Tourists

OCEAN CITY-- --On a rainy day, a beach town deflates. The whole myth of escape, of ceaseless fun and respite from reality, turns as sodden as day-old cotton candy. Yesterday, the rain drew the tourists inland, and the talk was all about the dead babies. Some vacationers headed to Ocean City's latest and most unlikely attraction - the 200 block of Sunset Drive, where yellow crime tape circled the home and yard of Christy Freeman, arrested in connection with the death of an infant, one of four whose remains have been found in and around her house.

CU CHI, Vietnam -- Camera-toting foreigners and young tour guides now occupy the dark tunnels of this old Viet Cong stronghold where "hero American-killers" once planned ambushes and hunkered down while American B-52 bombers attacked from the sky.But Vo Van Nam, 80, hasn't forgotten the way it used to be.From his modest farm down the road, the frail old man with the white Ho Chi Minh beard sometimes visits this place where he helped tend the wounded, and...

KEY WEST, Fla. -- Pollution has closed the beaches. Conchs have all but vanished from local waters. And some residents of the Florida Keys are still reeling from last year's Hurricane Georges, which inflicted more than $30 million in damage to parts of the island chain.Now the problem is tourists: There are too many, some locals say.With the Overseas Highway jammed with traffic and the streets of Key West clogged with sightseers, residents complain that both they and the fragile environment of this subtropical archipelago are being overrun.

Hawaii floats in the Pacific amid the splendid isolation only distance can afford. Nearly 2,400 miles from the nearest continent, the Polynesian kingdom of eight tropical islands and 124 islets saw explorers, capitalists and missionaries, but few visitors.Until the 1900s.The turn of the last century brought territory status (1900), Pearl Harbor (1941), statehood (1959), James Michener (1959), Don Ho (1962), surfers and a namesake TV show that intoned, "Be there. Aloha."And tourists did. Like the golden plovers that fly nonstop from Alaska to winter in Hawaii, vacationing Americans flocked there.

Imaginative tales continue to grow from the house where Edgar Allan Poe wrote his first horror stories almost 170 years ago.Literary tourists cross paths with city folks every Saturday at Poe's home in West Baltimore, which is surrounded by a public housing complex that bears Poe's name.With the 150th anniversary of the author's death coming up next month, the meetings of these decidedly different cultures provides a glimpse into what frightens people today, and how perceptions and misperceptions mutate into what might be called urban vs. tourist folklore.

A conventioneer from New Jersey who was found dead in his room at a historic Fells Point hotel Wednesday evening was beaten to death, and his attacker might have stolen his dark blue truck, Baltimore police said yesterday.Investigators found no sign of forced entry to the victim's fourth-floor room at the Admiral Fell Inn on South Broadway. Officials said they do not know how the man, who had been attending a pharmaceutical convention, met his attacker.Police said last night that more than 24 hours after the killing, detectives were unable to locate the victim's relatives.

It is Sunday morning in New York and we are in church, not as worshipers this time but as wide-eyed tourists having the time of our lives. The place is Harlem. The music is gospel that rattles the rafters. The welcome is as warm as a tropical breeze.Harlem, too often feared by tourists because of its reputation for crime and drugs, is actually one of New York's zestiest tourism hot spots. By night, tourists flock to clubs that were once the spawning ground for such artists as Duke Ellington, Ethel Waters, Count Basie and Cab Calloway.

WASHINGTON -- They wait for hours in the summer heat, drowsy or frustrated or just plain bored in their Bermuda shorts or sweat-drenched tank tops. They wander the grounds, vaguely lost. They crowd the corridors, not quite sure what they're looking at but pretty impressed nonetheless.All told, the throngs of tourists at the Capitol tend to be a fairly bewildered lot, but who could blame them? They enter the grand symbol of our representative democracy through four public entrances, into a dizzying labyrinth of corridors, anxiously searching for signs, asking anybody in a tie or uniform for directions.

JACMEL, Haiti -- Once, the streets of this Caribbean port pulsed with the incessant traffic of sailors and merchants. Its harbor was lined with ships loading mail, coffee, tobacco and indigo.Now, as it celebrates its 300th anniversary, the shabby but picturesque town 55 miles southwest of Port-au-Prince, the capital, is preparing for a possible renaissance. With its wide, sparkling bay and gingerbread houses, Jacmel has become the spearhead of a government drive to develop Haiti's tourist industry and revive the floundering economy.

WASHINGTON -- Overheated families wilted in line at the Washington Monument, children refueled on astronaut snacks on the steps of the Air and Space Museum and the Tourmobile chugged along its usual route.Despite the looks of it, this was no ordinary day at tourist central. Visitors were getting their bags searched and avoiding concrete barriers at the Washington Monument, while their cars were shooed away from the Jefferson Memorial. In museums on the Mall, they toured next to extra security guards.

ROCHESTER, Minn. - It's the town full of tourists who don't want to be here. Because who wants to get sick? Who wants to watch a loved one slip away? But that's why they come to this small city in southeastern Minnesota's rolling bluff country, where Midwestern friendliness is as abundant as fresh air. It's all about the Mayo Clinic. And that makes the Midwestern friendliness as key to local tourism as hotel rooms and restaurants. When local residents ride past on bicycles on the sidewalk, they apologize.

Magical is the most overused word when writing about the Galapagos, those magical islands off the coast of Ecuador. Oops! Sorry, but there really is something about these islands that gets under your skin. One visit and you're hooked. Two visits morph you into a passionate advocate. On my last visit, I tried to figure out just what is so alluring about the Galapagos. Compared with the lush majesty of the Hawaiian Islands, they rank a distant second. They don't boast four-diamond restaurants or five-star hotels, and there is not a shopping mega-mall or multiplex anywhere.

Madagascar is a huge island off the coast of southeast Africa, set amid the Indian Ocean. The area is known for its natural wonders, beautiful scenery and interesting wildlife. Not unlike the movie currently in theaters, Madagascar has some unique animal characters in residence, such as lemurs, sloths and tomato frogs. The situation for tourists (and natives) is not ideal in this very poor nation, where infrastructure, like roads and buildings, shows signs of distress. Still, tourism is beginning to thrive.

When Harborplace debuted in 1980, the idea was to lure tourists to Baltimore's waterfront. It was a reflection of a changed city. Tourists came by the car and busload, and over the past two decades, the downtown revival continued up and down Pratt and Light streets. Now change is once again in the offing. A proposal to revitalize the entrance to the city by remaking Pratt Street as a grand urban gateway reflects the desire to attract more tourists and also serve the growing number of downtown residents who have populated the east and west sides of the harbor.

GRACE BAY, Turks and Caicos -- Legendary rocker Keith Richards was out of uniform. No dangling cigarette, no wailing guitar, no stormy look. As a matter of fact, he was grinning. And scratching the tummy of a shaggy black munchkin of a dog. It was late January, and the Rolling Stones member was chilling on a dock overlooking the turquoise waters surrounding Parrot Cay, a Caribbean islet that bills itself as "the world's most exclusive resort." The 1,000-acre private island is in Turks and Caicos, a semi-obscure archipelago east of Cuba that has been propelled into the limelight by its rising popularity with the glitterati.

OCEAN CITY-- --On a rainy day, a beach town deflates. The whole myth of escape, of ceaseless fun and respite from reality, turns as sodden as day-old cotton candy. Yesterday, the rain drew the tourists inland, and the talk was all about the dead babies. Some vacationers headed to Ocean City's latest and most unlikely attraction - the 200 block of Sunset Drive, where yellow crime tape circled the home and yard of Christy Freeman, arrested in connection with the death of an infant, one of four whose remains have been found in and around her house.

I will probably never visit Prague in the Czech Republic. Though I once spent a month in India, I didn't tour the Taj Mahal. And it would take a live sighting of Shakespeare to make me return to Stratford-upon-Avon in England. That's because I don't like crowds, the trash they leave, tour-bus fumes, full parking lots, long lines. There comes a point when it's simply not worth seeing the Louvre's Mona Lisa or Italy's Leaning Tower of Pisa if it means being pushed, squeezed, elbowed and distracted.

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL / / Packed with tourists, our white minivan zooms past pristine beaches, past Corcovado Mountain, and deposits us in the sprawling ghetto of Rocinha, which is controlled by gun-toting drug gangs. What? Did we take a wrong turn at the Carmen Miranda Museum? Actually, it's all part of the plan. Along with eight other foreigners, I have plunked down $34 for some guided slumming in the favelas, Rio's infamous shantytowns. "Don't worry about your cameras or money," says our chaperone from Favela Tour, Christina Mendonca, who notes that we have tacit permission from the bad guys to be here.

Heading South is a hydra-headed love story, as dangerous as it is heated and complex. For the sexy middle-aged female tourists in this pre-AIDS period piece (set in the 1970s), frolicking with handsome Haitian men on glittering beaches and then taking them to bed is an experience both earthy and transcendent. Even when these women think they can keep their sexuality in perspective, they can't gauge how much the warmth, beauty and erotic release of lovemaking with these dream mates comes to mean for them.

TORONTO -- The narrow streets of Kensington Market beat to the rhythm of many a different drum, from reggae to Filipino folk music to Andean pan pipes. A jumble of food and vintage clothing stores spills out onto the sidewalks, giving the impression that many of them were set up on a whim. Clothing racks and cardboard signs fill front yards and line alleyways. The atmosphere is Third-World bazaar, the air pungent with spice and fish and ripe fruit, but the experience is uniquely Toronto.