Armchair Travel

Armchair Travel: Sailing Back in Time on a Treasure Hunt

Armchair Travel

Today you can sail aboard a ship that looks like a fat skyscraper floating on its side in the ocean.  Just book a cruise on the newly launched Oasis of The Seas.  (Click here for the recent story about this behemoth of the ocean by San Francisco Chronicle Travel Editor Spud Hilton).  But what if [...]

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Time Travel: New York, Before It Was New York

Armchair Travel

Human migration, voyages of exploration, moving from a hunter-gather to an agrarian-civilized lifestyle, and even leisure travel, has changed the face of the planet.  Often what once was now lies beneath layers of asphalt and concrete, or the weight of both low and high-rise buildings. In “Before New York“, National Geographic senior editor Peter Miller [...]

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"Extreme Travel": Living on A Razor's Edge

Armchair Travel

For me, living on a razor’s edge when I’m traveling means making sure I can get a close shave in the morning.  For writer Neil Shea and photographer Stephen Alvarez, it meant risking life and limb navigating their way through the maze of spiky stone towers in Madagascar‘s Tsingy de Bemaraha National Park and Reserve.  [...]

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Hitting The Books Again

Armchair Travel

Normally, I’m a fairly voracious reader, but this year, I went on an planned “book diet”.  It took me four months to read a single novel.  In the meantime, my waistline expanded and my brain shrank. I didn’t pick up another book for another four months, but I finished that one (Marco Polo Didn’t Go [...]

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