Tag archives: travel

There’s nothing like a good gritty gully. It was a fine tangled maze of chamiso, green ephedra, milkvetch, desert woollystar, and Menzies’ goldenbush, high plains flora concealing unique grassland fauna on the eastern fringe of the Carrizo Plain National Monument. I stood at the fork of the gravelly gully, briefly contemplating the path I should […]

As we paddled across the frigid but silky-smooth fjord of Höfðaströnd in the Hornstrandir Nature Reserve, the far northwest fringe of Iceland, our Icelandic guide, Oli, said with a wry smile, “I think the woman in the red cabin would like for us to stop for a visit over a cup of coffee.” Oli said […]

Kyoto, a sprawling city of 1.5 million, is a captivating patchwork of old and new. More than 400 officially recognized Shinto shrines and approximately 1,600 Buddhist temples are woven into its neighborhoods, along with countless tiny neighborhood shrines tucked into unexpected corners. I picked up a free Rakyo Taxi Kyoto map highlighting 81 temples and […]

It’s difficult enough to try and navigate travel in Japan on one’s own, and while doing so offers an ongoing element of surprise – both good and not so great – I finally cried “Uncle!”  After weeks of planning, booking, worrying, I’d just about given up on planning our Japan travel itinerary, when MacKenzie McNeill […]

There were two things I longed to experience during my two-week Japanese sojourn; one was to visit Kyoto, where my father was stationed in the US Army during “Occupied Japan,” and my other wish was to first rest and recover from the overseas flight and time change at an onsen-ryokan in the countryside. These are […]

Once in a while, you’ve got to get out of your hometown.  You need a dose of big-city culture – but not in L.A., where people drive like heat-seeking missiles and never slow down. You want a place that feels human and down to earth, somewhere to spend a few relaxed days with pleasant people, […]

After making my way through Japanese customs, I was thrilled to be greeted at the airport by Yoshi, who announced with great enthusiasm, “The first cherry blossom has bloomed!” How auspicious, I thought, to arrive on the day of the first official bloom. At first, I imagined there was only one cherry blossom somewhere in […]

“If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together.” – African proverb that speaks to the value of community for long journeys.  “If you want to go at all… and get there, make sure your flight leaves on time.” – me After decades of solo globe-trotting – first […]

Last month, I traveled to Kraków, Poland, where I was invited to speak at the International Wine Tourism Conference. I arrived expecting to find an emerging category that felt technically promising and logistically interesting while still finding its footing. I left thinking about something else entirely. Beauty. Ambition. The thrill of discovering a wine region […]

My husband and I went to La Jolla for the Concours d’Elegance, and somewhere between the oceanfront lawns, the village charm, the beautifully poured glasses, and dinner above the cove, I found myself thinking the same thing again and again: Santa Barbara people would love this. Of course, the La Jolla Concours d’Elegance was the […]

There is nothing better than a happy accident – not a car accident, but a missed turn-off that reveals an eye-popping, jaw-dropping view which is what happened on my backroads drive from Petaluma, in Sonoma County to Lagunitas, in Marin County. After whizzing past The Marin Cheese Company, without enough time to pull over (next […]

Happy New Year, a bit belated, armchair travelers and road warriors alike!  A new year offers a clean slate for travel this year. I’ve made plans for Japan, Hawai’i and Europe, that hopefully won’t get delayed by illness, a lost passport, a death in the family or other unknown factors which wreaked havoc on my […]

If you have ever traveled to sub-Sahara Africa or cruised the Peruvian Amazon River (as I have) or other parts South America, chances are you consulted – or should have consulted – Dr. Mary-Louise Scully at the clinic formerly known as Sansum (now part of Sutter Health). I first met Dr. Scully prior to one […]

All it took was a crumbly shard of shale cascading down a steep cliff face forcing me to look upward into the blue skies above the rugged Sespe Wilderness, part of the Los Padres National Forest. It was a majestic desert bighorn ram nimbly traversing toward me. Suddenly, I forgot how exposed I was on […]

I could see the dark rippling water off the port side of my kayak as we paddled southeast toward the northwest end of Santa Cruz Island. After paddling east, away from Carrington Point on Santa Rosa Island, and halfway across the Santa Cruz Passage, I searched for a favorable down-island current to propel myself and […]

It was an aerial assault of the avian variety on the westernmost point of Iceland and all of Europe. Squadrons of aerodynamic Atlantic puffins, razorbills, northern fulmars, kittiwake, and common guillemots, seafaring birds all, were returning from another busy day of feeding in the teeming North Atlantic. Their landing spot was the daunting Látrabjarg Cliffs […]

My dear friends, artist and professor Chris Long and his partner, sculptor and adventurous sportsman Steve Assassi, have long debated their ideal vacation style. “I like a hotel – with room service and turn-down linens,” Chris says, adding “Steve likes a house.” On the Big Island of Hawai‘i, I believe I found the perfect compromise: […]

Ahhh!… now we knew we were tucking into an authentic, iconic, traditional English afternoon tea: There were plates of finger sandwiches. My wife, Merry, and I sat in the white-columned tearoom at The Empress hotel, a stately dowager that has stood facing the Inner Harbor in Victoria, on Canada’s Vancouver Island, for 117 years. A […]

Travel Ain’t for Sissies – But The Rewards Can Sometimes Be Worth It! After a 24-hour delay to my Big Island flight on Hawaiian Airlines, which was delayed 12 hours, an overnight and food credit at the LAX Sheraton (courtesy of the airline), then accidentally leaving my small purse with my phone/passport/wallet on the LAX […]

My theatrical tastes tend toward dramatic and dark versus musicals, however I must admit that I was thoroughly delighted by Just in Time, the life story of Bobby Darin – born Walden Robert Cassotto with a heart defect and not expected to last past his teens – which everyone was raving about! Set up like […]