Glimpse the world as a Venetian: Go upstairs to the Loggia dei Cavalli at the San Marco Basilica.
Author: BashfulAdventurer
Postcard Memories
Keep in Touch and Remember Your Trips with Postcards I picked up my postcard-sending habit from a friend who taught me the importance of staying in touch with lots of people in your life, those from the past as well as those from your current existence. Letters are too long, emails are electronically aloof, postcards…
Infrastructure Tourism: The Holland Tunnel
A Landmark of Modernity in SoHo As unlikely as anyone visiting the island of Manhattan is going there purely to experience the Holland Tunnel (which leads from Jersey City, N.J. to New York) and all the concomitant traffic-ridden pleasure such an experience can bring, a city’s infrastructure—even some of the less glamorous sorts—can be pretty…
Beyond Saint Peter’s Chains
Of course, visitors to the Basilica of St. Peter in Chains in Rome are drawn to the story of how Peter escaped those chains while a prisoner. But are there other reasons to visit? The Bashful Adventurer finds out.
New England History for Truth-Seeking Tourists
Of Pilgrims, Progress, Power I begin reading Nathaniel Philbrick’s Mayflower with the hope that the ending is going to be a slightly different one. I resist picking up this work for a long time because I know it isn’t going to end well for the indigenous people. Still, I am curious to see how much…
Flatiron ABC
Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s Casual Cocina at Union Square Once dismissive of restaurants situated in strip malls (so suburban!) and those located in department stores (crustless cucumber sandwich, anyone?), I keep expectations for ABC Cocina, located in the same building as the store I love to love, ABC Carpet & Home, low, especially when, arriving three minutes…
Central Park: Enter through the Vanderbilt Gate
Nature in New York City Fresh from a visit to the Museum of the City of New York, the Brawny Sherpa and a Youthful Adventurer and I cross Fifth Avenue to admire the Vanderbilt Gate at 105 Street. Although the Youthful Adventurer and I lived in the city for a number of years, there are…
Melting-Pot Museum Full of New York City History
The Bashful Adventurer heads to the Museum of the City of New York. Will her visit be fun, or will she feel like she’s snooping in Grandma’s attic?
Hyannis Holiday Convenience
A Road Trip to Cape Cod On a road trip to Hyannis, Mass., we almost pass our motel by —despite admonitions from our global positioning system—because it looks just a bit like a car dealership. We know we are in the right place when we enter the lobby and right there on the wall is…
Is a Cape Cod Whale Watch Worthwhile?
The first time I sign up for whale watching, on a trip to San Diego, I somehow manage to book myself on a pretty small boat on what I consider to be a pretty choppy ocean, or maybe it only seems that way because I am in the early weeks of pregnancy. So with those…