I had 48 hours in Turin, a lovely weekend side trip from my base in Genoa. My primary tasks were writing about the Savoy dynasty and the city’s automotive history. But hey, a guy’s got to eat, right? 48 hour in Turin. Ostensibly four meals: two lunches and two dinners. Maybe some snacks or drinks…
Editor’s note: back in 2021, as the world was just beginning to open up from COVID, Curacao was my first destination. I spent three weeks on the island, and fell absolutely in love with the place and its people. It is really great to see that Sam felt similarly, even in a much shorter span…
The chances are that if I offered you a fill in the blank starting with Kentucky ____, the top three in some order would be derby, fried chicken, and bourbon. Well, I’ve never been to the Kentucky Derby (and didn’t visit Churchill Downs while in Louisville) and I’ve had good fried chicken all over the…
When Christopher Columbus sailed past the island we now know as St. Martin in 1493, the native Arawak and Caribe peoples had already left it. But the Arawak had a name for this island: Soualiga, the Land of Salt. While Columbus claimed the island for Spain despite not setting foot onto it, it was the…
Morocco is a destination that screams out exotic in basically all it has. The souks and Medinas of the cities, the image of a camel crossing the Sahara, and the minarets of the mosques… all are so different from what we as westerners are used to, and that lends an aura of excitement to a…
Editor’s note: While I’ve spent time in the amazing natural areas of Colorado, Denver is a city I’ve really only been through. Writer Sam Spector makes a nice case here for spending a long weekend - or more - in the metro area, and not just heading out to the mountains. For more of Sam’s…
Sometimes it can be a letdown coming back home to Los Angeles after weeks or months of travel. After I finish up my writing from the trip just completed, it can get to me a bit while I await my next getaway. In those times, I actively search out interesting experiences I can have here,…
I’ve been to a number of coffee producing countries, and I’ve written a number of articles from those. (Click here for Cartagena, Colombia and here for Antigua Guatemala.) Those have focused on how coffee is grown, or how visitors can find the best coffee-related experience. I’ve even spoken about coffee culture from a purely drinking…
My two weeks in the Bahamas challenged a lot of my expectations. That is good; travel is meant to take our assumptions and knock them around a bit. Sometimes, those end up being things that don’t live up to what we envisioned. And other times, the realities of an aspect of a destination blow those…
Fifteen men on the dead man's chest— ...Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum! Drink and the devil had done for the rest— ...Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum! The fictional sea shanty from Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island captures an actual truth: pirates drank a lot of rum. (To be fair, they probably drank a…