CategoryTRAVEL

Lingering elegiac evenings of the summer solstice, when the parted day slips behind the mountains to the north like a child hiding behind a sofa, are the best for exploring the valley of Ballynakill Lake. Elements of this little world apart that might not be noticed at other times become quietly insistent on presenting themselves, and those prominent by daylight sink back into obscurity. The...

I am good at many things. I can grow vegetables, bake from scratch, cook for a family or a dinner party without embarrassing myself. I can read maps and navigate foreign cities and make minor household repairs. I can do a headstand and paint a room and tile a backsplash and operate a jackhammer. Im an excellent driver, a fine teacher and a compelling public speaker. I can carry a tune and not...

Onions remained predominantly a wild plant in the Americas much longer than in Europe and Asia. The French explorer Jacques Marquette, traveling the shore of what is now Lake Michigan in 1674, relied for nourishment on an onion that the Indigenous locals called cigaga-wunj, which means “onion place” and is the origin of the name Chicago. In more recent times it has come to be known as the Canada...

Late one night in 1951, two Englishmen were wandering downtown Athens after an evening drinking in its tavernas. Passing beneath the Acropolis, they decided to scale its rocky north side and sneak inside the Parthenon. They were caught as they left the ancient temple by the guard on duty, but they had a stroke of luck. The sentry was from Crete, and one of the Englishmen was Patrick Leigh Fermor...

My copy of Passage to Juneauwent to sea with me, and it shows. Its pages are sun-browned, foxed, and dog-eared. The front cover is water stained. I first read it in 2001 while idling along the south coast of England in a hired yacht, skippered by a sailing friend called Ben whod given me Rabans book as a Christmas present. “I think he writes better on water than anyone since Conrad,” said Ben. I...

A secret for centuries, the south-eastern coast of France became the Riviera. It brazenly created and recreated itself in the image of successive visitors attracted by its sun, sea and fragrant air. To become so famous, so desired, and yet prove incapable of satisfying everybody’s dreams, is a tough destiny. Paradise was threatened—but there was much passion, wit, intrigue and splendor along the...

A city is not a static unit. Its a dynamic and constantly changing environment, adapting to the needs of its residents. And when that city has more than eight million inhabitants who come from every part of the globe, understanding how it works is a daunting challenge. New York Citys immense size and scope and the tremendous variety of its people make it impossible to reduce it to a set of...

My grandpa, John, wore his war story on his face. It was there the whole time I knew him, from my earliest days, but I never really knew how to read it until long after he passed away. The storys broad outline lay in the incongruence between the colors of his eyes, one a deep dark brown and the other a grayish blue. Hed lost his second brown eye, and half the sight he was born with, to a piece of...

My father traveled. Still in his teens, he traveled from Michigan to Alaska with a tent when the Alaska highway was still pitted dirt and gravel. He went moose hunting in Northern Ontario. He tried to travel to Korea in the 1950s, but a hernia barred him from enlisting. He met my mother in the early 60s, and despite being Depression babies from hardscrabble backgrounds, far from the avant garde...

Sardinian poet Nanni Falconi watched as translators zoomed infrom Paris, Montreal, Iowa City and numerous parts of Italy for the multilingual kickoff of his new book of poems,Su Cantu de su Ciddicoa. “You do not understand that my stubby hands also take care of the flocks of words, in the wild countryside of your consciences,” the former shepherd and award-winning poet had admonished in one of...