On a visit to Newport, RI, the Bashful Adventurer finds a blissful place to stay: in guestrooms at Bannister’s Wharf. What makes them special?
Bannister’s Wharf: Above It All in Newport, RI
Flashback Friday: Circling the Palatine
What I love about travel, aside from actually visiting a place, is the anticipation beforehand and then the memories afterward. I’m years and years past my first trip to Rome, and my memories of my solitary adventure there are a…
#TBT Remembering the Italian Lake District
It’s Throwback Thursday, so here is a photo from a 1989 month-long trip to Italy. What I have learned since that trip: label your photos while you still remember where you went. I’m pretty sure this is Lake Maggiore, but…
Making Field Trips More Fun: Gargoyles and Grotesques
It’s Wacky Wednesday! One favorite travel oddity is a certain grotesque at the Washington National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. The difference between a gargoyle and a grotesque, I have learned, is that gargoyles have spouts as part of a building’s…
Paris: This Is the End
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…
Reading Without Reservations
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…
Armchair Traveling: Next Destination—Asia
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…
The Wrong Way to Belize
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…
More than Just Hot Dogs on Memorial Day
The Ups and Downs of Mont Saint-Michel
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…
Quality Time at the Eiffel Tower
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,…
Three Lines Worth Waiting On (and Two to Skip)
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.…