My blog has migrated to a new host and is being painstakingly reconstructed here. Please bear with me as I iron out wrinkles, hammer out the dents, and apply enough spit and duct tape to hold it all together.— Karen
About four o’clock Sunday afternoon, Rich and I strolled out of our house in downtown San Anselmo, California and ran into a neighbor in her eighties. She was jauntily attired in pajamas, bathrobe, and slippers to walk her dog. “Some things never change,” Rich murmured happily. Embracing eccentricity is one of the hallmarks of…
Our route on the “In Search of America” tour When you live abroad, you always worry that you might start to feel a bit disconnected from your home country. America is something you have to stay in practice for, and I don’t want to lose my touch. Arriving in my native California just in time…
“I always plan trips to the nth degree,” a reader wrote me last week. “But we’ve decided that for our Greek Island trip next year, we’re just going to follow your lead (plan ahead, but don’t book anything in advance) — we’re just going to hop on the ferry and go. This is a bit…
“When you were a kid in New Jersey,” I said to Rich, “did you ever think you’d move abroad?” “Never.” “Me either. I thought it was something that people only did in books and movies, not in real life.” So you can imagine how gobsmacked we were a dozen years ago when we found ourselves…
Would you have answered that ad? Me neither, but it allegedly drew 5000 applicants for Ernest Shackleton’s 1914-1917 Antarctic expedition . As it turned out, the ad actually understated the dangers; things went horribly wrong for Shackleton and then they got much, much worse. What was meant to be a triumph — “the last great…
Every year, Lola and Rich present the holiday turkey to the assembled guests. “You will never be completely at home again,” said author Miriam Adeney, “because part of your heart always will be elsewhere. That is the price you pay for the richness of loving and knowing people in more than one place.” This is…
“Closed?” I said incredulously. “But the schedule said ten —“ My friend shrugged. “Apparently it doesn’t open until noon.” “Wait, are you telling me they gave out misinformation ? That we didn’t get the straight skinny from these people?” I shook my head in admiration. How subtle! Well played, Museum of International Propaganda. Well played.…
[Update: since I wrote this back in 2016, several of these dive bars have gone out of existence, including the venerable Bodega Virgen de los Reyes. I don’t know where Henry is sipping his morning sherry these days. But these guidelines for spotting a Sevillano dive bar still hold true, and may help you discover…
“We saw the oddest woman on the train,” my cousin said, when he and his wife arrived in Seville some years ago. “She was tiny with frizzy white hair. Everyone pointed and whispered when she walked by.” “Did she look like this?” I said, picking up a nearby magazine and showing him the cover. “Good…
“Barcelona hotels have gotten ridiculously expensive,” said Rich, thumbing through his hotel-finding app as we planned the final night of our three-month railway journey. “But I have one that’s near the train station and quite reasonable.” Hmmm. Convenient and cheap? What were the odds? “Can I take a look?” I asked suspiciously. I was still…
CELEBRATING GOOD NEIGHBORS These days I’m writing about Good Neighbors, exploring how the people around me are working to help each other get through these challenging times. My weekly posts appear on Tuesday or Wednesday, depending on my travel and research schedule.
THIS BLOG IS A PROMOTION-FREE ZONE. As my regular readers know, I never get free or discounted goods or services for mentioning anything on this blog (or anywhere else). I only write about things I find interesting and/or useful.
