Results tagged “My Favorite Place on Earth” from Intelligent Travel Blog

To compile his new book, My Favorite Place on Earth, Jerry Camarillo Dunn Jr., interviewed dozens of famous people -- from Natalie Portman to the Dalai Lama -- about the places they loved most. He's been guest-blogging about his experiences here on Intelligent Travel. Click here for recent posts.

In choosing a travel companion, you might look for a curious mind, a sense of adventure, or a working knowledge of planes, trains, and donkey carts. But most important is a sense of humor. When the frustrations and absurdities of travel pop up, you both just laugh and carry on.

In My Favorite Place on Earth, I talked with 75 celebrated people about the places they love most in the world, and I made sure to talk with funny folks, from actor Will Ferrell to Matt Groening, who created The Simpsons.

Robin Williams spoke about his hometown, San Francisco. "One famous neighborhood is Haight-Ashbury," he said. "It's like a Civil War re-enactment done by Timothy Leary. The sidewalks are packed, and there are still shops from the Sixties."

Jerry Seinfeld reminisced about playing on a softball team with other up-and-coming comics in New York's Central Park. "We were doing this childlike thing in the middle of this most grown-up of places," he said. "On a Tuesday afternoon you'd be in jeans and sneakers, running around playing ball, and you'd see the skyscrapers with all the real people working for a living. You couldn't escape the fact that you had just dodged this huge bullet in life: 'I'm not up there working!'"

To compile his new book, My Favorite Place on Earth, Jerry Camarillo Dunn Jr., interviewed dozens of famous people -- from Natalie Portman to the Dalai Lama -- about the places they loved most. He's been guest-blogging about his experiences here on Intelligent Travel. Click here for recent posts.

What makes a place memorable? Often it's the people who live there, or did long ago: Think of Egypt, Mesa Verde, or Angkor Wat. It may even be a single person, as mind-body medicine pioneer Deepak Chopra discovered in Jerusalem. Here's part of his story from My Favorite Place on Earth:

"One day I walked down the Via Dolorosa, the street in the Old City where Jesus carried the cross. The stations of the cross are marked out, and I began my walk where he was sentenced, at Pontius Pilate's court. The second station is where Jesus was flagellated, the third where he fell and was helped up. And I ended at Calvary, the hill where he was crucified.

To compile his new book, My Favorite Place on Earth, Jerry Camarillo Dunn Jr., interviewed dozens of famous people -- from Natalie Portman to the Dalai Lama -- about the places they loved most. He'll be guest blogging about his experiences here for the next few weeks. Click here for recent posts.

I think a lot of us travel to find that special place that makes us feel completely alive and "in the moment." For some it might be a marble temple gleaming in the Greek sunshine. (In Delphi I once sat alone in the Temple of Apollo, trying to hear the Oracle speak.) For others it's an extraordinary spot in the natural world, whether a beach in Bali or the top of a granite wall in Yosemite. And for Cesar Millan, the host of National Geographic's hit TV series "The Dog Whisperer," it's a sanctuary in the city - with his favorite companions.
   
"Dogs don't know whether they're in Italy or China or France, but wherever they are, they do know that they're having a good time at the moment," he told me. "And my favorite moments are when I'm walking with the pack in Runyon Canyon, a park in the mountains above Hollywood where dogs are allowed to walk off-leash.
   
"Runyon Canyon Park is a magical place because it's natural, with mountains, rocks, chaparral, and trees. Yet, at the same time you're right in the city, so the dogs have the benefit of both worlds.

"We make two trips up and down the canyon, which takes about four hours. We have a special place about halfway down under what the locals call a Jesus Tree, because its seeds have a cross on them. It's nice and shady there, and the pack knows it's their resting place. They've created little holes and dens for themselves, and each picks its own spot. They're happy because they've accomplished something, and we all sit and relax and drink water. We don't say anything, just rest.

"It gives me such happiness to be there, just to be in the moment and not looking at the clock. I don't have to go to any meetings. I don't have to do anything. It's just me and my pack. It's a beautiful thing."

For other remarkable stories from My Favorite Place on Earth visit www.myfavoriteplacenatgeo.com.

To compile his new book, My Favorite Place on Earth, Jerry Camarillo Dunn Jr., interviewed dozens of famous people -- from Natalie Portman to the Dalai Lama -- about the places they loved most. He'll be guest blogging about his experiences here for the next few weeks. Click here for recent posts.

Sometimes we reach a crossroads in life and take an unexpected turn that changes everything. It happened to custom clothier Manuel Cuevas - known simply as Manuel - the designer who turned Johnny Cash into the "Man in Black" and put Elvis in a jumpsuit.

"We all have one place that makes us think: Wow! What happened to me there changed my life!" he says. Coming from Mexico to Los Angeles as a tailor at age 21, Manuel soon was making clothes for Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack. But he grew bored with tuxedos. "Some were black and some were white, but it never went anywhere from there. I thought: This isn't my idea of designing. This is just monkey see, monkey do. I need to find something different.

"In the early fifties, a girlfriend asked me to go to the Rose Parade in Pasadena . . . There were people riding horses, and I had never seen anything so flamboyant in my whole life. The colors! The glitter! The embroidery! To see macho men dressed up in clothes with flowers on them, wearing hats all adorned with rhinestones - it just freaked me out. I thought, Oh my God, that's what I want to do!

To compile his new book, My Favorite Place on Earth, Jerry Camarillo Dunn Jr., interviewed dozens of famous people -- from Natalie Portman to the Dalai Lama -- about the places they loved most. He'll be guest blogging about his experiences here for the next few weeks. Click here for recent posts.

Back in 1906, a railroad hoping to attract passengers coined the slogan "See America First."

But which America?

A fantastic musician and great gentleman from My Favorite Place on Earth has some ideas. For his spot, musician Jack White of the White Stripes and the Raconteurs chose Clarksdale, Mississippi, a town that stands among plowed fields at the legendary crossroads where Highway 49 meets Highway 61. It has been home to blues singers Robert Johnson, Charlie Patton, and Jack White's hero, Son House.

"I didn't expect to feel the way I do about Clarksdale," Jack told me. "I thought maybe I'd find that it's all Wal-Marts and commercialized chain stores, like a lot of the western world now. When you're driving around the country, you think it would be nice to pull off the road and eat at a mom-and-pop diner or café, but you can't do that anymore. They're gone, and it's really sad. Now it's 'Take your pick of what corporation you want to have lunch at.' So I was worried that my idea of Mississippi wasn't going to be there anymore. But that wasn't the case. Clarksdale was the Mississippi I had in my head.

To compile his new book, My Favorite Place on Earth, Jerry Camarillo Dunn Jr., interviewed dozens of famous people -- from Natalie Portman to the Dalai Lama -- about the places they loved most. He'll be guest blogging about his experiences here for the next few weeks. Click here for recent posts.

"Cultural, authentic, and sustainable"- the triple aspirations of the Intelligent Travel blog - are watchwords for some of the accomplished people you'll read about in My Favorite Place on Earth.  

I think of Jean-Michel Cousteau, whose favorite spot wasn't undersea but a lost corner of Peru, where 25 years ago he met a remarkable man. "Chief Kukus [of the Achuar, a group of the Jivaro] had nearly as much impact on me as my own father," Mr. Cousteau told me. "He taught me his values...His village stood on a river in the deep forest...There were a lot of birds in the trees, and monkeys all over the place. The people hunted with blowguns and poison darts, but in a sustainable way. They only killed what they needed, what nature could provide.

"Chief Kukus showed me some trees he had planted that were about ten feet tall. He told me: 'I'll never see them grow big enough, and my children won't either - even my grandchildren, probably not. But my great-grandchildren, they'll be able to use those trees that I have planted.' He pointed to one in particular and said, 'That's going to make a good canoe.'

"For me, the chief expressed the unwritten constitution of the future. In our modern culture we deal only with the present - now now now. We say we care about our children and grandchildren, yet we do nothing about it. But the Jivaro people had the right concept. They knew how to live in harmony with nature in a sustainable way."

Like Jean-Michel Cousteau, the world stands to learn much from traditional people who have managed to survive in one place for a long time. I think of the Earth as "one place" - and I hope we take the long view.

Photo: via the Ocean Futures Society

To compile his new book, My Favorite Place on Earth, Jerry Camarillo Dunn Jr., interviewed dozens of famous people -- from Natalie Portman to the Dalai Lama -- about the places they loved most. He'll be guest blogging about his experiences here for the next few weeks. Click here for recent posts.

A reader on this blog emailed me (jerry@myfavoriteplacenatgeo.com), saying he plans a celebrity-oriented project and asked what I'd learned from writing My Favorite Place on Earth. So here are some tips on how to recruit famous people to work with you

1) Don't send stock letters that are obviously going out to dozens of other celebrities: "Dear (your name goes here), I love your movies. Please take part in my book. Or please send me an autographed picture/your Academy Award statue/your first-born." For My Favorite Place on Earth I researched everyone I invited, so that in my request letter I could mention places they'd traveled, charities they support, activities they enjoy, and so on. I hoped this personalized approach showed my serious intent and my sincere interest in them- especially compared to a dashed-off, "Hey Generic Famous Person!" approach.

2) Have a worthwhile core question, and pose it in a way that will spark the person's interest and inspire him or her to get involved in your project.

3) Flattery is okay, as long as you really mean it. I'm sure celebrities (and their publicists) can smell insincerity and opportunism from ten miles away.

Today marks the release of the new National Geographic book My Favorite Place on Earth: Celebrated People Share Their Travel Discoveries, by Jerry Camarillo Dunn Jr., who also happens to have written for us here at National Geographic Traveler. Jerry had to pull a lot of strings to compile the book (see below) so we pulled some of our own to get the inside details about putting it all together. He'll be guest blogging about his experiences here for the next few weeks.

For My Favorite Place on Earth, I asked 75 famous people, ranging from the Dalai Lama to Will Ferrell, to talk about the one place they love more than anywhere else on the planet. Hearing the concept, my friends said, "Great idea!" Then they'd add, "I can't believe nobody's done it before!"

My (admittedly simple) idea grew out of a question people ask me when they find out I'm a travel writer: "You must have been everywhere. So what's your favorite place?" I decided to ask the same question of highly accomplished people, so readers could see some fascinating spots through their eyes.

But how exactly could I get famous folks to talk with me?

I sent out hundreds of letters to people I admire, explaining the book and asking them to be part of it. Sometimes success was sublimely easy. The phone would ring and a voice would say, "Natalie Portman would love to talk with you," or "Jerry, this is Jeff Foxworthy."