Category: Destinations

  • Best of Argentina

    Best of Argentina

    1 San Telmo The oldest barrio in Buenos Aires, colonial San Telmo is destination number one for an authentic tango experience. But it’s more than antique shops, bustling street fairs, poetic cafés and fish-netted dancers twirling in milongas. Here tourists, artists, vagabonds and business people mingle, strolling the cobbled streets and frequenting the dive bars,…

  • Discover Seattle: Things to See & Do

    Discover Seattle: Things to See & Do

    Everyone says it rains all the time in Seattle but that was the furthest thing from our minds when we landed at SeaTac Airport. It was a dream come true for me and my students. Months of planning and fund raising were finally paying off and seeing the Space Needle from the air was so…

  • Guide to Visiting Sonoma

    Guide to Visiting Sonoma

    Just 40 miles north of San Francisco’s iconic Golden Gate Bridge is the Sonoma Valley, northern California’s food and wine mecca — and my getaway destination! I select the Fairmont Sonoma Mission Inn and Spa as my base of operations because I’m interested in its facilities and its history. Other properties in the area are…

  • Explore  Chateaux in Bordeaux

    Explore Chateaux in Bordeaux

    The train had rocked me to sleep after leaving Paris. A short three hours and few stops later, the whistle of the conductor announced we were pulling into Bordeaux. I almost expected the train station to be surrounded by chateaux, vineyards in long straight rows and winemakers carefully tending their vines. Instead, I found myself…

  • Visiting Machu Picchu, Peru

    Visiting Machu Picchu, Peru

    A visit to Machu Picchu, the Lost City of the Incas, is a must for world travelers, and to stay near the ancient site allows you more exploration than most. A whopping 70 percent of visitors see the ruins only as day-trippers, which is a shame because that’s not enough time to experience the magic…

  • Close Encounters of the Bird Kind

    Shetland is famous for its birds. As well its huge seabird colonies, the islands attract Arctic species and are an important crossroads for migrating birds.   Over 340 species have been recorded on Fair Isle, including rare and exotic birds from Asia and America. Twenty-one out of the 24 seabirds common to Britain breed in Shetland.…

  • Complete Guide to Visiting Larache

    Bigger than Asilah, and rather less bijou, Larache is a relaxed, faded seaside town, with a good beach and not too many tourists. A halfway house between Spanish and Moroccan urban life, it is a sleepy sort of place, with views over the ocean and the Loukkos estuary, plus the evocatively named, 16th-century Château de…

  • The Vilcabamba Syndrome

    The Vilcabamba Syndrome

    At the time a tiny isolated village, Vilcabamba attracted international attention in the 1960s when researchers announced that it was home to one of the oldest living populations in the world. It was said that people here often lived well over 100 years, some as old as 135. Although doubt was subsequently cast on some of…

  • Iguazú Falls in Argentina

    Iguazú Falls in Argentina

    Any trip to Argentina should include the Iguazú Falls. They’re the biggest falls in South America – half as high again as Niagara – and a spectacular experience. In all, there are 275 falls stretching over 2.7 km but the main attraction is the Garganta del Diablo (devil’s throat), where walkways take you right above…

  • Six Final Frontiers

    Six Final Frontiers

    an Juan de Nicaragua Located at the yawning mouth of the Río San Juan, the Caribbean port of San Juan de Nicaragua, formerly known as San Juan del Norte, marks the end of a long, meandering trip on jungle-shrouded river. No roads connect it with the outside world and the surrounding rainforests – the ancestral…