The sublime public life of a great city

 

Barcelona—once dismissed as a grimy, dull city—is now mentioned in the same breath as Paris, London and Rome as a must-see destination for anyone seeking to experience Europe at its best. What happened?

The city sports gorgeous architecture, both in the charming tangle of medieval streets and in turn-of-the-19th-Century masterpieces by Antonin Gaudi and other geniuses of the Modernisme movement. The Mediterranean Sea splashes right at its doorstep, creating a vibrant downtown waterfront where you can stroll past a harbor full of tall-mast sailboats and broad beaches crowded with stunningly well-toned sunbathers. Barcelona is ringed with mountains, laced with Parisian-style boulevards and dotted with lively nightspots.

Daytripping in the new and improved Detroit

Type	City
Mode	Walking
Lodging	"Lovely brick mansions" downtown
Distance & Duration	6 miles
Difficulty	Easy
Highlights	Streetlife and architecture

To many people the idea of visiting in Detroit sounds like the punch line of an old comedy routine. “First prize, an all-expense-paid one-week vacation in Detroit.  Second prize, two weeks in Detroit!” Ha-ha.

But for those of us who love cities in all their giddy gritty glory, the Motor City is no joke.  Although struggling in recent decades Detroit still offers experiences you expect from a world-class city: heartstopping architecture, a bustling waterfront, topnotch art, convivial nightlife, great food, picturesque city squares, a jam-packed public market and, most of all, memorable strolls.

REPOSTED FROM THE CLASSIC JOURNEYS CATALOG

The wildly popular book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil has inspired any number of pilgrimages to the coastal South. But our journey digs deeper than the guidebook landmarks. Of course, we walk our fair share of moss-draped lanes—but instead of admiring fine restorations of prosperous homes from the outside, we go in for private tours and even dinner under the chandelier. We meet up with the Gullah culture, too, with its strong West African traditions and visit the country's most unique living history museums. On the sea islands and in the tidal estuaries, nature has always nibbled at the edge of civilization down here. And you'll see just how close it is on our forays onto barrier islands and lazy floats on streams populated by dolphins and woodstorks. To our mind, there's just no other region in America with such a distinctive meld of history, climate and way of life, and we'll share it all with you in gracious style on our walking tour of Charleston & Savannah.

No, not that one – not the Al Capone, John Dillinger, bootleg liquor and ladies in red version of the underground. These days, Chicago's underground is the very cool, or I guess I should say- shelter-from-the-elements Pedway. The Pedway is a series of heated (or cool in summer) walkways, passages and tunnels, (and some overhead bridges) that link more than 50 skyscrapers, hotels, train stations around 40 blocks of the  central part of the city.

I took a tour of the Pedway with Amanda Scotese, of Chicago Detours. Not only does the Pedway have its own interesting history (and it helps to have a guide to orient you), you can use it to stay warm and visit some of the landmark Chicago buildings up on sidewalk level. An architectural walking tour of Chicago would otherwise be pretty brutal in February, when I went.

Detours, who are supposedly the only tour outfit using iPads to show videos, archival photos and old brochures, prides themselves on "exploring stories and places even the locals don't know about."

Aside from our Pedway background, we did an "Inside the Loop" tour that included going into a landmark Marshall Field's store. We craned our necks at the beautiful ceiling, and she explained the psychology of shopping and how it informed design;  we got a lot more out of it than a description of cornices and dentil moulding. (I, for one, got free theatre tickets, when I won an on-the-spot trivia contest about the "shop girls" who used to mind the counters at Marshall Fields.)

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