I guess I found out I was a little different when, late in my teens, I rode a Greyhound bus from Chicago to Texas to visit my sister and brother-in-law for a few days.
My dad offered to pay for a flight back. I said I’d rather take the bus, and I did.
Is that normal?
But that was more than 30 years ago. The love of the road is still there, but today, I’d fly back — and let the Tribune pay.
Which brings me to this: I’ve covered a pretty good chunk of the planet since that long-ago bus ride, a lot of it on the ground and, best of all, a big chunk of it on company time and at company expense.
What a scam.
Here’s a list. Chicago isn’t included anywhere, but it could have been.
Favorite city, U.S.: New York. Theater, neighborhoods, restaurants, street food, grit, piano bars, intensity and America’s best sense of humor. I love the place. Real close: New Orleans, San Francisco. Sorry, no shockers.
Least favorite city, U.S.: Dallas. It just is.
Favorite city, Europe: Venice. It looks just like the pictures. Though I’d rather eat in Rome, Bologna, Florence, Madrid or Lisbon.
Favorite city, if I spoke French: Paris. Two visits, loved both, and yet . . .
Favorite city, the rest: Hong Kong. It’s New York without knishes, though they’re probably there somewhere.
Most hospitable people, city: Cairo. Even when they aren’t trying to sell you something, you’re treated like a welcome guest.
Most hospitable people, province: Newfoundland. They’re just surprised anyone actually shows up there.
Most hospitable people, country: Ireland. Northern and the Republic. I once almost started a fight in a Belfast pub because my new friends wouldn’t let me buy a round. True.
Best excuse for driving: Texas, especially everything south of Interstate 20 (and off the interstates). Good folks, good little towns, uncrowded roads, hills, grasslands, mountains, canyons, deserts, dust, a gulf — plus gumbo, enchiladas, chicken-fried steaks and barbecue. And you always know you’re in Texas.
Best excuse for flying: Florida. You have two road choices: slow or dull. Sometimes, you get both. Sometimes, you pay a toll for the privilege, the ultimate insult.
Easiest city for driving, U.S.: New York (Manhattan). Really. Once you’re off the bridge or up the tunnel, it’s a piece of cake.
Worst city for driving, U.S.: Boston. Get into town, pahk the cah and leave it pahked or you’ll wind up in Connecticut. Runner-up: Atlanta, where every street is Peachtree Something.
Worst city for driving, overseas: Bangkok. No contest.
Favorite hotel, U.S.: The Jefferson, Richmond. Elegance without stuffiness.
Favorite hotel, Europe: Gleneagles Hotel, Auchterarder, Scotland. Elegance without stuffiness, plus falconry.
Favorite hotel, the rest: (Tie) Amandari, near Ubud, Bali. Pure indulgence. Palais Jamai, Fez, Morocco. Pure magic.
Favorite motel chain: Courtyard by Marriott. You always think you’re being undercharged.
Worst motel name: Holiday Inn Express. What does that mean? You can stay only 12 minutes?
Restaurants I’d drive all night for (listed alphabetically): Andante, Petoskey, Mich.; Arthur Bryant’s Barbecue, Kansas City, Mo.; Bern’s Steak House, Tampa; Broken Spoke (for the chicken-fried steak), Austin; Carnegie Deli, New York; Commander’s Palace, New Orleans; Goode Co. Barbecue, Houston; Immigrant Room, Kohler, Wis.; Joe’s Stone Crab, Miami Beach; Magnolias, Charleston, S.C.; Nate & Al’s (for the potato pancake), Beverly Hills, Calif.; Patina, Los Angeles; Scales & Shells, Newport, R.I.; and the Sea Chest, Cambria, Calif.
If I could pick one: Joe’s Stone Crab. Or Commander’s Palace. (That’s two, but this is my list.)
Favorite restaurant, Europe: Italy.
Can I be more specific? Why?
Favorite fancy restaurant, Europe: Lasserre, Paris. I remember the restaurant and my date were stunningly beautiful that night. I don’t remember the food, but it was expensive and seemed worth it at the time, and it’s Paris.
Most fun not-so-fancy restaurant, Europe: Au Vieux Bruxelles, Brussels. Great mussels, great frites and great beer at a table open to a great street. Runner-up: Botin, Madrid, which serves 1.6 million whole roast suckling pigs every night.
Most interesting non-restaurant meal anywhere: Tagine dinner (a kind of stew, probably lamb, and delicious) shared with blue-robed Bedouins in their Tinerhin, Morocco, desert home. We ate with our fingers and bread, and drank Pepsi.
Best restaurant-view combo: Madeira, in Acapulco, and its view of Acapulco Bay.
Best hotel-view combo: The Old Course Hotel, St. Andrews, Scotland, and its view of the 17th (“The Road Hole”) and 18th fairways.
Favorite swimming pool: The Acapulco Princess. The roar of the waterfall drowns out the rest of the world. Runners-up: Las Brisas, also Acapulco, because it was private and it was our honeymoon; and Amandari, in Bali, because . . . well, you have to see it.
Best country for driving, overseas: Portugal, except for the Algarve (the congested southern coastline). Portugal is ever-changing scenery, castles, short distances and no boredom. Also fun: Ireland, Scotland and Morocco. And Spain. And South Africa.
Favorite national park: Grand Canyon National Park. I’ve been there half a dozen times, and I still can’t believe it.
Favorite road cassettes: Self-made collections of Willie Nelson, Aaron Copland, Broadway shows, Garth Brooks and Sinatra, depending on the mood and the terrain. And the finale of “Candide” on a lonely country road when the low afternoon sun turns shadows long and the pastures a deep green.
Favorite road radio: Baseball, small-town “swap shops,” black gospel on Sunday mornings and “Prairie Home Companion.”
Favorite road-radio voice: Paul Harvey. If he ever retires, they should just re-run his old news shows so we can enjoy that quintessentially American “good day” sound forever.
Irresistible road food: Biscuits and gravy, chicken-fried steak and barbecue. You know. Health food.
The perfect road fast food: Drive-thru McDonald’s (regular) cheeseburgers. Cheap, filling, and they hardly ever drip on your shirt.
Best stand-up food: Cheesesteak (with grilled onions), Pat’s King of Steaks, Philadelphia; Italian sausage (with peppers), any of the pushcarts outside Fenway Park, Boston; split grilled sausages, Meknes, Morocco; Hungarian sausage, any of the pushcarts outside SkyDome, Toronto; crab cake, Faidley’s, Lexington Market, Baltimore.
Most overrated local delicacy: Cincinnati chili. Sorry, Don Zimmer. Runner-up: St. Louis toasted ravioli. Sorry, Harry.
Best bad-sounding food: Codfish cheeks, St. John’s, Newfoundland; duck tongues, Hong Kong; witchetty-grub soup (yes, it’s a caterpillar), Alice Springs, Australia; haggis, Scotland; biltong, South Africa; fishhead curry, Singapore; whitefish livers, Bayfield, Wis.
Worst excuse for food: Vegemite, Australia. I pray I’ll never be that hungry.
First choice for a vacation, especially if I’m paying: Mexico. Anywhere in Mexico. The food, the sun, the scenery, the music, the pace, the beer, plus good people and good value.
Last choice for a vacation, unless the company pays: A cruise. Maybe we did it wrong.
Once a year, just because, with the guys: Las Vegas.
Places I haven’t seen but hope to: the Mideast, India, Greece, central Africa, Rio and Maui — plus southern Italy, northern Spain and Portugal, and rural France.
Finally . . . the toughest place to leave: Ireland. After two weeks of solitary exploration, I wanted to buy a cottage and spend the rest of my life reading, watching sheep, drinking black beer, singing songs of treason, inhaling peat smoke while soft rain fell on cobbled streets, and writing poetry. And I hate poetry.
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Meet the staff
Alan Solomon has been a Tribune Travel writer since late 1994, after 6 1/2 seasons of touring North America’s cities while covering the Cubs and White Sox for the same newspaper. Which means that for the better part of a decade, he has been staying in nice hotels and eating awfully well, courtesy of the Chicago Tribune, to which this list is dedicated. His career highlights include moist eyes when Kirk Gibson hit his homer in the 1988 World Series; watching Michael Jordan look silly in spring training (1994); and, in 1996, driving to — and staying overnight in — each of 48 states over a 48-day stretch, which became a seven-part series for which he was not named Lowell Thomas Travel Journalist of the Year by the Society of American Travel Writers. That honor came last year, for other stuff. His e-mail address is alsolly@aol.com
