A Time for Tulips
By Sandy Klim

The magic begins as your car follows the picturesque drive toward the quaint town of Holland, MI. Along the way, tulip farms burst with color, roadside testaments to the heritage and pageantry this town has celebrated for 76 years.

The town welcomes you in style with over 750,000 tulips in bloom during the annual Tulip Time Festival held May 7-14.

Throughout the city, attractions and entertainment abound. One of the favorites is the “Volksparade,” with hundreds of Dutch-costumed townspeople. Many are armed with brooms and pails, a tradition born of the “Dutch Cleanliness” beliefs. Clicking along in their wooden shoes, they scrub the parade route clean, taking time to dump a bucket or two on the mayor, much to the delight of the cheering onlookers.

If you’re game, try your hand at Klompen dancing. Exhibition Dutch dance groups in turn-of-the-century costumes make this easy, but try it with layers of clothes and wooden shoes on your feet!

At Windmill Island, visit DeZwaan, America’s only 278-year-old working Dutch windmill. This 12-story giant still produces stone-ground flour. There’s also an antique Dutch carousel, manicured gardens, games and Dutch dancing during summer months.

Holland also boasts the only Delftware factory in the U.S. See how the classic wooden shoes are made at one of the many factories. Holland is a shopper’s delight with more than 120 specialty shops, galleries and restaurants that line the city streets.

You can also view re-enactments of 1890s life in the Netherlands. Professional bakers show you some of their tricks of the trade using traditional methods for making the delectably sweet krakelingen, a flaky, melt-in-your-mouth cookie.

If you can’t make the world-renowned Tulip Time Festival in May, not to worry. Holland is a visitor’s paradise year-round. Located near the beautiful shores of Lake Michigan, it’s also home to some of the best beaches in the Midwest. Swimmers, boaters, parasailers, sunbathers and shell seekers find the peaceful landscape a great escape.

Island Fervor Thrives On Prince Edward
By Ian Hutchinson

She may not be of Harry Potter proportions these days, but Anne of Green Gables has stood the test of time since being introduced to readers nearly 100 years ago by author Lucy Maud Montgomery.

There is no magic or witchcraft in the tales of Anne Shirley, but rather a charming and earthy tale of a redheaded orphan who inspired a series of books, plays, television shows, a mini-series and a cornerstone for tourism in Canada’s smallest province in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, off the east coast.

Prince Edward Island was part of Anne’s story, but Anne is still a big part of the Prince Edward Island story. She’s not just a fictional character, but an Island attitude in a maritime setting where you are never more than 10 miles from the sea.

Theme parks are not the reason to visit P.E.I., nor is shopping at a mega-mall or trendy boutique. This isn’t a place to follow an itinerary, but to go where your heart leads you. Finding one reason for visiting Prince Edward is going about it the wrong way, for there are countless little reasons that become clear at a lobster supper or while bending the elbow at a friendly pub.

Islanders are always eager to display their affection for their homeland to others, who now have more convenient access than ever with the opening of the Confederation Bridge, a toll bridge that spans the Northumberland Strait that joins Prince Edward Island with New Brunswick.

You’ll hear a lot of the word “Confederation” here because the Charlottetown Conference of 1864 led to Canada becoming a country almost three years later.

For those who arrive by car, it begins where the Confederation Bridge takes visitors into Gateway Village, which offers a variety of crafts and souvenirs, including the obligatory Anne doll for souvenir hunters.

In Charlottetown, Anne of Green Gables—The Musical has been playing since 1965 at the Confederation Centre of the Arts. It’s understandable that such a tiny island with a population around 140,000 would get charged up about a local legend.

The charm of the story is evident in the natural setting of Green Gables House, located in Prince Edward Island National Park, where sand dunes, beaches, barrier islands, wetlands and forests set up a scenic backdrop for those inclined to cycle.

The Confederation Trail, from Tignish in the west to Elmira in the east, offers a path to experience the island, whether cycling or walking, but it doesn’t end there for the adventurous.

Abundance of recreation, friendly people and inspiring scenery all add up to a sense of pride for residents. For those who come here, it’s an opportunity to experience a degree of serenity that prompts the natives to joke that “a traffic jam in Charlottetown is when two cars are at the same stop sign.”

It’s an attitude that takes some getting used to, but becomes the best P.E.I. souvenir to have when you’re not touching island soil anymore.

Tempe—Arizona’s Best-Kept Secret
By Sally Moe

Popular opinion tends to frame Tempe as a starting-off point for trips throughout Arizona, but this unpretentious university town is a worthy destination all by itself. Defined to a great extent by Arizona State (America’s third largest public university), it comes with all the cultural bells and whistles you might expect, including a vigorous arts community—with more than 20 museums and galleries at the University alone—and the striking Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Grady Gammage Auditorium.

But zoom in for a closer look. You’ll find bargain-priced public golf courses. An array of hopping microbreweries. South Mountain Park—the largest municipal park in America—with 58 miles of scenic, winding desert trails. The annual Fiesta Bowl at Sun Devil Stadium. Guadalupe, Tempe’s town-within-a-city, teeming with Native American and Hispanic culture. (And Mexican food like it “was really meant to be.”) Friday concerts—from Spanish guitar to swing to jazz—and December’s atmospheric Las Noches de las Luminarias at the Desert Botanical Garden. The Wyndham Buttes, an architecturally dramatic resort and fine-dining restaurant built into a rocky mountainside, is a perfect spot for taking in those gorgeous desert sunsets. And 220-acre Tempe Town Lake—an innovative project designed to control Salt River flooding—is a hub for everything from picnics, concerts and amateur athletics to yearly dos like the New Year’s Eve Block Party, the Fourth of July bash and Way Out West Oktoberfest. And starting this April, the Ironman Arizona Triathlon.

Furthermore, Tempe’s average 330 days of sunshine a year make it a haven for animal and nature lovers. If you pine for the quintessential all-American baseball experience—from cloudless skies to peanuts in the shell to the seventh-inning stretch with a classic rendition of Take Me Out to the Ballgame—spend an afternoon at Diablo Stadium, a Cactus League spring training site featuring the Anaheim Angels.

And if you yearn to get your shopping groove on, you can hear the cash changing hands all the way to Flagstaff when the bi-annual Tempe Festival of the Arts is in progress, featuring the efforts of nearly 500 artists and craftspeople. This highly regarded festival draws more than 225,000 visitors twice a year, due to its excellent variety of folk art, metalwork, jewelry, fiber, mixed media and much more. (The next festival will be April 1-3, 2005.) For those with energy to spare, the revelry continues into the night with music acts and entertainment.

The three-day festival is set up along a section of Mill Avenue in the thick of Tempe’s appealing tree-lined shopping and dining district. So whatever you didn’t find at the festival could very well be waiting for you in one of the Mill Avenue shops. At the very least, you’ll find a place to rest your feet, park your purchases, and kick back with a local microbrew.

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