Chick Chat

Chick Chat: Stopping by for a visit?

It’s summertime! Let the entertaining of out-of-town guests commence! We Chicks live in all sorts of interesting places — and a lot of us have been lucky enough to visit each other in our natural habitats. And let’s just say one of us has a carful of in-laws showing up any minute expecting us to play tour guide. Which leads us to this week’s question: When you have visitors from out of town, what’s your favorite place to take them?

Leslie Karst

I’m a big fan of roadside attraction type places. (Aside: When Robin and I drove across country many moons ago, we took two guide books with us: one on roadside attractions of America, the other on beautiful gardens of America. The only overlap between the two books? The Tupperware Museum in Orlando, Florida. So we had to go, right? And yes, it was fabulous.)

Back to the question of the day: Because of this love, when out-of-town friends come to Santa Cruz to visit, I always take them to the Mystery Spot, a “gravitational anomaly” in the redwoods just outside of town. As explained on their website, the Mystery Spot “has amazed and perplexed hundreds of thousands of visitors from all over the world, and many return time and time again to experience these puzzling variations of gravity, perspective, and height.” And it’s not just a goofy tourist attraction; there really IS something weird going on there. (Our 10- and 12-year science buff nephews brought levels with them when we visited and were astounded at the results.) So come visit me in Santa Cruz, and I’ll take you there!

Lisa Q. Mathews

Welcome to south central New Hampshire. We’re an hour and a half north of Boston, depending on the weath-ah and traffic. (Okay, I’m lying. Ever driven to the Cape from either direction? Or in a surprise “squall”? You haven’t lived.) Our town is small, connected to a larger town, and we entertain visitors differently in each season. Leaf peeping in early Fall is spectacular, so that’s when most of our guests plan to arrive. Usually exhausted by the long drive. We take them to local festivals and events (apple picking, ski jump contests, corn mazes, antiquing, craft fairs, breweries, etc.) and of course to Boston and Portsmouth (if they’re willing to get back in the car). To give you the idea, this is our “bigger” town. At some point, we usually end up at the local tavern, Tooky Mills Pub.

 Ellen Byron

Oh, this is SUCH an easy question for me to answer. My go-to location to take visitors to LA is the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. Full. Stop.

Yes, it’s all three and all three are spectacular. Care to gaze at a Gutenberg bible? Admire a rose garden, Japanese garden, Chinese garden, desert garden, etc.? Want to drink in the amazing painting set of Blue Boy and Pinkie? You’ll find all this and more at the Huntington, plus a tearoom (pricey) and a cafeteria (excellent and not pricey), as well as a fantastic gift shop. I honestly don’t think you’ll find a trifecta like this anywhere else in the U.S. of A.

Marla Cooper

Most visitors come to Texas looking for some combination of live music and barbecue but I like to throw in a couple of places that are unique to Austin. Our first stop is the small but mighty Elisabet Ney Museum, the former home and studio of a trailblazing Prussian artist who defied conventions by studying to become a sculptor in the late 1800s while simultaneously – gasp! – being a woman. You can spot her life-sized sculptures of Sam Houston and Stephen F. Austin in the Texas State Capitol, but visiting her castle-like studio shows you what an incredible talent and all-around bad-ass she was.

And because the average summer temperature here is 183 degrees (at least it feels that way) I like to take people for a refreshing dip in the icy cold waters of the huge, spring-fed Barton Springs Pool. It’s a brisk 68-70 degrees year-round, and it feels amazing to jump in after you bake in the hot sun for a while — well, amazing after the initial shock wears off and your heart starts beating again!

Jennifer Chow

A favorite fun destination for my guests is the beach! Specifically, I’ve taken others to the Redondo Beach Pier because it’s got all sorts of activities available: eating, kayaking, shopping—and, of course, enjoying the sand and ocean.

For more bookish visitors, I’m inclined to venture farther out and take them to the International Printing Museum, which houses a vast collection of printing machinery. You can even bring back a free customized linotype slug (think: metal stamp).

Patricia Sargeant

I enjoy taking my guests to our parks. Columbus has some great ones, with rolling hills, winding paths, thick foliage and a variety of wildlife.

I love walking on the dirt paths and seeing a chipmunk dive into a pile of leaves or being startled by a rabbit as it dashes across the path in front of me. I even don’t mind the disdain in the expressions of the deer that step out from the tree line. On especially humid days, the lush tree canopies provide protection from the hot sun, which summer guests appreciate.

When I first took my family to my favorite local—and not as local—parks, I wasn’t sure if they enjoyed the excursions or if they were humoring me. Now when I visit them, they take me to their favorite parks. And I love them, but not as much as I love my parks in Columbus.

Readers: Where do you take guests when they come to visit?

59 thoughts on “Chick Chat: Stopping by for a visit?”

  1. I always suggest taking the 2.5 hour circle line cruise tour as they will see all five boroughs. After that the usual tourist attractions – Broadway, Times Square, Central Park, Yankee Stadium, Citi Field, Macy’s, and the various museums. Then you have the Empire State Building, Freedom Tower, and the Statue of Liberty.

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    2. Great tour! (Love the Circle Line, especially on a hot day–check the thunderstorm forecast first, though, lol.) I’ll add Coney Island to this list!

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  2. People wouldn’t think there is a lot to do in Pittsburgh, but there is. We have great museums, Point State Park is lovely (lots of history, too), Phipps Conservatory with amazing flower displays, the Laurel Highlands is just 1.5 hours away with all the outdoor fun you could want and a wealth of history, and Fallingwater – a Frank Lloyd Wright house on the National Register – is also about 1.5 hours away. But I always make time to take them up the Duquesne Incline so they can see the skyline from Mount Washington, which is amazing on a clear day. Bonus: there are lots of photographs from the hey-day of the steel mills to compare the air today to back then (hint: it was pretty dirty).

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  3. Sports fan? I’ll take them to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway to take a ride on the track and tour the recently renovated museum. Bookish fan? How about a trip to the Kurt Vonnegut Museum. Outdoorsy type? Let’s visit the 100 Acres Outdoor Art Park, which is home to the real Funky Bones piece that was featured in The Fault in Our Stars. Want some history? Crown Hill Cemetery is stunningly gorgeous and is the resting place of James Whitcomb Riley, John Dillinger, and President Benjamin Harrison. Indy has lots of cool brew pubs and distilleries, too.

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  4. A gem in the crown of eastern North Carolina is our barbecue, which you cannot get anywhere else. IMHO, the best place is Parker’s BBQ in Wilson, NC. You can get family style (all you can eat) chicken and pork bbq with sides and hushpuppies for around 15 dollars.

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  5. Leslie – there are mystery spots like that in both Oregon and South Dakota. So fascinating!

    We usually take visitors to Fort Vancouver for a little history tour, and then into Portland to Powell’s Books.

    -Paula Charles

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  6. While I’ve traveled to these areas (minus Lisa’s–on my list now!), I haven’t been to most of the specific places. Well, I have been to The Huntington, but never went to the tearoom ($$$) or tried out the cafeteria. For Santa Cruz, I’ve passed by the Mystery Spot but never stopped (probably because I was heading straight for the boardwalk). In Austin, I’ve been to the Texas Capitol…but the Elisabet Ney Museum sounds amazing. And I’ve visited Columbus but didn’t go to the parks, though I did marvel at the botanical garden.

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  7. No one comes to visit us here as everyone is getting too old and Georgia is a bit away from Texas. But when we first moved here, my sister visited and we did a Grey Line tour of Atlanta which is the best way to see any city (we have done that in Savannah, New Orleans, New York, etc.), a behind the scenes tour of CNN (gone now), the Cyclorama (a Civil War diorama), the Fernbank Museum of Natural History, Coca-Cola Museum, Underground ATL, Stone Mountain Park, The Fabulous Fox, The Higfh Museum of Art, The Margaret Mitchell House, and the Road to Tara (that has moved). There is much to see and do here and lots of new things have been added. I love Powell Books Store and Denver had a great one The Tattered Cover. ATL had Oxford books but so many are gone now. You all listed so many cool places. that I have not seen and want to. We did drive our car on the Indy Track. So cool!

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      1. I forgot the Aquarium, Piedmont Park, Mercedes Benz Stadium, and so much more. ATL is amazing, but we don’t go anywhere now. Too old and too far from our suburb and traffic is terrible. It is so green here with so many huge trees and lots of rainfall. But there can be bad storms.

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      2. I have a fear of heights, too, but I’ve found coasters are a way to get the thrill of heights without any real fear. Still, there are times I’m wondering what I’m doing before the coaster takes off.

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