Cornering Best Places to Reflect

I don’t cut corners when I travel; I collect them.

Some of my favorite corners are out-of-doors, and shaded by ancient trees. Some are indoors, near a hearth or a bottle-glass pane window. They are places that draw me back for reassurance. They are places to revisit in dreams.

As actress Jessica Tandy once said of a cottage she frequents in the Bahamas: “It is a place for rest and replenishment. There should be some travel you don’t have to work at.”

Corners are both protective and undemanding. They are secretive posts from which to observe and listen. In a pub, they may come with a plowman’s lunch and a cold lager. In a church, they may be wrapped in organ music and dappled with stained-glass blue.

In London, one of my quiet corners is St. George’s Hanover Square, a park that is tucked behind Mount Street, beyond the tiles of the poulterer and across from the Connaught Hotel.

The Farm Street Church opens onto this gated garden, as does a branch library off South Audley Street. There is a corner slat-back bench where I like to sit and admire tulips in the spring and towering plane trees all year long.

I carry a newspaper, or a packet of biscuits and cheese, from Shepherd Market, and pretend that I live in the neighborhood.

In Paris, a favorite corner is the Alsatian brasserie on the Ile St. Louis, just across the footbridge from the back of Notre Dame Cathedral. On a sunny day in Sydney, you’d find me at a corner table at the Waterfront restaurant, in the charming old sector called the Rocks.

In museums, I seek out corners of special perspective, places to stand for angles that please me, while allowing for a stretching of the spine.

For a dazzling maze of corners within corners, I bestow stars on the Girard Collection at Santa Fe’s Museum of International Folk Art. Entire Latin American villages are re-created in miniature.

It is an inspiration to travel. An Italian proverb at the entrance says “Tutto Il Mondo E Paese,” which means “the whole world is hometown.”

I peeked through a tiny arch marked Plaza Monumental and saw a Spanish bullring with its cheering crowd and bold matador.

The poster promised El Cordobes. In another corner was a wall of fire engines and trains made of metal, wire, papier-mache and even adobe. Musical instruments and masks hung high and low.

This collection of more than 100,000 toys and folk objects grew from a single gift. Early on, the grandfather of designer Alexander Girard sent him a creche. It arrived damaged and Girard set about restoring it. Now there are many nativity scenes in the vast Santa Fe gallery.

Bookstores also have rich corners where it is easy to lose oneself. Not far from the Santa Fe plaza I wandered into the Collected Works bookshop to peruse the New Mexico section. Two clerks were mulling over a recommendation for a customer.

“I think he would like ‘The Two-Ocean War,’ by Samuel Eliot Morison,” one said. “It’s a good, long read.”

I had to interrupt. “Do you always recommend books by their length?”

“In this case, yes,” the clerk said. “You see, he’s a fast reader and he’s in prison. We send him a book a week.”

I was too curious to back away.

“May I ask what he’s in for?”

The clerk smiled. “Let’s just say he’s a good friend, but a bad lawyer.”

I left after buying a paperback called “People of Chaco,” by Kendrick Frazier. That is where I read that the 1,000-year-old Chaco Canyon ruin called Casa Rinconada translates as “House in a Corner.”

No wonder I felt at home.