tourist traps – erica goes traveling

beignets at Cafe du Monde

consumption of beignets sat squarely atop our list of tourist-musts for our New Orleans adventure. our very first stop on Friday morning, after a breezy but pleasant walk from our hotel next to the convention center into the French Quarter, was the Cafe du Monde – perhaps the best known source of beignets in the city.

situated diagonally across the street from Jackson Square, Cafe du Monde has operated since the 1860s, originally a part of the French Market. capitalizing on the popularity of their signature treat, at one time Cafe du Monde locations ranged all over Louisiana and as far away as Atlanta. today, there are just under a dozen locations around the greater New Orleans area. the French Market cafe is open 24 hours a day year round, with the exception of Christmas day and whenever hurricanes threaten enough to necessitate closure. the cafe closed on August 27, 2005, in advance of Katrina and, though the venue was only slightly damaged by the storm, the property owners took two months following the storm to refurbish the cafe while visitor numbers were down.

we arrived about 10:00 a.m. on a Friday to stand in line. while the line moved quickly, getting us under the awning in about 10 or 15 minutes, the same couldn’t be said for getting our tasty fried treats and chicory-flavored cafe au lait. when the beignets arrived, they proved mostly worth the wait, though by the end of my order they seemed to be losing a crucial degree of their warmth, if not their tasty, fried (and sugar-drenched) sweetness. not the best beignets I had on our trip, but still mighty tasty.

Guinness Storehouse

as a fan of craft brews, and living less than 10 miles from one of the most popular microbreweries in the state, I’ve taken a brewery tour or two (or dozen) over the years. from DIY affairs, to ones where the brewmaster takes you back among the tanks to explain the finer scientific points of beer brewing, to very limited, controlled situations where the script never deviates from the one all “tour guides” are compelled to memorize, the experience at the Guinness Storehouse is just that — an Experience.

with annual sales topping more than 1.8 billion U.S. pints, it shouldn’t have surprised me how thoroughly and expertly produced the “tour” at St. James’ might prove. in the dozen years since the Storehouse opened as a self-guided tour and attraction, over four million people have visited. the site, St. James’ Gate, was initially leased to Arthur Guinness in 1759 for the amount of 45 GBP each year for the duration of 9,000-year lease. (the company has since expanded outside its initial footprint and ultimately bought the land outright. a copy of that original lease is displayed under glass in the floor of the atrium.

the building that houses the Storehouse was constructed in 1902 as a fermentation plant for the brewery. it served as this capacity until a new fermentation plant was built along the River Liffey in 1988. the attraction is laid out over seven floors in what was, at the time it was built, the largest steel-framed structure in Ireland. the atrium is rather cornily designed to resemble the shape of a pint glass. the first floor introduces visitors to the four ingredients of beer – water, barley, hops, and yeast — and the general brewing process. after years of intimate and in-depth tours of craft and microbreweries, the polish of production surprised me a bit with projections of boiling tubs of wort and ovens of roasting barley, but seemed expertly and deftly done. you can’t actually see Guinness being brewed anywhere along the tour, but you can see the buildings at which various steps of the process take place! on the whole, the exhibits presenting other information interested us more. we saw examples of their famous marketing campaigns – My goodness! My Guinness! – Guinness advertisements on television throughout the decades (with cheesily appointed rooms identifiable by decade), the famous harp seen in the logo encased in glass at the top of one escalator.

the most interesting part, by a stretch, however, was the exhibit on the cooperage. at the height of barrel production (for transporting the black stuff) in the 20th century, Guinness employed hundreds of coopers. within a few decades, as aluminum kegs came into use after 1946, the number dropped precipitously — from some 300 in the war years to 70 in 1961. the last wooden cask was filled at St. James’ Gate in 1963. the exhibit featured all the tools of the trade, as well as fascinating footage from the 1930s or so of men at work – clearly decked out in their Sunday best to show off their work to the camera – working through the entire process of making a barrel. after that exhibit it was mostly down to figuring out where we’d like to enjoy our “complimentary” pint of Guinness. (we opted for the Gravity Bar at the top of the “pint glass” with panoramic views of the city.)

I had absolutely no idea of this: according to Wikipedia, St. James’ Gate traditionally served as the starting point for Irish peregrinos heading to Santiago de Compostela. they could get their credencials stamped in the brewery before catching a boat to Spain; the nearby church will still stamp them for you.

Starbucks in Seattle

one cannot accuse me of having an affinity for any kind of coffee, much less coffee from the most ubiquitous chain in the world … but that doesn’t mean we didn’t cross over to the other side of Pike Place to visit the original Starbucks location while we were in downtown Seattle back in October. somehow I’d gotten into my head that I’d visited the store while visiting Seattle back in 2007 but once I saw the line snaking out the door of the actual first Starbucks I realized my error. (well, really, the first one to open in 1971 was on Western Ave but relocated down the block to Pike Place in 1976 to make way for what is now Steinbruek Park.) in reality, I’d probably fallen for one of the other conveniently camouflaged locations also within a block of the Pike Place Market.

just got in line to order drinks…

in March of 1971, three guys opened the first location as a local bean roaster and retailer, inspired in part by the success of Alfred Peet (he of Peet’s Coffee) who also focused on selling high-quality beans and equipment. during their first year, they purchased green coffee beans from Peet’s to roast themselves before making connections to purchase directly from growers for themselves. in 1984, the original owners bought out Peet’s and, after deciding to focus their energy on that arm of their business, sold the Starbucks brand to Howard Schultz, who remains the chairman and CEO of the company. Schultz had been brought on in 1985 as marketing director and, after seeing coffee bars in Milan, tried to convince the original owners to incorporate such a concept into the Starbucks model. his efforts bore no fruit at the time and he left to open his own coffee shop (Il Giornale).

once under Schultz’s direction, the first coffee shop locations to open outside of Seattle were in Vancouver and Chicago. in 1986, before Schultz took over, there were 6 Starbucks locations; in 1989 there were 46 and they were roasting over 2 million pounds of coffee a year. in 1992 (the time of their IPO) there were 140 locations. four years later, they opened the first location outside of North America — in Tokyo; it took another 8 years before they expanded into Latin America (Mexico City). in 2003, Starbucks bought Seattle’s Best Coffee and an Italian outfit called Torrefazione Italia and expanded their stores to 6,400. now they have a a flabbergasting 20,366 locations in 61 countries. one wonders how that’s even possible (by buying out other chains, clearly). two weeks ago, they announced the purchase of Teavana — anyone want to take bets as to whether it will result in being able to procure tolerable brewed tea from your local Starbucks? (I’ll stick to my incredibly convenient and locally-owned CoffeeBytes.)

waiting (not in a line) for completed drinks

in any case, our trip to the (not-quite) original Starbucks delivered on our expectations. the line was out the door but the staff kept it moving along smoothly. all the died-in-the-wool Starbucks fans of our party picked out their purchases, many of which featured the original logo. it took about 10 minutes to get through the line to order, and maybe another 15 or 20 minutes longer waiting on drinks — and, according to our line attendant, it was a relatively slow day as there weren’t any cruise ships dumping their passengers into Pike Place. I will admit to taking satisfaction in that fact — I can’t imagine what the line would have been like on a truly busy day nor picture myself waiting patiently in that line.

a brief history of Key West

the first European visitor to Key West was Ponce de Leon while native peoples populated or at least used the island prior to his arrival. when de Leon’s men arrived, bones covered the island, possibly from a battle or because it served as a burial ground, which prompted them to call it Cayo Hueso, or Bone Island. when Florida became a Spanish colony, the island became a fishing village and small garrison. original Spanish settlers relocated to Cuba following when Britain claimed control, but back-and-forth between the powers resulted in a lack of oversight of the island for a significant portion of the 18th and early 19th centuries. at various points in its early history, the island was sold simultaneously to two men who subsequently fought one another; a military officer controlled the island using martial law as a military dictator; served as a strategic salvage village on a crucial deep-water channel through the Gulf of Mexico.

during the 1800s, immigrants from the Bahamas, known as Conchs, began to populate the island. today Key West is often referred to as the “Conch Republic,” with it’s own flag and strong sense of identity among natives (and accepted “freshwater” transplants). they were later joined by all manner of famous and infamous Americans, from Dr. Samuel Mudd to Ernest Hemingway to Jimmy Buffett to Harry S Truman.

Key West has long served as an important military and shipping outpost, as it sits on the northern edge of Florida Straits, separating the Atlantic from the Gulf. there’s a Naval Air Station on Boca Chica Key, where pilots train; the USS Maine sailed from there to its fate and the outbreak of the Spanish-American War; all number of cruise ships dock in the port before heading to more Caribbean locales. all those non-native short-term visitors certainly don’t help the feeling that the town is something of an unapologetic tourist trap though, as I mentioned before, if you get away from Duval Street and Mallory Square, it doesn’t seem like a bad place to while away some time.

quirky Key West

you hear it everywhere from everyone — Key West is “weird”. residents pride themselves on being weird, being counter culture, thwarting expectations.

maybe it is and maybe residents do. if you get rid of all the tourists. or get away from Duval Street and Mallory Square. when we saw what were obviously native islanders, they certainly seemed a little off — exactly what you think of when you think of someone “quirky.” mostly, though, Key West is a slightly offbeat tourist magnet with kitschy gift shops, touristy museums, overpriced sights, and plenty of street performers. I cannot imagine being on the island during the summer or in the height of Spring Break season. it must a different world.

we did manage to get slightly off the beaten path, thankfully. after our attempt to eat at a very Popular Spot was thwarted by a 70 minute wait, we walked the mile and a half to its sister restaurant on Higgs Beach. in the end we probably didn’t get our food any sooner than if we’d waited at the first place, but the walk afforded us with an alternative view of Key West that we hadn’t yet encountered on our shuttle rides or walks around the northwest end of the island.

on Higgs Beach, despite the wind coming off the water, a group of leathery-skinned locals sat on chairs in the shade of a palm tree, chatting. a sign warning of jellyfish danger greeted you on approach to rather murky-looking water. and, perhaps the best example of Key West’s alleged “quirkiness”, a peace sign composed of coconuts that had fallen from a nearby tree.

in spite of the crowds and aggressively touristy nature of Key West, there is a lot to recommend the place. the off-the-beaten-path places that are truly unique and don’t try to foist themselves on you and whose merit speaks for itself, for one thing. and the sunsets, for another.

our homecoming tradition: Wisconsin edition

rosewood window coverings

despite being a lifelong Wisconsin resident, until October, I’d never been to the House on the Rock — arguably one of the craziest, tourist-trapiest places in all of Wisconsin. I’d heard plenty about it, and of the enormous, ornate carousel (most notably in Neil Gaiman’s American Gods) but I don’t know if anything can prepare you for the site.

stovetop in the House portion

the structure started as a 14-room house, built by Alex Jordan, on Deer Shelter Rock in the Wyoming Valley between Spring Green and Dodgeville. personally, I was most impressed with the original building, which includes the House, the Gate House, and the Mill House, which are reminiscent of Frank Lloyd Wright’s style. some claim Jordan began his project to thumb his nose at Wright, as Taliesin is only a few miles away. in this section of the site, the architecture takes as much precedence as the sometimes fascinating, sometimes flabbergasting, sometimes disturbing knickknacks.

in the 1920s, Jordan visited a scenic picnic spot frequented by locals and, ownership and potential hardship be damned, vowed to build a “Japanese-style” house on the Rock. took him another 25 years to make a start and, despite the time, didn’t secure rights from the farmer who owned the land to build anything there. one account claims that Jordan hired drunks and bums from Madison to help blast the Rock level, paying them with booze or checks.

chandelier in the Organ Room

construction continued throughout the twentieth century (and up to the present day). Jordan quickly realized people would pay to come and wander through the House to see it and the oddments that filled it. in addition to the House, Jordan and his successors have added the “Streets of Yesterday” (influenced by the “Streets of Old Milwaukee” seen at the Milwaukee Public Museum. do those old-time-y reconstructions always have to be so dark? is it perpetually evening in the past?), the Heritage of the Sea building (which features a giant whale with teeth being attacked by a kraken), the Carousel Room, an Organ Room …. and so much other stuff. fake Crown Jewels; a mannequin orchestra; doll houses; weaponry; and more and more and more. honestly can’t say much about the third portion of the tour; with one exception we were all way too hungry to take in more than the enormity of the Organ in the first segment. apparently the pipes came from an old waterworks plant in Madison. oh, and the taxidermy in the men’s bathroom. by the last leg we were all but running for the door and anywhere for lunch in Dodgeville.

to the end of the Infinity Room

really, the only addition since the original construction to impress me was the Infinity Room, which juts out from 218 feet the original House and over the Rock. there are over 3,000 tiny windows. with the leaves just beginning to turn in mid-October, it was a pretty sweet view over the valley.

Deadwood

I must confess that before last weekend, when I heard “Deadwood” I thought “that show Tim Omundson and Jim Beaver were on?” A show, moreover, that I have never seen. this doesn’t really surprise me, as my previous trip to western South Dakota occurred well before an age that would allowed me to participate in what makes Deadwood famous.

there have been disputes over the legality of Deadwood, as the Black Hills (in which the town is nestled) were granted to the Lakota people by the Treaty of Laramie in 1868. of course, gold rushes and prospectors pay no mind to such things as “legal ownership” or “morally defensible behavior.” and so, with the help of wagons filled with the “needed commodities” (i.e. prostitutes and gamblers) the settlement exploded in just a few years.

the legality of Deadwood’s existence came into play in conjunction with the town’s most infamous event — the murder of Wild Bill Hickock. during an initial trial his assassin was acquitted, but because the town was not a legal settlement the verdict was deemed invalid. Jack McCall was then retried in a Dakota Territory court, found guilty, and hanged. Wild Bill is buried in a cemetery on a hill overlooking the town but, seeing as Mount Moriah charged admission (and we only drove past on a whim on our way out of town) we opted to forego the “historic” site.

the town was devastated several times, first when smallpox spread through the mining camp during 1876 and required quarantine of the sick, in 1879 when fire destroyed most of the town, and again by fire in 1959. despite being placed on the National Historic Landmark in 1961, the town continued its decline as mining in the immediate vicinity became less important and mines opened up elsewhere in the surrounding area. to make matters worse, the route for I-90 bypassed Deadwood in 1964 and the final nail in the coffin came with the closure of all brothels in 1980. yes. the brothels of Deadwood didn’t go out of commission (or underground, whatever) until 1980. as we drove around town, we guessed as to which of the neatly maintained, multi-story homes on side streets once housed brothels; some of our judgments were based on structural observations — external entrances, lots of upstairs bedrooms, etc., — others on whim.

after a fire in 1987, the town sought permission to allow gambling in an effort to revitalize town — after all, it was one of the town’s founding elements. it’s somewhat odd now to think there was a time when there weren’t casinos wedged into every fifth storefront of Deadwood and on every other corner throughout the rest of South Dakota. in the end, legalization of gambling did what Deadwood hoped and revitalized the town. it’s no Vegas, but it expands the town’s appeal to more than just people looking for gun fight re-enactments and the graves of Wild West outlaws.

Wall, South Dakota

the rest stop on I-90

anyone who’s driven towards, through, or around South Dakota has seen signs for Wall Drug in Wall, South Dakota. I’ve seen billboards for it in Minnesota and Iowa, not to mention all across the length of South Dakota. we started joking about whether or not to visit the famous Drug Store somewhere between Sioux Falls and the Missouri River, in spite of the fact that none of us had any interest in diverting off the road for the quintessential interstate tourist trap. I’d say “give ’em a giant ball of twine and they’ve got kitchiest road side attraction west of the Missouri sewn up” except I don’t think they need a giant ball of twine, really.

perhaps I’m not being fair to Wall Drug. I know we stopped there on my earlier westward trek to the Black Hills, but on pain of death and dismemberment I couldn’t produce any concrete memories of the place. all I know is that Wall Drug started up during the Depression (in 1931) by a Nebraska pharmacist who struggled to make his business work. his wife got the idea to offer and advertise free ice water for visitors of the newly-opened Mount Rushmore and, 80 years later, they boast handing out something near 20,000 cups of water a day during peak tourist season.

anyway, despite swearing we wouldn’t set foot in Wall, we did have to grace the city limits to get back onto the Interstate after diverting through the Badlands. and, leaving the Black Hills around 3 p.m., it turned out to be a decent place to stop and get some dinner. the local restaurant we found even had passable veggie options! (mostly because they had an extensive appetizer menu of fried foods.) in a town of 766, it might have been the only game besides the Subway and when a party of nearly two dozen people started showing up (a caravan of indeterminate make-up and origin) it stretched capacity to the limit. thankfully, we got in and out just in time and got out of Wall, bellies full and not a single Drug Store seen.

Casa Bonita

one of the other unique Denver experiences on our list: a trip to Casa Bonita. one of our party was rather adamant about the experience and I will say this: a trip to Casa Bonita truly is unlike anything else in the world. I’ve never seen the South Park episode that made it (in)famous, but having now seen the place myself, I have some idea what that episode might have looked like.

founded in Oklahoma City in 1968, the Casa Bonita chain spread through neighboring states in the early 1970s, known for it’s all-you-can-eat beef and chicken plates, as well as its sopapillas. only two locations remain — one in Lakewood and one in Tulsa. the restaurant in Lakewood opened in 1974 in a space formerly occupied by a large retail store (I heard someone say something along the lines of a Ross?).

what your food looks like

where you pick up your food

the food is horrifying and prices astronomically overblown. it may be all-you-can-eat, but who would want to? there was no vegetarian option that coincided with “cheapest item on the menu” and we all ended up picking up taco salad plates, some with beef, some with chicken. none of us were terribly interested in doing anything but carry the plates to a table near the diving pool where we might fill our bellies with sopapillas instead. I don’t quite understand how or why people make a family night of the place. surely there are much cheaper places to find entertainment and bad Mexican food in Denver? ah, but, enthusiasts counter, do any of those places have cliff divers? well, no. I guess you come for the cliff divers. and the sopapillas. the divers are swim/dive team members who want to practice during the off season, apparently. there are also strolling mariachis, an arcade, a haunted tunnel (which was rather creepily dark), and a puppet theater. there is really nothing else like it.

cliff diving pool

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casa_Bonita

the Argo Gold Mine

walking down the hill

after we learned about the tunnel from our new Dutch friend, we got to go up the mountain and into an abandoned mine — the Double Eagle Mine, which dates from the early 1890s. they made us put on hardhats and, upon letting us out of the shuttle, admonished us to walk down the hill. apparently, a couple of weeks earlier a couple from somewhere in Europe made the mistake of turning left out of the tunnel and ended up half way to Central City (which we know is about 4.5 miles away).

when these mines were prospected, men had to rely on candlelight and hand tools, with the occasional assistance of dynamite (which, as we know, got them into trouble in the Argo Tunnel). it was excruciating and exhausting work to dig and haul rock from the tunnels and the depth of the Double Eagle mine illustrated this. it’s only a couple dozen meters from the mouth of the tunnel to the end, though it’s high enough in most places for someone of my height to walk through (we still had to put on hard hats all the same).

while the Double Eagle mine didn’t net the miners the lode every prospector hopes for, it yielded some gold. in fact, there is still gold to be found in the tunnel. because they were using candles to light the tunnel, the original prospectors didn’t notice the vein of gold running along the ceiling at the back of the tunnel. it’s hard to tell from the picture of Gabrielle and Jen, but there’s an apparent streak along the southern wall of the tunnel which would have been just a bit too faint to distinguish by candlelight. we, of course, had the benefit of electricity. and being told where to look to see the gold. you can’t prospect on the Argo land any more, but there is still gold in dem hills and anyone can take a pan out to the creek and try their hand at prospecting in the frigid waters. we opted for the easy, gold-flake-laden prospecting opportunity in the troughs in front of the Argo shop. the water was plenty cold, but at least we weren’t up to our knees in it!