Those who have witnessed Riga’s architectural splendors understand why Latvia’s largest city was designated the European Capital of Culture for 2014. Founded in 1201, the capital of Latvia was a member of the Hanseatic League, an economic alliance of merchant guilds formed during the late Middle Ages that left an…
Author: Mark Thompson
A member of Authors Guild, Society of American Travel Writers (SATW), and New York Travel Writers (NYTW), Mark Thompson is an editor, journalist, and photographer whose work appears in various periodicals, including Travel Weekly, Metrosource, Huffington Post, Global Traveler, Out There, and OutTraveler. The author of the novels Wolfchild (2000) and My Hawaiian Penthouse (2007), Mark completed a Ph.D. in American Studies. He has been a Fellow and a resident at various artists' communities, including MacDowell, Yaddo, and Blue Mountain Center.
Book Reviews
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‘Theatres’ Features Extraordinary Spectacles
The Latin phrase “sanctum sanctorum” most often refers to the most holy places – and for thespians and bibliophiles, few places are more sacred than theatres and libraries. With the publication of its two latest tomes Libraries and Theatres, Roads Publishing has opened the portals of the world’s most sancta…
Design
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Walls of Beauty: Montreal’s Mural Festival
Held in June 2014, the second edition of Mural Festival transformed Saint Lawrence Boulevard into a veritable open-air studio and museum as 20 international muralists created works of public art on the facades of buildings around Montreal’s most historic boulevard. A celebration of the creativity and democracy of urban art,…
Design
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Architectural Guide Through Postwar Venice
Some of the world’s most beloved cities are cherished for their architectural associations with a particular period: the 19th-century luminosity and grands boulevards of Paris, the imperialism of Rome, the 20th-century modernism of New York. Some cities have a harder time than others showcasing their contemporaneity in the face of…
Fragrances
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Only For Him by Hayari Parfums
For Proust, it was the scent of linden-flower tea (and a brown butter madeleine) that took him back to his childhood and his meeting with Baron de Charlus, one of fiction’s most aristocratic aesthetes. In a similar vein, French couture designer Nabil Hayari has created an olfactory ode to the…
Fragrances
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Aqua Sextius by Jul et Mad
If you were fortunate enough to study in the South of France as a student, and if you were lucky enough to fall in love, and if you were happy, then it’s likely, to paraphrase Hemingway, that you’ll antagonize everyone with your good fortune – while your good fortune stays…
Hotels
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Asbury Park Rock-n-Roll at The Berkeley Oceanfront
There’s a hotel for every occasion. Let’s say you’re on a rock-n-roll road trip to Asbury Park for a long, hot summer weekend. The kind of getaway you used to take with your frat brother in college or your two best girlfriends: beach all day and party through the night….
Culture
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New York City Pride Week Celebrates March Toward Equality
Along the edges of New York’s Madison Square Park, as the New York City Police Department Band played a rousing rendition of “When the Saints Go Marching In,” a young girl in a rainbow dress and waving a rainbow flag, seated atop her father’s shoulders, sang and shouted with such…