Visiting the Hemingway house in Key West, FL, the Bashful Adventurer finds his Key West wife.
Tracking the Beatles in Hamburg
I didn’t go to Hamburg because of any love of the Beatles, but I’m happy to have rediscovered them there. Partial to the Rolling Stones, I don’t consider myself a huge Beatles fan. Sure, I had Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band on vinyl in the ’70s; had a favorite Beatle (George in my teen…
Tis the Season for Reflection
Another year, not enough travel! I’d hit the road all the time if my checkbook would let me. But I am grateful for all of the places I have been so far and to have goals about where I want to go in the future. For the present, I am grateful to be able to…
Sunshine Coffee Books Seattle
Thinking of a place as a city of environmentalists certainly isn’t a bad thing. I was reminded of my own first visit to Seattle as I was reading Allison Winn Scotch’s The Theory of Opposites, a thoroughly entertaining and amusing read about a too-timid New York woman who might just finally make a bold decision—but…
Kindle Spirit
I’ve finally bonded with my Amazon Kindle even though I’ve had it for a few years and it’s been getting dusty in my antique desk. I’m a book lover, a book hauler on vacations (three to five works weigh down my suitcase on any given adventure), I pretty much lust for books all the time….
Are Witch Hunts Good for Tourism?
The Bashful Adventurer visits destinations historically associated with witches and witch hunts. Have they been good for business?
Bonus History in Witch City
Dispatch from Witch City: It turns out, there are more than witches in Salem, MA.
Don’t Miss in Salem, Mass.: One Over-the-Top Bookstore
I was in town to learn about the witches, and maybe just a little bit about author Nathaniel Hawthorne (with whom I spent so much time in freshman English class in high school), when I discovered a marvelous place: Derby Square Book Store. Paths between shelves were just sufficient for one person to walk through;…
What We Used to Think of Paris, and Women
Get a few glimpses of 1960s Paris—and New York—in A New Kind of Love, starring Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward playing, respectively, a ‘newspaper man’ and a career-gal fashion designer who meet not-so-cute on a plane headed toward France. Newman’s character, a boozing, womanizing charmer with an ironclad contract (did those ever really exist for…
Want to Visit Old Penn Station? Watch 1942’s ‘The Palm Beach Story’
I picked up a copy of the 1942 film The Palm Beach Story, starring Claudette Colbert and Joel McCrea, hoping to see some of old Florida, but I got something better instead: a view of the original Penn Station in Manhattan. I’d always heard that the Beaux Arts station, built in 1910 but bulldozed in…