Like Gloria Swanson at the end of 1950’s Sunset Blvd., L.A.’s newest visitor attraction, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, is finally ready for its close-up. Years in the making, the Academy Museum premiered on …
January 30, 2022
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Stories by Ed Rampell
Lights, camera, action: L.A.'s Academy Museum
South Pacific's mythic Marquesas
The South Pacific’s remote, pristine Marquesas Islands make Hawaii look like Harlem. I can honestly say these South Seas sojourns to French Polynesia’s untrammeled atolls and isles have been the greatest excursions of my life. …
August 6, 2017
Feeling the "other" Bern: Switzerland's capital
Bernie Sanders attracts big campaign crowds with his authenticity and populism - but this unique candidate has met his match in unorthodox Alexander Tschäppät, Switzerland’s outspoken rabble-rouser. Sanders is a Vermont Senator; Tschäppät has served …
January 30, 2016
Columbia, South Carolina: study in contrasts
South Carolina is a state of contradictions, and nowhere is this more apparent than in its capital. Last June, Kristin Morris, the Nickelodeon’s marketing manager, summed up contemporary South Carolina’s dichotomy, noting: “We’re a progressive …
August 6, 2015
Switzerland's Jungfrau
Riding the train up to the 11,371-foot Jungfraujoch, Europe’s highest point accessible by railway, I fell in love. I first glimpsed her after departing Grindelwald station, when the cogwheel stopped briefly at Brandegg and she …
March 23, 2015
Huế down yonder in Vietnam
Stretching before me is an archaeological site straight out of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. But this is no studio set; Y Khiêm Viện and Trì Khiêm Viện are the real McCoy. The …
Halong Bay’s Emerald City
After an hour of downhill and uphill hiking immersed in semi-darkness, we finally emerge out of the bowels of Sung Sot Grotto, or Surprise Cave, into the sunlight, greeted by a sensational surprise: an eye-popping …
Wagner's Lucerne
May 22 is the bicentennial of the birth of German composer Richard Wagner. Although born 1813 in Leipzig, the operatic genius has a strong connection to Switzerland. Wagner – then Royal Saxon Court Conductor – …
June 11, 2013
Trip to Basel, Birthplace of LSD
Behind Basel, Switzerland’s bourgeois persona is a mind-blowing history currently experiencing its 70th anniversary. Inside the walled-off compound where multinational pharmaceutical giant Novartis (formed when Ciba-Geigy and Sandoz merged) is headquartered is a futuristic glassy-steel …
March 21, 2013
Zürich: Switzerland’s Secret to Success
The Economist ranks Switzerland the best country “to be born in 2013.” Zürich, the largest Swiss metropolis with 380,000 residents, has been voted the planet’s best city by Mercer Human Resource Consulting, Monocle and others. …
January 10, 2013
Swank in Switzerland
Built in 1913, Switzerland’s Gstaad Palace is an icon of Old World charm. By the ‘50s the posh hotel was attracting an international jet set, playing host to singers like Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald. …
December 18, 2012