Norman Rockwell Museum, an Immersion in Art
A drive through the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts brings one to Stockbridge, a quintessentially New England town, with magnificent scenery. On a hot, summer day last year my husband and I drove...
View ArticleReunited in Turkey – Love Overcomes the Pandemic
I gripped my fiancé’s hand tightly as we took our first tentative steps across the smooth wet crystallised rock. Our bare feet on the carbonate mineral generated by thermal spring water, and the...
View ArticleJust Before WWII – an Australian Girl’s Gap Year…
In 1937 Australians didn’t take ‘gap year’ – least of all girls. So it was a big deal when my grandmother, June Gray, deferred her first year of university to travel Asia, the US, Canada and Europe....
View ArticleMy Day in Kaohsiung, Taiwan
In my third month as a Covid refugee sheltering in Taiwan, I finally had an opportunity to venture down south from rainy Taipei to sunny and warm Kaohsiung, the second largest city in Taiwan. In...
View ArticleHoi An, Vietnamese Hand Embroidery
It was a boiling day in Hoi An when I was exploring the tourist attractions in the charming ancient town. After visiting a couple of them, I just wanted to get into an air-conditioning enclosure to...
View ArticleFinding Americana: The Cody Nite Rodeo
As people who grew up in coastal cities, I am not accustomed to Wild West cowboy culture, aside from what I’ve seen in TV and movies. But when international travel came to a halt in 2020, I packed up...
View ArticleSailing over the Myanmar’s Plains of Bagan
Bagan Archaeological Zone More than 2,200 eleventh to thirteenth century temples and stupas pepper the forty square miles of Myanmar’s plains of Bagan. Why are so many of these graceful, exotic...
View ArticleLiving Quite Local in Mbale, Uganda
Before I was set to start a new job in Morocco, I had just enough time to find a meaningful way to spend two months. Determined to explore more of sub-Saharan Africa, I found a small Ugandan NGO...
View ArticleAn Encounter with Waterfire in Providence
The river walk was slowly filling up with people. Expectant, exuberant and excited. They lined up on the promenade and on the bridges over the river. They sat on the steps leading to the water. They...
View ArticleIslas y Huacas, Lago de Titicaca
The harbor waters are still. Beyond the sheltered inlet a stiff wind whips the lake into whitecaps. My stomach doesn’t much like these choppy waters. Lake Titicaca This body of water sits just over two...
View ArticleA Different Side of Mostar
The summer sun shone brilliantly over the Mostar Bridge as tourists clambered to its peak. Daredevil young men dove from the high point of the bridge into the Neretva River, egged on by audience...
View ArticleParis: Beyond the Tourist Trail
Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, Champs-Elysee, and the Arc de Triomphe. These are just a few of the major sights that tourists flock to on a trip to Paris. This is understandable of course, everyone wants to...
View ArticleA Bewitching Voodoo Festival in Benin
I never imagined I’d one day celebrate my birthday at a voodoo festival in Benin, but what an event it turned out to be. Some friends working in Cotonou told me about the annual festival held on the...
View ArticleA Unique Souvenir from the Big Apple
Bringing popular souvenirs from a country back home is as much a tradition for travellers as clicking a selfie at some Instagrammable joints in the country. On the last day of my holiday in New York, I...
View ArticleAn Awakening at Jetavanaramaya Stupa in Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka
The soft rays of the 8 o’clock sun played peekaboo with me, as I cycled into the historic city of Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka, that May in 2016. Tall trees stooped and swished to embrace, and the asphalt...
View ArticleThe Enchanted Island of Sardinia
Sardinia is one of the most gorgeous places in the world. The second-largest island across the Mediterranean Sea, it’s got a variety of ecosystems — including steams, rocky coasts, sandy beaches,...
View ArticleA Risky Ride Down Death Road
One of my favorite things about living in South America was the ease at which I could travel around the continent. One of the more appealing attractions to the adventurous side of me was the Death Road...
View ArticleA Shooting Star Over Baghdad
Tonight’s flight to Doha is a bit different than last night’s flight to Istanbul from Toronto. Nine out of ten passengers are men over the age of 50 and I’m one of five women. There is a lot of snoring...
View ArticleA Different Life, Lobamba Swaziland
The paved highway provided a stark contrast to what I anticipated when I entered the small country of Swaziland, on the southeastern corner of the African continent. While I had expected some modern...
View ArticleTravel-in-Place: Klickitat Traders
Where I live over two-thirds of the adult population have been vaccinated against CoVid, and travel is again beginning to enter the collective conscious. Now it’s time to move outside the...
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