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Show Page THE DAILY HERALD. Provo, C.4 In woirHd l Uh. Sunday, April 14, 19 ff By RANDY CURWEN Knight-RiddNewspapers Yes. Rick and Use, you'll always have Paris. Or Riga. Or Sofia. Or Tromso. You know, those other Parises, the cities that writers are especially travel writers fond of praising through comparisons w ith the classic cities of the world. As the consensus pick as most glamorous city in the world. Paris is the benchmark by which all other cities are judged or at least those cities that some writers or publicists wish were something more than what they are. Take Riga.Latvia. Please. "Can Riga." asked Business Traveler magazine in its November 1992 issue, "earn back its one-tim- e reputation as the "Pans of the Baltics'?" Well, the jury's still out on that. But Sofia. Bulgaria, is, of course, "the Paris of the Balkans." The European Travel Commission's 1995 guide said so. But we're not sure about Tromso. Nor-av. Though the Norwecian Tourist Board w lassie w inrapsQS says it is '"known as the 'Paris of the North,' " Fodor's guide to Norway has its doubts: "Tromso has been know n to call itself the 'Paris of the North,' but 'Gateway to the Arctic' is more accurate and descriptive." April in Tromso, anyone? Then there's Africa. "The World's Best: The Ultimate Book for the International Traveler" (1992) notes that "several cities claim to be the 'Paris of Africa,' " and then settles the dispute by dubbing Dakar, Senegal, "the best Paris of Africa." Don't tell that to Negley Farson. "Naiaibi," he wrote in his 1940 book, "Behind God's Back," "is the Paris of the East African coast." Asia's Paris is also in dispute. Da Lat. Vietnam, was "once known as the Paris of Asia." Cond Nast Traveler magazine declared last October. Oh, yeah? It's Shanghai that's "the Paris of the Orient." according to other sources. (Passport Books' 1995 Shanghai guide, having a little trouble defining the turf, called Shanghai "the Paris of the Orient" on its front cover and "the Paris of the East" on its back cover.) South of our border, though, there seems to be no debate. "The people of Buenos Aires like to think of their city as the Paris of Latin America," the New York Times reported on Nov. 4, 1992. And, sure enough, too many guides to list call the Argentinian capital just that. Famous people also get into this city-matchi- ng business. Winston Churchill once called Mar-rakec- h. Morocco, "the Paris of the Sahara." Hans Christian Andersen called Barcelona "the Paris of Spain." Paris isn't the only classic city used to flatter all those imitators. There's also no dearth of Venices. "Bangkok is the Venice of the East," French explorer Henri Mouhot wrote in 1864. He probably wasn't the first to call it that, and he certainly wasn't the last, as anyone who's read a guidebook to Thailand can attest. Also with near unanimity, Recife, Brazil, is "the Venice of South America," and Stockholm is "the Venice of the amrt aDD he Fairos game. Witness the movie title "Moscow on the Hudson." That's New York they're talking about. And then there's Hue, Vietnam: "The Tom Swick, Fort Lyons of Vietnam" March 5, 1995. Lauderdale And Cuzco, Peru: "The Katmandu of New York the Western Hemisphere" Times travel story. 1995. Finally, we return home to Chicago where the comparisons go both ways but begin, of course, with the City of Light. Chicago was the fans ot tne Midwest" in Newsweek's Periscope column on Nov. 9, 1992. Chicago Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin put a little twist on that title when he w rote, on March 5, 1995, that "Daniel Burnham unveiled his famous 1909 Plan to turn the Hog Butcher to the World into Paris on the Prairie." Returning the compliments, our friends in Novosibirsk, Russia, declared that they live in a "Siberian Chicago" in a supplement to AsiaWeck magazine last December. Thanks a lot, Novosibirsk. North." Oops. Our mistake. It's Amsterdam that's "the Venice of the North." Or so USA Today reported on March 10, 1995. Brantme, France, is the "Venice of Perigord," according to the Relais & Chateau guide for 1995. Bandar Sen Begawan, capital of the tiny oil principality of Brunei Darsalem, is "the Oriental Venice," though there wasn't any oil on those waters when Francesco de Sande, Spain's captain-generin the Philippines, wrote those words in a 1578 letter to King Philip II. San America's most classic city also gets it comparisons. Francisco Dubuque, Iowa, is "the San Francisco of the Midwest," according to a story in the Travel section of this very paper on Sun-Sentin- al tongue-in-cheeki- Aug. 14, 1994. Good thing we didn't remember that when we wrote in our Oct. 29, 1995. ski issue that Traverse City, Mich., had been "dubbed by travel writers 'the San Francisco of the Midwest."' Sometimes even a megalopolis can get itself turned around in the comparison OKLAHOMA: Pae (13 (Continued from put up his final teepee. Roman Nose wasn't the only Indian who sought to avoid the Mviety of white men. At Hinion. just west of Oklahoma City close by the Missionary Baptist Church and in the shadow of a a Comanche pony trailer court trail once disappeared into solid rock, baffling pursuing federal tnxps. The trail has been widened so you can drive a car down it into what is now called Red Rock Canyon State Park, a tiny spring-fe- d ecosystem that supports ancient plant species. Yellow-maple- in its bottom mimic New IllHIlllElMIl On hew England and defy the hot red plains as the silence of the Comanche defied the thunder of the soldiers About an hour's drive west brings you to Clinton, just off Interstate Highway 40. where the Oklahoma Historical Society has established the Route bb Museum m honor of the road's 70th birthday. Steinbeck called it the Mother Road, and there are more miles of the original route in Oklahoma than any other state. I hey do not. of course, go all the way to Canada, but Oklahoma's Tallgrass Prairie Preserve north of Pawhuska is busily protecting a fraction of a v irgin praine that once covered a fifth of the continent Some say it almost died, but it's coming back. In the spring, it is again a "green carpet stitched with black-eyeSusans and purple concflowers; in the fall, the wind ruMlcs the heads of golden grass like a horse mane." Bilger w rues And the bison are bask. Not the honon to honon herds that once blackened the land and caused the earth to shake with their passing, but they re there Tallgrass Prairie IV serve Drive, intersecting I S Highwav Ml near Pawhuska. will show vou up close what one-fiftof unexplored, unevploited America Kniked like. Oklahoma is all of this and more. In the deep forests of the southern part of the state the Choctaw once were amaed by the ignorance of white people who thought they could actually own the earth. The Choctaw s dreamed of an Indian state where no man could own the Great Spirit's land, but all could use it They called the state Sequoyah The white pioneers of the Panhandle dreamed ot a state called Cimarron n Ht f; - . ( ' - t- d ) i h land-hungr- y SunSpree Resort' vYellowstone (tli Bed & Breafrfast From Fly nonstop at full fare and take up to three people along for just $25 each. m take iiiorie Funis Now it's easy Tor the whole family to get away. 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