Thanks for joining me on the journey.
I’m an American travel writer dividing my time between Seville, Spain and California. I travel the world seeking intriguing people, quirky places, and outrageously delicious comfort food so I can have the fun of writing about them here. — Karen McCann
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So What’s Most Surprising About Living Abroad?
“What surprises people most when they first move here?” I asked my friend Gabrielle — Gaye, for short — as we lingered over late-morning coffee in one of Seville’s back street cafés this week. Having moved from the US to Spain in 1963, marrying a Sevillano, and raising a family here, Gaye has been my…
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Launching “The Amigos Project”
The first thing that struck me when I arrived back in Spain this week was how much less invisible I feel here. People pay attention to each other. It’s one of the things that makes Seville — a city of 700,000 souls — seem like a village. For instance, there was the time I discovered…
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Read Beloved Classics While They’re Still Legal
“The horrible thing,” Rich said, after finishing Charlotte’s Web , “is that I’m never going to be able to kill a spider again.” When I’d learned Rich had somehow managed to get through childhood without meeting the talking spider who saved an innocent pig, I gave him my copy, pulling it out of the huge…
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The Literary Dive Bar Pub Crawl (What I Remember of It)
You have to love a city that commemorates the removal of a hated eyesore with poetic words celebrating our collective joy. Walking out of the San Francisco Ferry Building this week, I discovered a sidewalk plaque commemorating the destruction — begun by the 1989 earthquake, finished by the mayor — of the hideous 1958 Embarcadero…
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Bourdain Took One Look & Cried “Cowabunga!”
Did you do anything loony during the pandemic lockdown? Of course you did, but don’t worry, I’m not asking you to reveal details. (Unless you really want to — in which case, I’m all ears.) Europeans under strict lockdown, allowed outside only to fetch groceries and walk pets, took to strolling around with their cats,…
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Is the Modern Art World Completely Bananas?
Remember the $150,000 banana duct-taped to the wall ? Roguish Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan caused a sensation showing it at a swanky Miami art exhibition in 2019. Performance artist David Datuna caused another sensation by pulling the banana off the wall and eating it . Everyone else had an uproarious time coming up with memes…
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“Don’t worry, there’s a shortcut.”
I never learn. Really, I ought to have my head examined. “We should go out to Angel Island,” Rich has been saying all summer. “Take a picnic.” I was tempted. I’d never been there before, and Rich had fond memories of a visit 50 years earlier; cue the montage of soaring trees and spectacular views of…
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I Want to Be That Kind of Woman
Running across this wonderful meme yesterday, I paused to think about the women in my family. My great-grandmother Mary Langley crossed the continent by covered wagon, arriving on the West Coast around 1889. Her daughter Ramona would spend her youth as a silent film star and her later years as my outrageous grandmother. My mom…
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Take Off on a Joyride
The day is an open road stretching out before you. Roll down the windows, Step into your life, as if it were a fast car. —From Barbara Crooker’s Promise Along with strong black coffee, a bracing poem is one of my favorite ways to start the day. By the time I reach the breakfast table,…
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Eat, Drink & Be Merry at the Death Café
I don’t know if you’ve firmed up your plans for entering the afterlife, but until recently I favored the viewpoint popularized by that old reprobate Woody Allen: “I’m not afraid of death, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” Now I’ve learned this is an old-fashioned attitude that has failed to keep…
TRAVEL with CURIOSITY
These days I’m cultivating curiosity, which science says will keeps my brain agile. I figure spending more time on the road and indulging my natural nosiness about the world will be good therapy and a cheerful counterpoint to today’s headlines. And I will never run out of quirky stuff to write about.
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