Nothing can ruin a vacation like being the victim of a pickpocketing scam. Throughout Europe specifically, a new study shows that there are some destinations where theft is more prevalent than others.
15.04.2024 - 12:15 / forbes.com
Passing over the Atlas Mountains in 1925, the French military photographer Marcelin Flandrin spotted a Barbary lion walking through the sand. Flandrin had flown the route often enough to realize that the sighting was uncommon. He took a picture, which he published as a postcard sold to travelers visiting Casablanca.
Neither Flandrin nor his customers could have known that it would be the last postcard of its kind, the final documented appearance of a beast verging on extinction. At the time, the postcard was just another souvenir of African exoticism. In retrospect, the footsteps appear to represent the lion’s final exit.
Walton Ford brings a different perspective to the scenario. In a 2018 watercolor painting, he shows Flaudrin’s journey from the Barbary lion’s point of view. The lion stands at the center of Ford’s composition, strong and proud, while Flaudrin’s biplane makes an exit overhead, exotic picture-postcards tumbling to the ground. Even if he’s the last of his subspecies, this Barbary lion shows no compulsion to play the victim. As long as he lives, the mountains remain his territory. From his position on the ground, humankind is hardly an afterthought.
The lion is a recurring subject for Ford. Many are represented in an impressive exhibition of his watercolors currently on view at the Morgan Library & Museum. In most of them – as well as his paintings of tigers and panthers and bears – he ingeniously inverts the tradition of natural history painting to examine aspects of the human condition.
Ford’s paintings often begin with a story. He began one series after reading about an accident involving a circus caravan in 1913. While traveling through Leipzig, the caravan was hit by a trolley, springing eight lions from their cage and sending people running. Contemporary newspaper illustrations focused on people’s terror, showing hats flying as they fled in all directions. Ford decided to ignore the hubbub and depict what happened afterward. “I wanted a decidedly undramatic moment,” he notes on one of the wall labels. “I imagined one of the hats that had been left behind: the lions approach it like a strange object, like a turtle or something.”
Another story about a fugitive beast inspired a series set in the Swiss Alps. In the winter of 1933, a black panther escaped from the Zurich Zoo, living in the snow for ten weeks, feeding on domestic animals. Nobody could find the wildcat, who was said to leave no tracks.
The story didn’t end well for the panther, who was eventually caught and eaten by a farmer. But Ford decided on a different ending. “Because they never found a track, in many of the pictures I had her floating above the snow, making her into a magical spirit,” he writes. The scientific
Nothing can ruin a vacation like being the victim of a pickpocketing scam. Throughout Europe specifically, a new study shows that there are some destinations where theft is more prevalent than others.
Since its release in 2016, the Chase Sapphire Reserve® has been a major player in the world of travel rewards credit cards. When the card launched, it offered new cardholders a welcome bonus of 100,000 points, an offer never seen again.
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With the Paris Olympics a few months away, booking a hotel in the French capital may as well be a competitive sport. Thankfully, the editors of Forbes Travel Guide have eased some of the preparation by revealing the 30 best hotels in Paris. From five-star grande dame properties, to chic boutiques, here’s where to stay in the City of Light.
At the risk of sounding like a culinary simpleton, I’ve always been a fan of buffets.
A special segment of adventurous travelers will purposely book itineraries with long connections in layover cities just to leave the airport and explore for a few hours or days between flights.
Amsterdam has banned new hotel developments to combat mass tourism, the municipal government announced Wednesday.