With a population of over 25 million people, Mexico City is a study in contrasts: an urban park double the size of New York’s Central Park, the number of museums second only to Paris, more than 40,000 restaurants living side-by-side with less appealing urban sprawl, traffic snarls at most hours, and pollution especially noticeable upon takeoff and landing. Despite that, it is … [Read more...]
Travel: Lucca, Italy
November might seem like an off month to take a vacation, but it proved to be an excellent time to visit Lucca in Tuscany. We had the most wonderful weather ranging from 65-70 degrees during the day and dropping into the 30’s and low 40’s at night – great for fires and sleeping. In addition, our room rates were lower than “in season” prices, and we never fought crowds. We flew … [Read more...]
Travel | Higgins Lake: Unsalted and Shark-Free
Pawley’s Island residents and Michigan natives Kim and Tom Fous invited us to spend Labor Day weekend a few years ago on Higgins Lake, where they have a summer cottage. I’ve been to lake regions in the U.S., but at that point in my life, having lived on various coasts, I would never have considered traveling to a lake in Michigan had I not known these friends. And I should add … [Read more...]
Swimming Upstream
When I was a kid, my summer was consumed by our club swim team. My brother, David, and I no sooner finished swimming lessons than we raced up to the swim team coach to ask if we could try out for the swim team. We made it. Everyone did. But we were overjoyed, nonetheless. We spent every day walking to the pool with our friends at 8:30 a.m. and arriving back home at 12 p.m. … [Read more...]
Travel: Milan
“I went daily to the cathedral of Milan, that singular mountain which was torn out of the rocks of Carrara. I saw the church for the first time in the clear moonlight; dazzlingly white stood the upper part of it in the infinitely blue ether. Round about, wherever I looked, from every corner, upon every little tower with which the building was, as it were, overlaid, projected … [Read more...]