Free St. Louis

Written by Cindy Scott Traeger | 04 August 2010

Part of National Geographic Traveler's Free Cities series

Nestled just below the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, St. Louis has a rich history of trade, travel, and adventure. This city was once the launching point for Lewis and Clark's famed expedition. As America's population spread rapidly westward, St. Louis was a riverside gateway to the wild frontier. Today, it is a study in 21st-century urban renewal that buzzes with much of its old energy. Here are some suggestions to help you make the Gateway to the West your own personal gateway to free entertainment, exploration, and fun.

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Get Lost at Sea in D.C.'s Folger Shakespeare Library

Written by Cindy Scott Traeger | 19 July 2010

A review of the Folger's seaworthy new summer exhibit for National Geographic's Intelligent Travel

Ahoy! Calling all would-be salty sea dogs and lovers of nautical lore--Washington, D.C.'s Folger Shakespeare Library has just the exhibit for you. Lost at Sea: The Ocean in the English Imagination, 1550-1750 is a brilliant collection of writings, maps, atlases, globes, and antique navigational paraphernalia, on display now through September 4 in the library's great hall. Visitors get a glimpse of how our friends across the pond perceived the seven seas several centuries ago. Sail into the psyche of a seafarer and discover what shaped the many attempts to explore--and express--the ocean's mysteries from the time of Shakespeare and his contemporaries to the mid-1700s.

These days, many prefer the speed and convenience of air travel. We relish our ability to hurtle along, cradled between jet engines and largely disconnected from the roaring waves that might be whizzing past miles below. The Folger's exhibit takes you back to a much different time, when the astrolabe--not the GPS--was the navigational instrument of choice and the ocean was not merely a thing to traverse, but a widely acknowledged seat of divine force.

This is not to say the sea no longer produces emotional, spiritual reactions from us in the modern day. In a public lecture last Tuesday, exhibit curator Steve Mentz described a common sense of awe mingled with fear--"that moment when we stand on the beach and have this feeling of being in the presence of the largest thing on the planet."

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