Queen Elizabeth making sandcastles at Craigwell House in Bognor, on view at The Athenaeum Hotel in London this summer.

What’s the Deal: In a summer that will include HM The Queen’s Coronation Anniversary and the birth of a Royal baby, The Athenaeum Hotel, in the heart of  Mayfair within sight of Buckingham Palace will offer its own celebration. Between Saturday, June 22nd and August 31st, the Athenaeum will be hosting an exhibition of more than 40 rarely-seen photos of the Royal family’s children, from Victorian times to the present day. The ‘Royal Child’ exhibition, curated in partnership with Royal Life Magazine, includes a striking, never-before-published image of HM The Queen making sandcastles in Sussex at the age of four (see above). On weekends until the end of August, guests will be able to view the photographs over a sumptuous afternoon tea in the Hyde Park suite and listen to the insights from Royal photographer Ian Pelham Turner and Helena Chard.

 What’s the Backstory: The Athenaeum’s Royal Summer Afternoon Tea will include honey roast ham with Royal Park honey, arugula and red onion marmalade sandwiches, along with Royal drop orange blossom scones with rich Devonshire clotted cream and homemade English strawberry jam. Not to mention traditional British cakes and pastries, including Victoria sponge cake with Royal icing, Battenberg cake and English strawberry tartlets. The Athenaeum was named 2012 winner of the Top London Afternoon Tea award from the Tea Guild.There are two sittings per day at weekends, priced at £60 (approximately $93) per person.

 What are the Details: The Royal Child’ Photography Exhibition and Royal Tea accommodation package starts at $823, based on double occupancy, and includes  a deluxe room, two places at the Royal Child afternoon tea and two tickets for Buckingham Palace – The State Rooms and Garden Highlight Tour. Rates include full English breakfast daily, all drinks and snacks from the mini-bar, tax of 20%, free meals for children under 12, one-way transfer from any London airport for a three-night stay or round-trip for a five-night stay.  Subsequent nights are $579.

 Booking: Call 800-335-3300 or visit www.athenaeumhotel.com/

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Rafting with O.A.R.S.

Interview by Everett Potter

 We’re giving away an amazing multi-sport trip with O.A.R.S. this month, to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National parks. if you haven’t entered yet, take a minute to do so,. And then read this interview with Steve Markle, Director of Sales & Marketing for the O.A.R.S. Family of Companies. He’s spent a decade with the company and is passionate about both conservation and adventure, leading O.A.R.S. into partnerships with  environmental organizations and strategic partners around the world. He led O.A.R.S. into the world of social media long before the competition knew what a tweet was. Steve lives with his wife Nichole and their Son Preston in the Sierra Foothills overlooking the Stanislaus River Canyon in California. I’ve known Steve for years and we regularly run into each other at the Adventure Travel World Summit. He’s a busy guy and I caught up with him this morning.

Steve and Preston Markle on an adventure

EP: Rafting legend George Wendt founded O.A.R.S. more than 40 years ago, and still has a role in the company. But where do you, as the younger guy, see the rafting world in 2013?

 SM: Aside from the pure enjoyment of getting repeatedly splashed in the face on a hot day, I still see rafting less as an adrenaline-inducing thrill ride and more as a means of access to some of the most untouched, pristine regions of the world. And, at the heart of the company, rafting is about exposing people to natural areas and inspiring them to care and take action for the future of wildness. River trips just have a way of taking people out of their comfort zone and removing all the distractions of daily life, which really opens the door for meaningful interactions with the natural world and their fellow travelers. I see river trips becoming increasingly popular as outfitters continue to raise the bar on comfort and more people seek to take a break from technology.

EP: Is adventure travel still a new experience for most guests or are you dealing with a clientele that needs new thrills and seems a bit jaded?

SM: A lot of the folks who join us have never been rafting before and many have never camped. It’s never gets old hearing about how people were scared of bugs, or whatever, before their trip and by the end of it, they’re sleeping under the stars outside of their tent. We have some veteran rafters too, but with some 30+ stretches of river and more than a dozen sea kayaking and multi-sport adventures around the world, we can always find something that will knock your socks off.

Rafting Cataract Canyon with O.A.R.S.

EP: How important are multi-sport trips to O.A.R.S., like the Yellowstone & Grand Teton Explorer that we’re giving away with you?

SM: By our standards, our Yellowstone operation is a pretty big piece of the puzzle. It gives us a solid foothold in two of the most popular national parks in the country, but what we offer is really unique. Generally people don’t think of Yellowstone & Grand Teton National Parks as good sea kayaking destinations, but it’s a great way to explore off the beaten path and away from the crowds. Like rafting, the boats are just the vehicle of access to some of the most extraordinary hikes and sites in the region and our small groups are ideal for exploring. And, generally, our multi-sport trips tend to attract a slightly younger, more active set of travelers, which gives us a great opportunity to introduce people to the world of O.A.R.S.

EP: There seems to be a big move to custom trips these past few years, trips where an extended family or a group of friends get together to raft or hike. What kind of numbers are we looking at – how many people do you need to make it cost effective, and what would a ballpark price per person be for a given trip?

SM: Indeed. We’re seeing more and more cases of grandparents booking trips for the entire family. Generally, you’re going to need to recruit 16-20 people to make it a private affair and prices will range from under $1,000/person to more than $2,000/person for a 5- or 6-day trip. However, in some cases we can bring our minimum number down to 10 or 12 people on a trip like the Rogue River in Oregon or our trips in Grand Teton National Park.

On the Yampa River with O.A.R.S.

EP: You do sea kayaking trips as well, which people may now know about. Do you actually get to cover some distance on these trips?

SM: We do. On most of our sea kayaking trips we cover 5-8 miles/day at a pace of about 2-3 miles/hour. The rest of the time is generally spent exploring on foot and relaxing in camp, on a catamaran or in a family-owned inn.

EP: Your Crete sea kayaking trip looked pretty amazing to me. How tough is it, and are you staying in hotels on this one?

SM: Our Crete Sea Kayaking trip is pretty special and arguably one of our more active trips. We stay in local inns and eat at seaside tavernas while kayaking in crystal blue waters. This is the trip I’d like to take my wife on next…

Fiji with O.A.R.S.

EP: What do you think your most unsung destination is – anywhere on the planet?  

SM: Fiji. It’s rafting in paradise with some of the friendliest guides on the planet. We employ exclusively native Fijians and compensate the community to help ensure the protection of the Upper Navua Conservation Area. This unique public-private partnership protects the UNCA from future logging or gravel extraction and, to date, the community has earned more than $1,000,000 through trip fees.  It really is the model for ecotourism in the world today and I’m always surprised we don’t get more recognition from the travel press.

EP: Steve, let’s say I’ve done the Colorado River with O.A.R.S.. I want to do another rafting trip in the US with you guys, but what on earth could compare to doing the big one?

SM: I honestly think Idaho’s Middle Fork of the Salmon River is as good as it gets. Maybe I just prefer more mild summer temperatures, alpine scenery, crystal clear water, hot springs, wildlife and the nearly continuous whitewater, but I could run the Middle Fork over and over and it would never get old.

EP: Where are you looking next to expand to?

SM: We’ve got our eye on a new series of lodge-based river trips around the world that will include new adventures in Africa, Asia, Central America and South America.

Camping next to the Tatshenshini River in Alaska with O.A.R.S.

EP: How about you own dream trip – where would you go tomorrow if you could?

SM: Alaska. There’s nothing I enjoy more than big mountains and wild, untouched wilderness where wildlife roams free. The Tatshenshini River is calling my name…

For more information, visit O.A.R.S.

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A Venetian gondola ride? Of course.

By Larry Olmsted

The word “tourist” has taken on a negative connotation, especially when used to deride an activity or place as a “tourist-trap,” or suggest that a restaurant or sight is only for tourists.

It is true that there are many commercialized or stereotypical sights and activities in certain destinations that are contrived, artificial, or low quality and can easily be skipped. New York is one of the greatest culinary cities on earth, with great food in every price range, so there is hardly a reason to go to the massive Times Square chain restaurants when visiting – there are Olives Gardens, Red Lobsters and Bubba Gumps in lots of other places. Do you really need to pay to take a photo outside Rome’s Coliseum with someone dressed in cheesy gladiator garb? If it’s a cultural experience and understanding of native culture you are looking for, you can do far better than a luau at a Hawaiian mega-hotel.

But there are some downright touristy activities that have stood the test of time and are not only worth doing, they are absolute musts for first time travelers. Are gondolas in Venice purely for visitors? Absolutely, locals do not use them. Are they a bit hokey? Sure. But nonetheless the experience of riding in a gondola on a Venetian canal is so magical and unique to this spot that it simply cannot be skipped. Here are 10 touristy things you should do …

   Award-winning travel journalist Larry Olmsted is a Contributing Editor to US Airways Magazine and Cigar Aficionado Magazine and “The Great Life” columnist for Forbes.com.

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Bald Mountain Camps, Maine

By Everett Potter

The phrase “sporting camps” was once confined to classic Maine or Adirondack camps with an emphasis on fly fishing. But in 21st century, the term has broadened. It now means a place where the entire brood can enjoy a sport together and pay something akin to an all-inclusive price. The hallmarks of such camps are authenticity, a gorgeous rural setting and an active week away from it all for the entire family. And while you can still fly fish, if you choose right, you can also surf.

Bald Mountain Camps Resort
Oquossoc, Maine
This classic Maine woods resort has been around since the late 19th century, hosting sportsmen like Teddy Roosevelt who fished for brook trout in Mooselookmeguntic Lake. Today the fishing is still superb, but families will find many other activities after a morning of fly-casting, from kayaking to mountain biking. The central lodge and 14 rustic cabins, each with its own fireplace and screened-in porch, are rustic accommodations at their finest.
From $160 per person, per day, including three meals daily

Bitterroot Ranch
Dubois, Wyo.
You come to Bitterroot Ranch because you love to ride, want to improve your horsemanship or simply want to learn how to ride under the tutelage of some of the best riding instructors in the West. After a morning in the saddle, surrounded by the Shoshone National Forest, you can ride some more, nap in your cabin or head out for some cutthroat trout fishing. Everyone from the lodge gathers in the evening for cocktails, dinner and stories.
Doubles from $2,100, including all meals

Peaks ’n Swells
Montezuma, Costa Rica
No one said a sporting camp had to be in the US, and no country epitomizes the laid-back surfer-dude ethos better than Costa Rica. The water’s warm, the waves are good, and the country is both eco-friendly and kid-friendly. All accommodations at this family surf camp face the beach — think porches, mosquito netting and hammocks for siestas. Parents can take advantage of yoga and pilates sessions, improve their own surfing technique or walk into funky Montezuma, which is a 10-minute stroll away.
From $2,450 per person, all-inclusive, including surfing instruction

The Hedges
Blue Mountain Lake, N.Y.
Fishing in the Adirondacks of upstate New York is a classic experience. The Hedges on Blue Mountain Lake offers an old-fashioned summer vacation experience: Accommodations are rustic and range from lodge rooms to four-bedroom family cabins. While some come to fish, others spend summers here to go boating, swim, canoe or kayak. But the porch rockers and nightly campfires are all the activities that some guests seem to need.
Doubles from $225 for two, including breakfast and dinner

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Boston’s HarborWalk

With the emergence of the Seaport District, Boston is finally taking advantage of its waterfront setting. This is especially true if you use the HarborWalk, a boardwalk that snakes along the shores. Park in the lot next to the ICA building. From the grandstand behind the Museum, you can watch the planes fly into Logan Airport and tugboats glide through the harbor. The downtown skyline, best seen from this vantage point, becomes even more impressive as you make your way around the glass exterior of the Joseph J. Moakley Courthouse. Next up is the Barking Crab, a great place to grab a lobster roll and sit family-style at picnic tables. Walk across Fort Point Channel on the pedestrian-only bridge to reach Boston Harbor Hotel, and the mega-yachts that line Rowes Wharf. If the weather cooperates, you can continue along the waterfront to the New England Aquarium, Christopher Columbus Waterfront Park, and the North End, where I usually reenergize with a pistachio macaroon at Mike’s Pastry.

    Steve Jermanok As a columnist for National Geographic Adventure, adventure travel expert at Budget Travel, and regular contributor on outdoor recreation for Outside, Men’s Journal, Health, and Sierra, Steve Jermanok has written more than 1,000 articles on the outdoors.He’s also authored or co-authored 11 books, including Outside Magazine’s Adventure Guide to New England and Men’s Journal’s The Great Life. His latest book is Go Now! Put Your Life on Pause and See the World. He’s currently an adventure travel expert at Away.com and blogs daily at  Active Travels.

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Millennium Knickerbocker Hotel, Chicago

What’s the Deal: This summer, Millennium Hotels and Resorts North America (millenniumhotels.com/usa/) is encouraging families to visit America’s top cities for an affordable summer getaway.  The Millennium Hotels & Resorts Summer FREEdom package begins at just $93 per night at 14 US properties centrally located in major cities such as New York (from $187/night), Los Angeles (from $161),  and Chicago (from $144) and more. This is 15 percent off best available rate.

 Details: The “Summer FREEdom” package includes:

- Overnight accommodations
- 15 percent off Best Available Rate
- Children 12 years and under receive complimentary breakfast
- Complimentary Wi-Fi* (complimentary wired connection provided where Wi-Fi is not available.)

Fine Print: Valid from May 27 to September 2, 2013.

 Booking: Visit www.millenniumsummer.com or call 1-866-866-8086 (booking code: SFREEDOM).

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Mountain Biking in Moab

Moab is to mountain biking what Hawaii is to surfing. It’s home to the legendary Slickrock Trail, a 12 mile pedal through a stunning labyrinth of deep narrow canyons that twist and turn sharply, without reason, like the scribbling of a 5 year-old. Trek Travel, the travel arm of the bicycle manufacturer, is taking advantage of this spectacular terrain by offering two mountain bike camps in Moab in October and November 2013, where you’ll get to ride with mountain biking legend, Gary Fisher, and pro couple, Heather Imerger and Jermey Horgan-Kobelski. The five-day, four-night Moab Ride Camp features trips to Porcupine Rim, Amasa Back, and Pipe Dream. The trip culminates with The Whole Enchilada, where you descend 4500 feet from alpine forests to the Colorado River valley. It’s an epic experience of challenging terrain and spectacular panoramas. Cost is $1199, including all meals, lodging at the Gonzo Inn, use of a Trek Remedy 9 or Lush SL full suspension mountain bike, and guided rides with experts who will only enhance your biking skills.

  Steve Jermanok As a columnist for National Geographic Adventure, adventure travel expert at Budget Travel, and regular contributor on outdoor recreation for Outside, Men’s Journal, Health, and Sierra, Steve Jermanok has written more than 1,000 articles on the outdoors.He’s also authored or co-authored 11 books, including Outside Magazine’s Adventure Guide to New England and Men’s Journal’s The Great Life. His latest book is Go Now! Put Your Life on Pause and See the World. He’s currently an adventure travel expert at Away.com and blogs daily at  Active Travels.

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Town Hall Square, Tallinn

By Marc Kristal

A few months ago, I visited Rome, a beloved city in which I have long followed, like many tourists, a particular, equally beloved routine. One of the high points is a first-day visit to the Forum – where I was very surprised to discover that admission to this fascinating monument, one of the essential archaeological sites in the west, was no longer free. A dependable pleasure of the Eternal City was not as eternal as I’d assumed.

I was, of course, shocked, shocked by this change of policy – but, really, why should I have been? As the history of Rome itself so eloquently demonstrates, everything is a moment in time, and even the things that seem immutable are fugitive. Still, I was struck by my own reaction, my feeling that this small transformation – the installation of a ticket kiosk – had drawn a line in history: suddenly the ‘old’ Rome, the Rome in which you could stroll down the steep stairs behind the Piazza del Campidoglio and into the seat of ancient empire, was gone. This led me, in turn, to consider how particular and personal experience can be, how the absence or presence of knowledge or context can powerfully influence one’s perceptions. To wit: If your first Roman holiday came after the installation of the turnstile – AT, as it were – Weltschmerz for Rome BT is inexplicable, even absurd: So they’re charging admission. What’s the big deal?

What’s interesting is that this disconnect can exist even if the line in the sand of time is epoch-making – for example, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the subsequent independence of its vassal states. In Prague, Warsaw, or anywhere else behind the Iron Curtain, the difference between Then and Now is quantum. Yet if you have no memory of what life was like in the Eastern Bloc prior to 1991, then freedom there is your reality, and you can be as mystified by those haunted by the ghosts of the Soviet years as someone who’d never known a Forum without turnstiles. Thus it can be invaluable, when visiting places where, to paraphrase Faulkner, the past isn’t past, to be made aware of significant recent history: the better to understand what shaped the seemingly eternal everydayness of the place you’re experiencing, and to perceive that you are in fact in a kind of chrysalis, a city or country emerging from a previous state of being into a new condition traced by, but separate from (hopefully, someday), the dark past.

Hotel Telegraaf, Talinn, Estonia

A recent visit to Estonia and Lithuania brought this home to me sharply, the former especially, as Tallinn, Estonia’s enchanting capital, is in many ways a typically ‘modern’ European city – which is to say that it can comfortably put forward both the historic and contemporary. Tallinn’s Old Town, comprised of upper and lower districts, began life in the early 13^th century and is today a picturesque mélange of Danish, German and (to a lesser degree) Russian influences; from my base at the Hotel Telegraaf, a chic hostelry installed in the city’s old telegraph building, it was a pleasurable stroll to the district’s greatest hits: the best-preserved medieval town hall (dating from 1404) in Europe; on Town Hall Square, the oldest continuously-operating pharmacy (dating from 1422) in Europe (be sure to check the expiration date on your prescription of Eye of Newt); and – despite Estonia’s being, according to my guide, the second least religious country on the continent – the very handsome churches St. Nicholas, St. Olav’s (at 129 metres the city’s man-made high point and, from 1549 to 1625, the tallest structure in the world), and the onion-domed Alexander Nevsky cathedral.

At the same time, contemporary Tallinn is palpably present, in cultural attractions such as the design-forward Kumu Art Museum (in Peter the Great’s Kadriorg Park) and the superlative fun-for-all-ages Seaplane Harbour maritime museum, in what is surely one of the great interior spaces to be found in the Baltics, a three-domed concrete-shell airplane hangar dating from the early 20^th century; and Rotermann Quarter, a former industrial district near the waterfront that has been reinvented via the alchemy of that ubiquitous urban revitalization model, an interleaving of historical and contemporary architecture, as a hip business, residential and leisure-time destination. (Tallinn also has an active alternative music scene and, like Estonia overall – the birthplace of Skype – light-speed, ubiquitous, free wifi.)

The KGB radio room, from which Soviet agents eavesdropped on guests in the Viru’s many bugged hotel rooms and sent coded messages back to headquarters. Photo by Marc Kristal.

Yet the years between the Soviet occupation of Estonia in 1944 and 20 August 1991, when the nation declared its independence, make themselves felt in large ways and small, and nowhere more transparently than at the KGB Museum, atop the Viru Hotel, a 23-story modernist pile, resembling a flat-footed version of New York’s Lever House, which was built by the USSR’s Intourist agency to attract foreign customers (and currency) and opened in 1972.

The museum, which debuted in January of 2011 and has drawn some 75,000 visitors to its relatively cramped quarters, is difficult to characterize, in large measure because there’s not much to it. Located in the former headquarters of the KGB in Tallinn, it occupies the hotel’s top floor, which remains unreachable by elevator, as was the case during the Soviet years, when it officially didn’t exist (nosy questioners were told floor 23 held ‘technical rooms’); there are displays of vintage photographs and documents, an office with telephones and technology that, though only four decades old, own a primitiveness worthy of the Flintstones, and a KGB ‘radio room,’ used for sending messages and eavesdropping on guests, that was abandoned so abruptly in 1991 that there are still rotting fag butts in the ashtrays. Yet the place exerts a weird fascination, which derives (for me at any rate) from its almost perfect conformity to a 1950s Hollywood-style laff riot vision of utter Commie incompetence – the kind of comedy in which the Red agents are depicted as bumbling, black-suited, bushy-browed buffoons (the Austrian actor Oscar Homolka made a specialty of such men), booming out party platitudes but all too susceptible to Jack Daniel’s, Chiclets, Jayne Mansfield, and other classy American blandishments.

The mirthful mood is abetted by my group’s tour guide, Jana, a fast-talking, high-energy gamine in a red warm-up jacket with the museum’s logo emblazoned on its back, who calls to mind a blond, pixie-cut version of the impish Soviet gymnast Olga Korbut, and sustains a non-stop monologue that is at once richly informative, deeply sad, and laugh-out-loud funny. Indeed, it is not too much to say that Jana is the KGB Museum, as she animatedly fills its dreary rooms and corridors with the bizarre up-is-down world of Estonia under the pathetic, vicious Soviet thumb.

What do we learn? That the Viru, Tallinn’s first skyscraper and most prestigious hotel, required a mere three years to construct (using Finnish labor), as opposed to the decade or more it typically took the unmotivated local talent to finish a comparable job. That, out of 460 rooms, 60 were bugged – the joke was that the Viru was built from “micro-concrete – 50 percent concrete, 50 percent microphones.” That only the best rooms, the ones with views, were wired, and that guests such as journalists, who were most likely to divulge useful information, received the same bugged accommodations over and over again. That the KGB went so far as to insert microphones into butter plates in the dining room (while cautioning the waiters never to put them in the dishwasher).

We learn as well that the spy agency’s omnipresence, which it took great pains to conceal, was an open secret to one and all. Mischievous guests would often write ‘KGB’ in the elevators where the button for the 23^rd floor would have been, and a museum visitor who’d been at the Viru pre-1991 told of standing in his wiretapped bathroom and loudly complaining of a lack of toilet paper – after which a bellman immediately showed up with a fresh roll.

In the radio room, Jana displays a purse rigged with a paint bomb that exploded when the purse was opened. Hotel management used the device to catch employees who might be tempted to find and pocket foreign currency, an offense punishable by imprisonment. Photo by Marc Kristal.

Jana vividly describes the strange inner world of the place, which had the schizophrenic mission of being attractive to foreign tourists but to also serve as a subtle prison for them, as the Soviets didn’t want free-world aliens to be out exploring Tallinn (and polluting the minds of the locals). And so the Viru was designed to be completely self-contained, ‘like a small nation,’ she says: the hotel maintained, not only the usual in-plant necessities like kitchens, but also its own medical team and radio station, as well as a staff of 1080 to look after a maximum capacity of 829, ‘which came to 1.3 workers per guest,’ Jana notes.

Despite the promise of the risqué floorshows, in which scantily clad Eastern Bloc Amazons posed provocatively (though with the high-minded froideur of magistrates), the Viru was a tough place to relax and have fun. The bar didn’t stock bourbon – too American. Local people, even if they were blood relatives, were not allowed above the ground floor. Prostitutes were prohibited – the museum displays a list of banned scarlet women, their names chivalrously blocked out – and those who managed to get in the door had to write the price of their services on their shoe soles, which they’d display discreetly by crossing their legs. And, showing us a vintage photo of a matron armed with a pencil and a stern, eagle-eyed glare, Jana tells us about the Viru’s 68 ‘guardians of the floors,’ whose job it was to write down the activities of the guests (one night, to induce writer’s cramp in these unfortunate old ladies, a visiting dance troupe spent hours scampering back and forth between each other’s rooms).

As this story suggests, to work in such a place was to be more than a prisoner in name. Jana shows us a trick purse that, when opened, set off a paint bomb: the idea was that a hotel employee who might find a lost wallet and try to secure some foreign currency would be incriminated by the colorful splatter. That this was no laughing matter is evident from the story Jana tells of two waiters. One who was caught drunk on the job was sent to work in the hotel’s storeroom for three months. Another, found with a pocket full of Finnish money, was sent to jail.

Vilnius, Lithuania

Owing perhaps to my own family’s Lithuanian Jewish roots and the folkloric fantasies they’ve engendered, my expectations of Vilnius are out of Chagall, bearded men in black robes and skull caps leading blue cows beneath trees filled with fiddle-playing elves. The reality is a graceful capital of considerable architectural interest – ‘a Baroque city built on late Gothic foundations,’ my guide calls it – enjoying surprisingly broad-scaled public spaces (the triangular Town Hall Square with its multiple sidewalk cafés, overlooked, at one end, by the Art Nouveau-inflected Hotel Astorija, conveys a sense of the gracious, companionable elegance of Mittel-European society before a century of war and totalitarianism tore it to shreds), and hills – some wooded, others capped by centuries-old fortifications – to rival those of Rome. First recorded as Lithuania’s capital in 1323, and in the 16^th century one of the largest cities in Europe, Vilnius is redolent of history, some of which plays out in diminishing numbers: in 1903, there were 105 synagogues, today there is one; of the original gates along the fortification wall that once ringed the historic heart of the city, only the Gate of Dawn, above which is a chapel containing a 17^th-century ‘black Madonna,’ one of the best known, and most visited, religious icons in the Baltics, still remains. Vilnius also has a district, Uzupis, which declared itself an independent republic in 1997 (with its own idiosyncratic constitution – ‘A dog has the right to be a dog,’ is one of its 39 articles), and remains home to artists and squatters, who inhabit its collapsing buildings – which, in a world of escalating land values and relentless urban gentrification, seems to belong to a rapidly vanishing zeitgeist.

Black Madonna, Vilnius

Though Lithuania was in fact the first republic to declare its independence from the USSR (in 1990), its half-century of Soviet domination seems both more present, and less available for lighthearted reinterpretation, than Estonia’s. The may have to do with Ona, my guide, who, being older than Jana, has a longer memory of the period and whose manner seems faintly infused with melancholy. Ona also makes the micro-concrete joke (a Baltic staple, apparently). But she observes as well that ‘the experience of Communism was different in every period and every country,’ adding that ‘we were born into Communism, like animals in captivity.’ As our tour bus takes us into the pine forests beyond Vilnius, Ona relates a story about a Lithuanian farmer who, with his family, worked a small unpromisingly piece of land, barely surviving on the yield. The Soviets had marked the man for deportation for the crime of being a ‘landowner,’ and when the KGB showed up to arrest him, he threw a piece of paper in the face of one of the officers. It was a wartime form letter from Moscow, offering condolences for the man’s son, who’d been drafted into the Russian army and killed fighting the Nazis. (After reading the letter, the KGB man canceled the deportation.) And Ona tells us, too, with nostalgic laughter, of queuing, as a child, with different local women on lines to buy flour, as it was strictly rationed based on the number of people in one’s family.

Grutas Park was developed by a successful entrepreneur named Jkurejas Malinauskas, who made money after 1990, the year Lithuania became independent, in the mushroom and snail trades. Malinauskas wanted to preserve, not only the artifacts of Lithuanian Communism, but also the experience of living under the Soviets’ thumb. Accordingly, he enclosed the 20-hectare, heavily forested park, on the shore of Grutas lake, in barbed wire, and added guard towers with loudspeakers that play ‘patriot’ music. Photo by Marc Kristal.

That it can be difficult to transition from captivity to freedom becomes bizarrely evident when our bus arrives at Grutas Park, some ninety minutes from the capital. Developed by a successful entrepreneur named Jkuresas Malinauskas, who made his post-1990 pile in the mushroom and snail trades, the 20-hectare, heavily forested destination, on the edge of Grutas Lake (in the town of Grutas, just to make things extra easy) is essentially a theme park filled with Soviet-era Lithuanian artifacts – mostly statuary and sculpture, but also a multitude of cultural objects – that despite (or perhaps because of) the incongruously peaceful setting, convey a powerful sense of what life was like in the east prior to the USSR’s dissolution. Part of this derives from the way in which Malinauskas has chosen to frame the experience: to preserve, not only the bric-a-brac of Lithuanian Communism (most ubiquitously numerous representations of Lenin), but also the experience of living under Soviet domination, he enclosed the park with barbed wire – and added guard towers fitted with loudspeakers that play ‘patriotic’ Soviet-era songs.

Lenin, Lenin, everywhere, in Grutas Park. Photo by Marc Kristal

Grutas Park contains multiple curiosities: weaponry, Soviet-era playground equipment (to amuse visiting children, Malinauskas thoughtfully included recreation areas and a small zoo), an old vodka still, a truck from which mandatory lottery tickets were sold (the proceeds supported the Russian army), and a library housing multiple propaganda elements. But the most interesting are the kitschy statues, each of which has a telling tale attached to it. My favorite is a peculiarly proportioned pairing of Lenin and Vincas Mickevicius-Kapsukas, head of the Lithuanian Communist party. In real life, Mickevicius was considerably taller than Lenin, and the two statues were originally completed to scale. The bosses in Moscow, however, were having none of it – and so Lenin was fitted with a new, much longer, pair of legs that leave him looking faintly like a Soviet Jiminy Cricket.

Both Estonia and Lithuania belong, to be sure, to the moment, and can be enjoyed entirely as 21^st-century examples of European tourism at its most lively and entertaining. Yet the tincture of history offered by the KGB Museum and Grutas Park enriches the experience of both countries – adding perspective, complexity, and a greater awareness and appreciation of the quotidian joy of freedom.

Visit the websites of Estonia and Lithuania for more information

  Marc Kristal is an architecture, design and travel writer. Kristal, a contributing editor of Dwell and a former editor of AIA/J, and has written for The New York Times, Architectural Digest, Elle Decor, Wallpaper, Surface, and numerous other publications. In 2003, he curated the exhibition ‘Absence Into Presence: The Art, Architecture and Design of Remembrance’ at Parsons School of Design, and in 2009 he was part of the project team that created the award-winning Greenwich South planning study for the Alliance for Downtown New York. His books include Re:Crafted: Interpretations of Craft in Contemporary Architecture and Interiors (2010) and Immaterial World: Transparency in Architecture (2011), both from The Monacelli Press. Also a screenwriter, Kristal wrote the film Torn Apart.  He lives in New York.

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Sallie Brady, a friend and a contributor to this site, died unexpectedly last week. Sallie was a wonderful and gifted freelance writer and editor. She had a brilliant smile, a warm and engaging manner, and some of the best media gossip imaginable. Days before something hit The New York Post’s Page Six, you could hear it from Sallie, fact-checked and cross referenced via her bevy of friends, informants and Cassandras at the major magazines in New York.

Always dressed up in a fashion that suggested the high gloss 50’s rather than the dressed down permanent Fridays we seem to be in now, Sallie was a shot of old fashioned glam. With her fuzzy sweaters and pearls, she had the sorority look long before “Mad Men” made it chic all over again. Like many people I’ve known who seem to be the most authentic, died-in-the-wool, hardboiled New Yorkers, she was born and raised in the Midwest, in her case in Cleveland.

She worked at many magazines including GQ, Brides, House Beautiful and This Old House, and had lived a New York life that seemed ambitious for someone twice her age, with tales that would have made Dawn Powell sit up and pay attention, if not Dorothy Parker. Some came from her days haunting the fabled Lion’s Head on Christopher Street, where newspaper guys, novelists and other wastrels would drink and talk and then talk some more. Think of the likes of Breslin, Hamill, and Frank McCourt. She was acquainted with a lot of people, as one can be if you’re young and smart and social in the city.

We’d see each other at press events in New York, Sallie arriving sparkling and smiling. If you knew her, you’d watch her do her thing and then wait for her to stand next to you and hear her breathy, sotto voce rundown of everyone in the room. It was always worth the wait. She knew every Holly Golightly making the scene and the backstory to the poseurs, the influencers, and the most interesting people in the room.

We traveled together a bit – back in the late 90’s, we did the Coast to Coast walk across England with a small group of like-minded masochistic Anglophiles. Sallie usually lagged behind but she was a trooper, even as her every step seemed an agony, as if the physical act of walking across a field instead of in search of a cab were something new to her. The sight of her in hiking boots made me wonder if she might have done better in her usual white heels. We roamed through the Cotswolds another time, gathering material for stories on antique dealers and auctions and collectibles, subjects in which Sallie because something of an expert for Art & Antiques and Forbes Life. Here she was more sure-footed, fearsome with cagey dealers, quick to show umbrage – there was an Irish temper lurking there — but equally quick to reward someone with a smile if it was warranted.

 She wrote the Letter from London column for me and raced across that city covering antiques fairs and shows, crashing one night at The Dorchester, the next at One Aldwych and maybe Dukes the night after that. It was a glam life and she knew everyone, as they say, this 47 year old woman who traveled with her favorite pillow that had been stuffed into the overhead of more than one first class compartment. At home, she buckled down and worked hard, her companions a succession of small white dogs and a beloved Irish husband, Jimmy, from whom she was recently widowed. She was a delight and she will be missed by many.

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Wolcott Hotel, New York City

What’s the Deal: Manhattan’s Wolcott Hotel is a budget friendly — and family-friendly — property that’s having a summer sale.

Details: The Wolcott Hotel’s summer rate starts at $180 Summer Starting Rate.

Background: Located in midtown, just blocks from the EmpireStateBuilding, the property opened in 1904 was designed by John H. Duncan, architect of Grant’s Tomb. Henry Miller, Edith Wharton and Buddy Holly are among those who have spent the night here.

Amenities: Complimentary breakfast with a selection of muffins and coffee, concierge services, fitness room, laundry facility. The Wolcott also offers free bike storage, coordinates bike rentals through Sid’s Bikes with a 10% discount for hotel guests, and provides complimentary NYC bike maps to explore the city’s top tourist routes via two wheels.

Booking: Visit www.wolcott.com or call 212-268-2900.

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