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Airport Hotels and Travel Writing

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The airport hotel is certainly another step in the evolution of world travel.  Here, the savvy globetrotter can enjoy the same luxuries that come from other hotels that meet the high standards in the world of accommodations.  They are a breed apart, offering something exceptional for circumstances when staying deep in the heart of the city aren’t an option.  For those who have decided that they want to have the good life wherever they are, airport hotels are another piece to the puzzle, insuring that short trips don’t necessarily mean compromising quality.  This is another movement forward in the history of travel.

In this same history, travel writing is something that really came into its own after World War II, and in the recent decades has become a very specific kind of literature.  There were also other epochs when travel writing was a popular form.  In the 19th century, there were lots of accounts of strange adventures in strange lands that was an outgrowth of colonialism and colonial thinking.  Before that, and in similar fashion, navigators would write about their adventures on the high seas, and before that…it seems that there was always another “before that,” and there is evidence to suggest that travel writing begins at almost the exact moment that writing begins.  The questions, “Where did you go?  And what did you see?” are elemental.

To pinpoint the moment when travel writing began, then, is rather difficult, but for the first widely read accounts of travel, we should probably look at Herodotus.  Born in what is present-day Turkey in 484 B.C. Herodotus was a friend of Sophocles, and saw the Persian War.  He traveled in Africa, Europe, and Asia, and his writing, books of history taken from these travels, add up to nine volumes.  The great Polish historian and storyteller, Ryszard Kapuscinski, wrote Travels with Herodotus, as a nod to this classic writer, acknowledging the similarities in his own work.  It is interesting here to note that Herodotus called himself the father of history, and also the father of lies, because he, like most writers, understood that writing is as much an embellishment than it is a factual account.

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Tags: Airport Hotels, Herodotus, Ryszard Kapuscinski, Travel Writing

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Traveler's Pages Community — Blog — Airport Hotels and Travel Writing | AffairBoard on July 17th, 2009

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