but on the day we stopped in it was totally mobbed with Japanese tourists buying souvenir brown mugs with the store original logo.

Since I was a tourist….I bought one, too.

Make sure you go to the correct one – there is yet another Starbucks across the street from Pike Place (on 1st Avenue, I think) with the same brown sign, but it is NOT the more cramped, older-looking original. Accept no substitutes.

If you’re in doubt, tweet @SeattleMaven who is Ann Peavey from the city’s Tourism office.  She’ll be happy to guide you to the original (and she’ll hook you up with all sorts of other cool Seattle ideas and tips – just ask!)

On October 3rd, 6000 people turned out to commemorate the opening of a multi-million-dollar civic project the scope of which probably hasn’t been seen since the Great Depression. Of course, it’s hardly the Hoover Dam, or the Interstate Highway System, but it’s been decades since any federal or state government in the U.S. put serious money and backbreaking labor into a construction that exists purely to benefit the public at large. In a time when commuter bridges are falling apart or simply being shut down for safety purposes, it is astounding to see public funds poured into a pedestrian bridge crossing the Hudson River.

Much like the Hudson River it straddles, this bridge has been called “muscular.” Unlike the river, it is a solid, soaring relic of the Industrial Revolution. The Walkway over the Hudson is a project and organization that has attempted to achieve its goal in fits and starts for almost 20 years. Finally pushed through by state funding — in a year of recession, no less, when word was the entire project would be scrapped — to coincide with the Hudson Valley’s 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s historic voyage, the bridge’s renovation was completed to almost everyone’s astonishment.

The railway bridge was originally built in the late 1800s to funnel coal from the mines of Pennsylvania across to New York and New England, and to service the industrial upstate New York city of Poughkeepsie, sitting on the eastern bank of the Hudson River. It was abandoned in the 1970s and left, basically, to rot.

Some say the renovation only went through because, while the Walkway project cost $38 million, it would have cost $60 million to dismantle the bridge, but who ever accused a politician of common sense, much less common fiscal sense? The acceptance and completion of the project seems to be a complete fluke, especially as two weeks later the only commuter bridge linking New York to Vermont across Lake Champlain was suddenly closed indefinitely due to fears of its safety, leaving commuters with a 100-mile detour.

Whatever its reasons, the fluke that allowed the Walkway over the Hudson to reach completion is to the benefit of anyone residing in or visiting the Hudson Valley. In a time when travel is too expensive for many and a need for community is growing, the pedestrian bridge seems to be feeding people’s need for something new, something local, something to be proud of, and yes, something free.

Witness last weekend, when we finally drove up to walk the bridge with some friends. We expected crowds, but we certainly didn’t expect the nearly 3000 people who soared with us at an unbelievable height across the river, pushing strollers, walking dogs, dodging bicycles and runners, and taking hundreds of photographs.

The bridge walk is 1.28 miles from end to end, and a loop slightly over 3 miles links the pedestrian bridge to a pedestrian path on the Mid-Hudson Bridge, which was built and is still used for cars. Eventually the Walkway will also link to abandoned railbeds that crisscross the Hudson Valley. Its eastern shore, consisting of post-industrial Poughkeepsie, ends relatively close to the train station, making the Walkway accessible for visitors taking the scenic Hudson train line up from Grand Central in New York City.

Its construction is impressively solid, and sports Historic Hudson and Environmental Hudson informational posters at various intervals. There is also a Talking Walkway, a number you can dial to receive an audio tour of the Walkway through your cell phone.

The project, of course, is not all roses. While it gives people like me hope out of all proportion for a future in which the public good is more important than private profits, the Walkway has had its issues. As we finished our walk, I spoke with two State Park employees who were changing the trash. The organization that’s been pushing the project, they told me, had been enthusiastic for 20 years but in the end had little idea of how to manage it. So they turned it into a State Park, “and now we’re stuck with figuring it out.”

I asked about the parking. We had expected, and found, parking problems on a beautiful autumn Sunday, but laughed aloud when we finally reached the parking lot itself. There were 10 spaces. “They were expecting about 100 people a day at best,” said the Park employees. “Nothing like this. They’re completely unprepared.” They waved at the Clovis toilets that I hadn’t noticed before. “We can’t even open the composting toilets because they can’t handle the volume. We’re too green!” That’s why the Port-a-Potties were still heavily in use, and, I might add, getting awfully full.

Winter is undecided. The bridge sits high above the Hudson River, and while the views are awe-inspiring, the winds can be strong and biting. No one has worked out how to remove built-up snow, and, said the Park employee, “You can’t just let people on if there’s snowdrifts because then the guardrails will be at an unsafe height.” Well, I wouldn’t have thought of that, either.

Still, the whole shebang seems better organized than the highway construction that’s in constant flux near our New York State Thruway entrance. And, judging by the sheer volume of visitors who repeated the phrase “Oh,yeah, it’s definitely worth the walk,” I’m not the only one who’s moved and inspired by a project designed simply to share the beauty and wonder of the Hudson Valley with anyone who cares to make the trek.

Early on in my recent trip to Mexico, I was having dinner with a small group at a restaurant in Guadalajara. When the meal was finished, the woman who was charged to leading us back to our bus spoke Spanish and French, but no English. She also wasn’t familiar with the area we were in, and didn’t know where our bus was, exactly, making it a mystery about why she was leading us in the first place, but there wasn’t really time to contemplate that, because I was the only one among us who was able to communicate with her, using a language that I call Spench.

Spench, of course, is a blend of Spanish and French, borne out of a cheerful mix of second language education: I was in a bilingual French program in the first and second grade, took Spanish for the balance of elementary school, French through high school, Spanish in college. Of all of my formal second language education, I’d say the first experience and the last made the most impact. The last, because I studied Spanish intensively in college and graduated with the ability think in Spanish – short-lived, it turned out, since I used it not at all and it faded from my conscious mind. And the first, because some essential neurological wiring happened in my brain during those early years. If I’m relaxed, I can understand French with a startling amount of clarity.

In recent years, my French has been stronger than my Spanish. I’m just exposed to it more often, my husband speaks French to his father and I participate in their conversations too – but I speak my parts in English. I have trouble managing a social interaction while conjuring up French sentences, especially since I have to double-check that I’m not inserting Spanish words into the mix.

But in the situation of needing to find the bus, my guide and I were able to agree that it didn’t matter at all. She spoke to me in French and I responded using whatever word I was able to grab at, no matter what the language. (Which led to such linguistic atrocities on my part as “un rue muy grande”.) But we found the bus.

It’s sad, I think, that English speakers usually don’t have to struggle with language when we travel. True, you can almost always find someone who will speak to you in English. Of course this is part of what contributes to the bad reputation of American tourists, blithely assuming that everyone speaks our language. It doesn’t just hurt our reputation though, it limits our experience: sticking to English alone makes it harder to penetrate a place, to go outside the tourist track. Which makes everything less interesting.

With the amount I travel, it’s impractical for me to learn the language of every country I visit, although I do consider it basic decent manners to be able to say a few words in the language. If nothing else, I want to know how to say “thank you”, because I’ve found that thanking people, in combination with smiling, and a method that a good friend of mine calls “hooting and pointing” – hand gestures — you can get through a number of situations. (Or you can make a laughing stock of yourself. During my recent trip to Shanghai, I noticed that my earnest attempts to thank people tended to be greeted with giggles. Once I got home and ran it past a Chinese friend, who also laughed helplessly. Oh, God, what did I say? It’s xie xie, right? Right, but I was pronouncing it like shǐ shǐ, when I should have been saying something more like tsyeh-tsyeh. Instead of saying thank you, I using a child’s word for shit. Whoops.)

At this moment, though, my Spanish is stronger than my French, because I ended up using it a lot during the rest of my time in Mexico. Spanish phrases and words came back to me like words floating up out of a deep, dark cave. (Not the kind that has bears, the kind of cave that looks like a hole in the ground that spelunkers like to squeeze into.) I supplemented these memories with my Rough Guide phrasebook for when I needed to remind myself of something. I had that book in my hands at least once an hour, looking up phrases and repeating them to myself, over and over again. In the science of second language acquisition, this is called the “silent phase”, where you’re listening and learning and repeating language to yourself over and over again without speaking.

I’m not sure what the scientific explanation of this is, but sometimes words would go haywire when they journeyed from my memory cave. In Mexico City, I wanted to tell the cab driver that we were at our hotel. “Pare aqui, por favor,” I said. (Stop here, please.) And then: “Este mueble.” (“This furniture.” What? I meant to say, “this building.”) Sometimes, nothing would come up at all. I was in San Miguel de Allende, about to buy some ice cream from a street vendor. “How do you say, flavor?”, my friend asked. “I don’t know,” I said. A few moments passed. “Sabor,” I said. I didn’t know it and then I knew it.

How did that happen? It’s like there’s some screen in my memory, and forcibly prying the screen back only makes it hold with more tenacity. The only way to remove the screen is to patiently stare at it, for hours, until it becomes opaque and then maybe, after some time, it dissolves.

For as long as I can remember, any trip to Los Angeles always involved spending the day at Disneyland, visiting with Micky, Minnie, and the rest of the gang. But on my last stopover in Los Angeles,  I was talked into visiting the Getty Center instead. Enticed by the promise of  blue skies, amazing views, and a free ‘grownup’ Disneyland experience, how could I resist.

Perched on a hilltop just above the 405 Freeway in the Los Angeles suburb of Brentwood, the Getty Center is a collection of low rise, interconnected buildings surrounded by a variety of landscaped gardens.

Just like Disneyland, the Getty Center thrives on being big, bold, and magical. Once you arrive, it’s difficult to decide what to do first. Go inside and wander around the enormous collection of paintings, antiquities, and photography.  Perhaps meander through the eighty-six acres of landscaped gardens and terraces. Or focus on the architectural splendor of the Richard Meier designed buildings.

To be honest, I spent more time outside than in, wandering around admiring the architecture, the gardens, the panoramic views,  and enjoying the sunshine. Next time, I’ll have to spend more time inside the buildings viewing the impressive collections of paintings -  Van Gough, Monet, Renoit, etc – as well as Greek, European and Roman antiquities and decorative art, and American and European photography.

If you had only one day in Los Angeles, where would you go?