Richard Whittington DBA Whittington And

Vienna, The City of Dreams, is like a jewell box - compact and loaded with history and treasure. Vienna's history is rooted in it's geography in the foothills of the Southern Alps where it straddles the Danube River. The Danube marks the Eastern frontier. In the Spring of 2010 I was driving through my Hancock neighborhood in Austin, Texas when I came across a strange procession of oddly costumed characters marching through the streets. I raced home and grabbed my camera. The white costumed participants were part of performance artist Jaclyn Pryor's seven year Floodlines project.

I have been a newspaper junkie for most of my life and I used to revel in the visceral experience of all the rustling paper, the ink on my hands, and being well informed. And then, my wife Michelle got the first generation iPad. She began reading the New York Times headlines to me the NIGHT BEFORE my paper arrived.

I've come to the conclusion that successful traveling requires equal parts art and science. The art of travel is encompassed in the aesthetic choices made that effect primarily food and lodging. Travel has a way of stretching the mind. The stretch comes not from travel's immediate rewards, the inevitable myriad new sights, smells and sounds, but with experiencing first hand how others do differently what we believed to be the right and only way.