|
Streets & Districts
Some streets have that special
punch! They’re not simply thoroughfares that lead from x place to y but are
attractions in themselves. Capturing the buzz of the the town to which they belong,
they're where locals and tourists alike are headed. Here’s a list of roads that
evince instant recognition. They are ones you can’t not walk when you’re in the
cities that have made them sights to see and savour.
'Cos some streets just are
destinations in their own right.
Top
Rue
Mouffetard, Paris
| All the way back
in the days of the ancient Roman Empire the oldest road in Paris ran all the way from
Lutetia to Rome connecting what are recognised today as the two capitals of culture. A
part of this historic ribbon in an antique landscape survives till date and it’s
called the Rue Mouffetard. |
 |
Winding a narrow steep way from the Place de la Contrescarpe to Square St.
Medard, Rue Mouffetard is as big a tourist attraction as the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower or
Champs Elysee. People flock here in huge numbers to meander past croissants, fresh farm
produce and beguiling restaurants housed in 12th century stone buildings with
medieval facades. Students, artists, travellers, matrons, those with a purpose and those
without fill the street like the coffee servings at one of its cafes, to the limit.
What’s so special about it?
The restaurants. From a bowl of borsch to your fill of falafel,
done-under-a-minute crêpes to patent-recipe pâtes, Rue Mouffetard is the place where any
cuisine of note finds a roof. In the mornings an open-air market of fruits, vegetables,
fish and seafood comes up. Later in the day, the patisseries, charcouteries, boulangeries
and the rest up their shutters keeping them up till around 11 at night.
The neighbourhood. Beyond the rue is Paris’ student district - the Latin
Quarter where lies the Sorbonne. It was the site of a Paris Commune in 1871 and the
epicentre of the 1968 student’s uprising that shook Europe.
For more information on Paris, click here
Top
Lombard
Street, San Francisco
 |
The Crookedest
Street in the World is how Lombard Street is better known. Paradise itself for steering
wheel acrobats and a new one for collectors of superlative phenomena, this street has a
record eight switchbacks. Designed in 1922 so that San Franciscans could negotiate their
way past the steep mound of Russian Hill, this crooked cobbled motorway has since become a
tourist delight. |
Helped by the cause that most people want to get beyond it to well-mapped
attractions like the Presidio, Telegraph Hill and the Coit Tower and appreciate
bird’s eye views of Alcatraz and the deep blue bay, the street is straightforward fun
thing.
What’s so special about it?
Apart from 8 hairpin turns, plenty. It offers a panoramic view of San Francisco
Bay and The Rock. The street is lined with low hedgerows and from spring until fall bright
pink and blue hydrangeas are abloom. There are some lovely mansions too in this block,
some of which you may recognise from the movies (check out house no. 900 – think
Jimmy Stewart’s dwelling in Vertigo).
Bringing a car down is not for everybody, and come summer (the peak of the
tourist season) it’s not for anybody. To avoid the huge traffic jams that occur
because of the curves we suggest that you walk instead. Stairs cut into the side of the
hill will lead you straight up or down without diminishing the value of your encounter
with that really really wonky street!
For more information on San Francisco, click here.
Top
Bourbon
Street – New Orleans
| Bourbon Street or
Rue Bourbon in the French Quarter of New Orleans is the place to head to if it’s an
eclectic collection of bars, pubs, jazz clubs, Cajun Creole restaurants and residences
that you seek. Posh hotels share the road with strip parlours, and merry makers from
around the world congregate at what is New Orleans’ most famous street. Named after the great Bourbon rulers, the
street was for long a dignified residential area at the heart of the new capital of French
America. It was part of the original plan when New Orleans was constructed so that the
capital could be shifted from Biloxi in Mississippi to someplace nice in Louisiana. Today,
New Orleans is synonymous with jazz, blues, soul and the alternative. And the one-stop
destination for capturing all these and more is undoubtedly Bourbon Street. |
 |
What’s so special about it?
It buzzes with activity 24 hours of the day, everyday. No visitor to New Orleans
gives Bourbon Street a miss because from a nail clipper to a deliciously potent Rusty Nail
one can get everything here. The special buzz though, is definitely reserved for the
annual New Orleans Mardi Gras parade. The parade does not actually pass though the French
Quarter but the shops and pubs here gear up for the big event anyway. And since attitudes
towards risqué behaviour are the most relaxed in this part of town, some of the greatest
carnival colour finds its stage here.
For more information on New Orleans, click here.
Top
Victoria and Albert
Waterfront – Cape Town
 |
Blessed with great
climate and the stunning Table Mountains, Cape Town is South Africa’s premier tourist
destination. Jutting into The Pond, surrounded by blue, the Cape is among the prettiest
coastal cities in the world. The Victoria and Albert Waterfront, or the simply the
Waterfront, is one of its greatest attractions. Recently refurbished into a glitzy
promenade, the waterfront has it all. |
Hosting an estimated 20 million visitors annually, it pampers them with its
astounding range - of activities, entertainment, gourmet food, fast food junk, pubs, bars,
general stores, speciality shops, street musicians, cinemas, discotheques, historical
buildings and the harbour.
What’s so special about it?
Lots. Whoever’s in charge of developing Cape Town tourism obviously knows
how to keep guests entertained. On the waterfront there are 17 cinemas including an IMAX
theatre, 260 speciality shops, countless designer clothing boutiques, restaurants with
foods from Italy, England (wonder why?!), France and elsewhere in Africa, the huge Two
Oceans Aquarium which you can also view from a helicopter, penny ferries to Robben Island
where political prisoners including Nelson Mandela were imprisoned. There’s a Crafts
Market and at the Red Shed Workshop you can witness the making of these crafts, there are
many historic buildings, and there are many groups of free-spirited buskers to keep the
music going through the day. Come evening and the waterfront becomes the place where the
Cape’s trim and trendy are headed. Don’t miss it when you’re there.
For more information on Cape Town, click
here.
Top
Oudezijds Achterburgwal,
RLD – Amsterdam
| Come away a little
from the Centraal Station on Amsterdam’s main drag Damrak, head east in pursuit of
such ecclesiastical treasures as the Oude Kerk (the Old Church) and find yourself slap
bang in the middle of the city’s famed red light district. The RLD, as it’s
known to those on familiar terms with it, is probably the one site that every visitor to
Amsterdam checks out. |
 |
By day and by night, the wide windows of its large stately mansions feature
women and men in various stages of undress. With sundown, neon lights come on inside these
windows bathing the streets outside with a deep pink glow. In fact, it’s from this
phenomenon that the generic term ‘red light area’ takes its cue.
The Red Light District, and the main street in it, the Oudezijds
Achterburgwal, is a symbol for what makes Amsterdam, Amsterdam. It’s liberal attitude
towards soft drugs (coffeeshops are places where you buy a packet of dope) and sex have
made many think of the city as more “civilised” than any other in the world!
What’s so special about it?
The best of the RLD is on Oudezijds Achterburgwal:
Amsterdam’s Moulin Rouge, Absolute Danny, which is one of the earliest shops to be
managed entirely by women, the Casa Rosso and De Bananenbar. Very close to area are the
Oude Kerk and the Gothic Nieuwe Kerk, important landmarks in Amsterdam. The place is
buzzing night and day with casual sightseers, mellow students, hobos and hippies. No time
is closing time in Amsterdam’s Red Light District.
For more information on Amsterdam, click here.
Top
Ginza - Tokyo
 |
The sprawling district of Ginza is
one of Tokyo's primary attractions. All the things that make Tokyo the city that it, is
are crowded here in one half a square kilometre area of brassy boutiques, high art,
technological centres, cultural clutter, restaurants, coffee houses, office workers on the
move and youth with streaks in their hair and the tiniest mobile phones, on window
shopping missions. But one thing that Ginza
is and the rest of Tokyo certainly not, is it is well planned and laid out in neat grids.
That happened due to an accident, which paved the way for the occident. |
A huge fire ravaged this part of town
in 1872 and a British architect was handed the responsibility of replacing tinderbox
Ginza, a maze of wooden buildings, with something that was a little less likely to go off
at the hint of a spark. He made Ginza into a west-west experience; with nary a care for
the hot climate and the shortage of space, Ginza came to be a precious oddity, pretty
brick houses and wide tree lined boulevards. It was all very pleasant to look at but
nobody wanted to inhabit the hot brick contraptions. The government put a real cheap price
tag on this piece of real estate and the heat be damned, the lost status as the place of
reference for all things chic was eventually restored to Ginza.
The origin of the name goes back to the 1600s when Shogun Tokugawa Leyasu minted his first
coins - Ginza literally means 'the place where silver is minted'. The name is still
relevant. The district may have lost some of the edge on glamour to newer upstarts but
Ginza is still the grand old dame of posh. It's a snooty area and the fun of going there
as a visitor is that you aren't at all required to make a fit.
What's so special about it?
You don't see remains of turn of the
century British suburb architecture anymore, since most of it was levelled in the 1930s
earthquake. But you do see towering skyscrapers and get lots of a-sight-a-second pleasure.
The main shopping drag is Chuo-dori. Ginza corner is dominated by the Wako clock tower;
the Wako building is now a department store but was originally a small shop where the line
of watches called Seiko or precision were first constructed. Ginza is where you find the
Sony building, the Kabuki-za theatre and the post-modern Sana-ai building. Check out the
Bridgestone Museum of Art if you have ¥ 700 to spare, catch up on news and views at the
World Magazine Gallery.
Go gin-bura (Ginza strolling) and get a kick from knowing you're on the most valuable bit
of real estate anywhere in the world, ¥ 9 million per square metre.
For more information on Tokyo, click here.
Top
Chandni Chowk - Delhi
| When the Mughal emperor Shahjahan
shifted his capital from Agra to Delhi in 1650, he made a magnificent citadel, the Red
Fort, to house the court. Lal Qila, as the Red Fort is known, was the administrative hub
of Shahjahan’s Delhi, while its commercial centre was Chandni Chowk. Literally
`Moonlight Square’ (a name given because of the reflection of the moon in the waters
of the canal which ran down the centre), Chandni Chowk was a beautiful stretch of land,
tree-lined and busy, the very essence of the exotic East. |
 |
Chandni Chowk is today, if anything,
busier than ever before- and the very epitome of chaotic, crowded India. Stretching the
length between the Red Fort and Lahori Gate (one of the main gates of the Walled City),
Chandni Chowk bustles with activity all through the day. From off the main street, narrow
lanes- locally called gallis and kuchas- weave their way into the heart of the old city;
and tiny squares known as katras, demarcated on the basis of trade, stand alongside the
main road. Kuchas and katras, as in the time of the Mughals, are still devoted to a single
commodity: Kucha Chowdhury sells cameras and photographic equipment; Ballimaran is the
place for spectacles, Dariba Kalan is the street of the jewellers, and Parathewali Gali,
besides churning out the most sinful of ghee-laden parathas, has diversified into selling
saris too. And that’s not all- flowers, sweets, bridal wear, theatrical costumes and
masks, kababs, groceries, spices, paper, virtue- all are sold in Chandni Chowk.
What’s so special about it?
Everything. No part of Delhi can perhaps match Chandni Chowk for history, spice and sheer
exotica. More than any other corner of the Old City, this stretch of road throbs with
reminders of the past- Gurudwara Sheeshganj, where the Sikh Guru Tegh Bahadur was executed
at the orders of Aurangzeb; the Sunehari Masjid, the Town Hall, and Bhagirath Palace- once
a palace owned by the famous Begum Samru, now a dilapidated structure devoted to the sale
of electrical goods. And history isn’t all of it; there’s poetry here too- in
the tiny Gali Qasim Jaan, where the tottering haveli of Mirza Ghalib still stands;
there’s food and commerce, religion and trade- and an overwhelming sense of
interesting discoveries to be made at every other corner.
For more information on Delhi, click here.
Top |
