Passing through Guayaquil on the Way to Galapagos On a press trip to the Galapagos Islands, the Youthful Adventurer and I stay briefly, before and after our island adventure, at the Hotel Oro Verde in Guayaquil. As we really are just touching down here after a flight to Ecuador from New York before we take…
The Calm at the Center of the World
Crossing the Equator in Ecuador On the list of things I am excited about when contemplating my trip to the Galapagos Islands, crossing the equator is not an entry. What is there really to trill about when passing over an imaginary line? So even though I am in a country called Ecuador and enjoying immensely…
Day Trip from Geneva to Yvoire, France
Make Time to Go Medieval in a Small French Village From fast-moving and modern Geneva, with its trains and efficiencies, escape for a day to nearby Yvoire, France, a medieval town replete with a castle. Situated on Lake Geneva (also known as Lac Léman), this little town transports visitors to the Middle Ages as they…
Make Time for the Tenement Museum
The Bashful Adventurer visits the Tenement Museum in New York City to learn how people lived in centuries past. Will the visit be dreary or enlightening?
Castles in Westchester: Caramoor
Seeking the Rosens in a Villa in Katonah Going on a house tour is a bit of an odd pastime, being as a certain amount of snooping into other people’s personal lives is encouraged, yet go too far, and a velvet rope is likely to hold you back. I feel a bit like this the…
Westchester Castles: Manhattanville
Don’t let Reid Castle be wasted on co-eds Try to find a reason to visit the campus of Manhattanville College in Purchase, N.Y. just to visit what’s called ‘The Castle,’ and it indeed looks like one. Formally called Reid Castle, it once belonged to New York Tribune owner Whitelaw Reid, who acquired the estate,…
Retro Saint-Michel
Will a Half-Century Old Guidebook Help a Tourist View an Attraction Differently? Picking up an old guidebook on Mont Saint-Michel that was published in the 1960s, I flip through to find out what highlights were deemed important 50-plus years ago. In this guidebook, the photos are black and white except for the covers, and the…
Upstairs at San Marco
Glimpse the world as a Venetian: Go upstairs to the Loggia dei Cavalli at the San Marco Basilica.
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…