A fitting finale for our last day in Paris is a visit to Père-Lachaise Cemetery. On the subway ride there, I begin to doubt the appropriateness of this trek. Are we squandering our time by looking to the past? Will…
I pick up Alice Steinbach’s Without Reservations: The Travels of an Independent Woman (Random House, 2000) at North Salem, N.Y.’s Ruth Keeler Memorial Library book sale, so I don’t have a lot of money invested in it. The first 20…
As a firm believer in writing it down to make it happen, reading about it to make it happen also is an avid pursuit of mine. I don’t just set my travel goals, I then read about the places I…
I’m not in Belize for more than a day when I am ready to drop everything and relocate there. I love the jungle, the caves, the thatched roofs, rising waters, wildlife, and the complete lack of people. I also like…
I both love and loathe my experience at Mont Saint-Michel. I’m enamored of its history—how the Archangel Michael appeared to a priest some 700 years ago and told him to build this church in the water, how the priest equivocated…
Figuring that the Eiffel Tower will be a ho-hum stop on our tour of France, I buy tickets to go see it on the first night we will be in Paris. I’ve seen the Unisphere in Flushing Meadows Corona Park,…
The frustration of any trip—especially one taken during peak tourism times—is waiting on line. If only all major world attractions had a FastPass, where I could return at a designated hour and cut right to the front of the line.…
There’s just something alluring about having dinner in a low-ceilinged dining room with peanut shells on the floor and a fireplace and ancient-looking wooden beams holding everything in place and rippled views from the antique glass windows. That this place—Purdy’s…
During this season of renewal, my mind floats to my favorite churches in Paris. I can’t help but marvel at Sainte Chapelle, stuck next to a courthouse, the little sibling of its competitor, the grand Notre Dame Cathedral. With each…
Any number of people, knowing that I’ve visited Russia, say to me, “I’d never go there now.” I can’t help but think, why not? Well, there’s that crisis in Ukraine, of course. Yet most people I know wouldn’t be heading…
Not every vacation can be a jungle adventure in the Amazon. Sometimes, a traveler just needs to get away and for the trip to be unthinkingly stress-free. For a quick escape, I tend to choose Florida. It’s all too easy…