“Just look! It’s right there in the painting.” This exhortation from our guide Sara Magister seemed so intuitive, so easy. A painting is there to be looked at. What happens when we take the time to do it? Let me back up a bit. Who is Sara, and which paintings […]
How far would you go to save a painting? One of the people we’ll meet on our upcoming trip The First Modern Artist: Caravaggio in Rome and Malta found himself facing that very question. In December 1984, three men disguised as workers stole the painting St. Jerome Writing from St. […]
OK, we don’t quite have 80 drinks to recommend to you here. But spend enough time on the road with us, and you’ll see that at Classical Pursuits and Worldwide Quest, tasting the cocktails, wines and beers of different cultures is one of our favourite parts of travelling. We look […]
by Sean Forester, leader of our September 2019 trip to Moscow and St. Petersburg For many of us, the images we have formed of Russia are rooted in Soviet times: We picture a tyrannical and bureaucratic country full of dreary buildings. Or maybe our images come from Hollywood and its […]
There will be no shortage of forceful personalities on the Classical Pursuits trip They Came to Paris: Literature 1910–1940. The French capital nurtured and attracted strivers, artists, dreamers, writers and flâneurs of all kinds. We will meet many of them, from Hemingway and Stein to Picasso to Kiki of Montparnasse. […]
I first met van Gogh when I was a 14-year-old bookworm devoted to exploring the richness of the local public library’s holdings. I had been making my way through the English literary canon and was already deeply committed to the written word when I found myself casually browsing through the […]
One heavy step, then another. Straps across their chests, they pull. It’s Russia, 1869. In Repin’s Barge Haulers on the Volga, you can feel the heat and the workers’ exhaustion. If you look closely, you’ll notice a steamship on the horizon; this back-breaking labour is no longer necessary. Like Dickens […]
The 2019 Travel Pursuits season opens with one of our most popular trips, Mystery and Manners: Flannery O’Connor in Savannah. Mystery and manners—that’s a funny kind of name for a trip, you may be thinking. Maybe you’re envisioning genteel lady detectives, or lighthearted satire set in elegant Southern drawing rooms. […]
For those of you who, like me, read everything on Vincent van Gogh you can get your hands and eyes on, there are several recent works you may enjoy, from books to films to art exhibits. First is Bernadette Murphy’s 2016 work Van Gogh’s Ear. Scrupulous as to details, research […]
[Editor’s note: This is the second in a series on the role food has played on Classical Pursuits trips as we remember the formidable, exuberant Anthony Bourdain. Enjoy!] By Ann Kirkland Unlike so many, I came late to the charms of Anthony Bourdain. It was when I heard he would […]