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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.

I was trying to explain to my non-American husband the other day why we should go to Monticello this summer. It's incredibly unique and fascinating, I said, but I was met with a blank stare. I faltered and whimpered, "Well I was there when I was a kid and...and...it was cool. He invented a lot of cool stuff, penned the Declaration of Independence, was a red-headed president, and his home's on the back of a nickel and..."
   
He's been unconvinced until now, but today I spied Maira Kalman's post on her illustrated blog, "And the Pursuit of Happiness," on www.nytimes.com.

Kalman's spirited post, "Time Wastes Too Fast," brims with biographical info about Jefferson presented in playful white script, whimsical illustrations of Monticello interiors, and photos of its stately façade.

Kalman, an American illustrator, author, artist, and designer, explores the conflicting nature of Jefferson; a slave owner who called slavery an abomination. She touches on his alleged relationship with Sally Hemmings and mentions the ongoing archaeological work at Monticello.

She asserts that to understand the U.S. you must go to Monticello to see "its people and what it means to be optimistic and complex and tragic and wrong and courageous..." Reason enough for my husband; plans are finally underway.

Read more about visiting Monticello the July/August issue of Traveler.

What places have you visited that have helped you better your understanding of a nation and its people on a philosophical level?

Image: Maira Kalman for the New York Times

As we mentioned earlier, the National Geographic Museum in DC has just opened a wonderful free exhibit called "Kodachrome Culture: The American Tourist in Europe," featuring big, luscious blowups of travel photos that appeared in the pages of National Geographic magazine (we call it NGM for short) in the 1950s and '60s. I particularly liked this photo of feeding pigeons in St. Mark's Square in Venice, dated 1957, by Ardean Miller III.

I was curious about the photo, so I pulled the second half of 1957 off our shelves (we keep the older magazines in leather-bound volumes), and found the picture on page 791, with the following caption (or legend, in NGM-speak):

"Finest Drawing Room in Europe," Napoleon Called Venice's Marbled Piazza
Gilded pinnacles and gem-bright mosaics give St. Mark's Cathedral the look of an oriental palace, Built about 830 and several times reconstructed, it is graced by treasures won when the city reigned as Queen of the Adriatic.

A new exhibit opened today in the National Geographic Museum here in DC at the National Geographic Society headquarters. It's called "Kodachrome Culture: The American Tourist in Europe" and it features wonderfully retro travel images from the pages National Geographic magazine. Here's one of my favorites, a photo of people lounging on the rocky beach at Etretat, France, with the Notre Dame de la Garde chapel atop the chalk cliffs in the background.

From the exhibit:

National Geographic pioneered the use of Kodachrome film in the late 1930s and was among the first to recognize its advantages. The film produced a dye image without the grain found in other color processes, and the photographs could be enlarged without loss of detail. The film was also faster. Instead of requiring a tripod, color shots taken with a compact 35mm camera could be spontaneously composed. By the time American tourism was taking off in the 1950s, National Geographic photographers were adept at using Kodachrome. The images helped National Geographic stand out from other magazines still publishing in black-and-white.
Eventually Kodachrome became the most widely used color film in the United States.

Fast Facts:

The National Geographic Museum, 1145 17th Street, N.W., Washington, D.C., is open Mondays through Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is free. For information on the "Kodachrome Culture" exhibit, call (202) 857-7588 or visit www.ngmuseum.org.

Read More:

Senior Photo Editor Dan Westergren discussed the story of how National Geographic Explorers came to name Kodachrome Flat in Bryce Caynon, Utah. And check out a gallery of classic Kodachrome images from the National Geographic archives here.

Photo by Howell Walker, from "Normandy Blossoms Anew," National Geographic magazine, May 1959, p. 629

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.

Need some music to inspire your next trip? In our April issue, writer Tom Pryor put together a list of some of the best songs that will transport you to London: from Britpop to The Clash. And now you can download the entire list on iTunes.

The beloved postcard has gone digital. A few months ago, we wrote about Hazel Mail, which allows you to upload photos from your computer to be sent as postcards back home. Well, now it seems there's an app for that as well. Our friends over at Matador Travel introduced us to goPostal, an application for your iPhone or iPod Touch which lets you to snap a photo and send it as a paper postcard with a personalized message attached. The 4x6 postcard can be delivered to any U.S. address for just $1.29 per card, including postage. We can't help but think it's perfect for the tweaks on classic postcard images (holding up the tower in Pisa, for example). But I have to admit that it dispatches with one of my favorite aspects of postcard culture: foreign stamps. What's your take?

[Print Your Life]

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.

I spent last weekend wandering through Europe. Ok, so it wasn't really Europe, but it was easy to pretend while visiting the many EU embassies that opened their doors this past Saturday for Europe in D.C. week, which extends through May 16. One of the best parts about living in (and visiting) D.C. are the infinite ways to engage in the city's international culture, and this week-long event is one of my favorites. I toured the Czech ambassador's home, nibbled on Polish perogies, and happened upon a delicious pastry during my stop in Hungary (or the Hungarian embassy, if you will). Naturally, it was the pastry that rose to the top of the things that screamed out "this must be blogged."

The Kürtöskalács, or chimney cake, is a traditional Hungarian pastry that is wrapped around a wooden spool and slowly turned over an open fire. Its origins are from Transylvania, but they're now celebrated as the oldest pastry in Hungary, and they're often served as street food. The dough is coated with oil and sugar, and when baked it creates a crunchy, sugary outside crust, not unlike a hot pretzel, with a soft doughy inside. City Life editor Amy Alipio tells me that, "you can find them at folk fairs and festivals, they're kind of like the Hungarian equivalent of funnel cakes or corn dogs. They are best when they are just hot off the fire." I definitely have to agree. Delicious.

Read more: Check out the recipe here to make the cakes yourself at home, or order some online here. Read Don George's online Trip Lit column about book of the month, Valeria's Last Stand, which takes place in part in Hungarian markets. Or watch a video of bakers making the cakes and try to contain your appetite afterward. It's called Hungary for a reason.

Photo: Janelle Nanos

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

The world's worst commute? Check out the Titanic Awards for more of the world's worst...

Here at Traveler, we tend to vie between celebrating what's great about travel and criticizing what's just flat out terrible. But Doug Lansky isn't looking for such a balance. He's the author of the forthcoming Titanic Awards: Celebrating the Dubious Achievements of Travel, and the creator of the accompanying survey, which asks travelers to enumerate the worst things they've experienced on the road. Since launching his site a few weeks ago, he's interviewed several travel luminaries about their worsts, and today he's published his interview with our own editor in chief, Keith Bellows, who shares his stories of eyeball soup, overused travel-writing tropes, and why he avoids organized tours (why? because there's always one jerk).

Intrigued by the concept, we asked Lansky for a sneak peek at some of the standings. So far, he tells us, China is leading the polls for world's worst toilets, while France is ahead for most overrated cuisine. And little shock: Americans are polling in first place for rudest tourists. (Agree? Disagree? Take the survey yourself.)

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."

Those of you who were fans of Hunter's story yesterday about Costa Rican turtle preserves, or recall our great Q&A with Wallace J. Nichols, a conservationist whose turtle-tracking project thrilled children around the world, we offer you some more turtle topics, only this time these turtles are traveling themselves.

National Geographic is partnering with Conservation International and the Canadian Sea Turtle Network to sponsor the Great Turtle Race, and yesterday, the contestants (all of whom are leatherback sea turtles) started on their two-week journey from the frigid Newfoundland costline down to the Carribbean. The turtles are tagged with state-of-the-art satellite tracking devices that enable the rest of us to follow their incredible 3,700-mile (6,000-kilometer) journey, which you can track yourself here on NG's interactive race map. So far, it seems as though Nueva Esperanza is winning, though Cali is on her tail. You can sign up with Conservation International to get updates on the the racers, and get their play-by-play of race on their blog.

For more on turtles, check out the story by Tim Appenzeller about Leatherback Sea Turtles in this month's National Geographic. And watch the video of photographer Brian Skerry as he talks about using natural moonlight and a long exposure to create this ghostly image of the vanishing species.

My heart almost skipped a beat yesterday when I saw the trailer for the new Where the Wild Things Are film, perhaps because the classic children's book by Maurice Sendak was one of my first encounters with the idea of running away - a concept that I still so closely associate with travel.

For those of you who don't know the premise, it's the story of Max, a bad little boy who was sent to bed without any supper. When he arrives in his bedroom, he finds it transformed into a magical forest, one inhabited by tremendous beasts who crown him king. But Max eventually grows homesick and returns back home, where his supper is waiting for him, still hot. The book was only 10 sentences long, but it won a Caldecott Medal and is considered a literary classic (did you know that Sendak named many of the beasts after his aunts and uncles?); its adaptation was written by Dave Eggers and directed by Spike Jonze. Mark your calendars for October 16, 2009, when the film will be released.

Is there a children's book that inspired you to travel? Let us know in the comments, or email us your favorites. 

Read More: Cinematical has some fantastic still images from the film. Read more about Sendak's life and work in the notes from "Wild Things: The Art of Maurice Sendak" which was exhibited at the Jewish Museum in 2005. 

When a slip of the non-native tongue ends in sexual innuendo, things can get awkward. Our friends over at Glimpse, National Geographic's website for young people living abroad, just listed their Top Five Accidental Sexual Innuendo moments, and they're hysterical. One thing we learned: You shouldn't imply that you're "in heat," while visiting a Russian banya.

Have a cringe-worthy moment? Share your tips here.

Photo: Nick Fitzhugh

So, the other day, while I was trying to get my horse to tölt across a lava field in Iceland...

OK, so maybe I don't get to say things like that on a regular (or even an irregular) basis. Darley Newman, however, does. Newman is the host of Equitrekking, a PBS television series about equestrian travel.

I'll admit; when I first heard the name of the series, I was ready to write it off. Though I've always enjoyed horseback riding on my own, I have suffered through many smelly, boring, tourist-oriented trail rides in my lifetime, and I certainly have no desire to watch a television series about them. After watching a few promo videos, checking out the show's website, and exchanging e-mails with Newman, however, I think I will be tuning in to the new season come May.