Islands in the Seine

WORTH A TRIP: In Paris, there's a butcher who sells poultry with the feathers still on, shampooing and blow-drying the deceased birds "to make them prettier." His shop is on Ile St.-Louis, featured along with its sister, Ile de la Cité, in July's Condé Nast Traveler. It's the magazine's "islands" issue, and if these two islands in the Seine don't immediately come to mind when you think of island vacations, they should. Ile de la Cité is where Paris was born, about 2,000 years ago. It's where Notre-Dame stands, where Sainte-Chappelle's stained-glass windows dazzle and where Marie Antoinette spent her last hours.

But across a small bridge is the other island, less touristy, more like a village than merely part of a metropolis. Once upon a time when residents ("insulaires" -- what a marvelous label) ventured off the island they announced that they were "going to Paris." But why would you want to leave the sidewalk cafes, boulangeries or Berthillon, the ultimate ice cream shop? Even the architecture on Ile St.-Louis is "gastronomy of the eye."

WORTH A FLIP: How much do you need a hug? Willing to spend $130 for it? What if we were to add that it's a panda hug? A Budget Travel author with the improbable name of Joshuah Bearman reports on his trip to the Wolong Panda Club in China's Sichuan Province. There you can see panda cubs in their nursery, frolic with the little furballs, and even hug them. And they hug back. It's "five minutes of nirvana." . . . Here's a prospect to give Jeremy from "Zits" the shivers: a bike trip through Tuscany and Umbria -- with his mom. But, from the point of view of one mom, Joyce Maynard in National Geographic Traveler, traveling with her 23-year-old son, Wil, it wasn't that bad. "We weren't having any dramatic breakthroughs, but neither were we having any other dramas." She resisted the impulse to grill him "for news of his life, insights into his thoughts about his childhood, or his future." Smart move, Mom . . .

According to National Geographic, there appear to be a couple of words missing in "Tongass National Forest." It's a "rain" forest (unusual as that seems for the decidedly untropical Alaska) and it's a "cathedral" forest: "Behind the silence, [it] is alive with faint rustlings, as in the moments before a hymn begins." Despite logging (lately diminished because of political and economic factors), the woods challenge anyone trying to travel through them -- and, indeed, are so thick "you can't see your feet through the leaves." . . . Travel + Leisure's Eleni N. Gage, whose family moved from Greece to the United States when she was 7, tries to recapture her childhood. She finds three islands, "quintessentially Greek" and beloved by Greeks but unknown to Americans: Spetses ("leave your cars and cares behind"), Kithira (whose residents try to keep its existence secret) and Monemvasia ("there is not one modern building on the island") . . .

No need to limit your travel reading to travel magazines. Check out Dog World's take on Australia for canines. If you take your dog Down Under, you may have to stifle its normal curiosity, as there are many critters it's unlikely to recognize, and many of them are venomous. Not that even getting there is easy: Fido will have to get blood and parasite tests and be quarantined on arrival for at least 30 days. Why don't you just adopt a wombat instead?

WORTH A CLIP: Things you didn't know you needed to know how to do (courtesy of Outside): Escape an attacking baboon, survive a bar fight, buy a wetsuit, ski the beach. It's a pretty eclectic list, called "How to Do Everything." We worry, though, that our favorite testosterone travel mag is getting soft, what with items describing how to make a power smoothie, fake a sick day and groom a mustache. Will next year's list contemplate cuticle care? . . . Follow Travel + Leisure Family's lodging advice and your kids will declare you the Best Parents Ever. That's because T+LF has assembled recommendations for "11 accommodations that are both wonderfully wacky and affordable." Examples: a treehouse in Oregon; a lighthouse in Massachusetts; a fire lookout tower in Montana; a drive-in movie/motel (all rooms face the screen) in Vermont. And the battleship USS New Jersey in Camden.

WORTH A NIP: Finally, from Men's Journal, a trip not to share with the kiddies: a ride down the Bourbon Trail of Kentucky, tasting along the way. Rejecting mass-produced whiskeys, they focus on small-batch corn liquor, "the one thing a man must experience before death." The final stop is in Virginia, for a taste of moonshine: "Why buy expensive corn whiskey when you can make it yourself out in the woods?"

-- Jerry V. Haines