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One of the most ghastly surprises of my expat life occurred during a convivial country barbeque shortly after we’d moved to Seville. Without warning, a Spanish friend called for attention and announced, “Now our American friends, Karen and Rich, will sing.” This was horrifying on so many levels. I’m the least musical person on the…

Nearly all my American friends and relatives think I’m bonkers to live abroad. “But you’re from California ,” they point out in bewilderment. “That’s where people move to . Why live anywhere else?” No doubt some suspect that I’m hiding out in foreign parts because I’m secretly up to something, like the expat writers in…

“Have you bought your miners’ headlamps yet?” a friend asked me. “You mean, those lights you strap on your head? Do we need them?” “They’re really great if you have to pick through rubble looking for survivors,” she said matter-of-factly. Yikes! Perhaps the scariest part of that conversation was the way swapping tips for coping…

The first thing they always tell you about Napoli (aka Naples, Italy) is, “Don’t go.” And for a lot of travelers, that’s good advice. The city is insane. Every cab journey is “Mister Toad’s Wild Ride” from Disneyland. Attempts to cross the street on foot are like traversing the Grand Prix. The lodgings are tricky…

“This is it!” I said to Rich, wafting the sample under his nose. “This cheese actually smells like the feet of angels.” We’d adopted this new benchmark for gloriously overripe cheese while watching a TED Talk by travel guru Rick Steves . In France, he says, “you step into a cheese shop and it’s just…

“Well, that’s another restaurant we’re never going back to,” Rich said. We were peering in the front window of El Traga, a Seville eatery in which we’d whiled away many happy hours with great friends and passable wines. Inside, a mob of twentysomething Americans and Asians perched on our old familiar bar stools, shooting selfies…

​Sicilian grandmothers are known for their warm hearts, steel spines, and pasta to die for. Don’t ever cross one. “My Nana,” wrote a Sicilian now living in New York , “is an extremely powerful figure in my family. At five-foot-nothing, she towers over everyone else. My Papa knows to keep his mouth shut, or he’s…

Have you ever noticed how often San Francisco has been the setting for lurid cinematic disasters? I personally have watched my fair city attacked by Godzilla, aliens, zombies, brain-enhanced apes, cyborgs, a giant octopus, a Bond villain, the Body Snatchers, biological weapons, and the Incredible Hulk, to say nothing of floods, fires, and of course,…

The Crunchy Granola Spectrum ​“San Anselmo?” a friend said, when I mentioned we keep a cottage there for summers in the US. “Where’s that on the crunchy granola spectrum?” Here in quirky Marin County, just north of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, the further you are from the city, the less mainstream and more offbeat…

“Ask if the haunted room is available,” Rich said as we approached the front desk at Hotel La Rose in Santa Rosa, CA. “Seriously?” As a rational, modern woman, I do not, of course, believe in ghosts. But as a fourth-generation Californian, I was raised to respect vibes, and it seemed to me any room…