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A life in ruins: Petra, Jordan
Hooves tattoo down the Siq, that sinuous half-mile crack of canyon. Dusk drips down the walls. Gods squat in the shadows; ancient desert lords hacked into the scarlet sandstone. We cower, alone and forsaken.
A Look Under the Hood
NEW:Cold-water divers explore Puget Sound's jade underbelly
I grew up on the coast of Puget Sound, galloping along drift logs and squelching across mud flats. Yet the inland ocean remained a cipher: a reflecting pond for the snow-shadowed mountains. Now I've plunged through the looking glass.
A new era for Ischia
Capri’s overlooked neighbor is heating up, luring tourists with natural hot springs, serenity and the famous garden of British composer William Walton
At the Seashore with Medea
NEW: A Marriage Unravels in Athens
Plum shadows outline the Parthenon. This buttress of land, the art upon it – defying time and Turkish detonations – are so ancient. The moon even more so, a bruised apricot. My woes, suspended briefly between the two, have no weight.
Athens: Europe’s Cinderella
Greece’s capital turns rags to riches – and Olympic gold in 2004
Alaska: Bears Behind Trees
In Alaska, I hope to miss the forest for the bears. And indeed the state wantonly strews them everywhere: bears prowling through coastal waterfalls, bears nosing in roadside berry patches, bears charging across tidal flats.
Big
Rock Candy Mountains: Cappadocia, Turkey
All the stonescapes have the sugarcoated hues of the sweet shop: pinks,
oranges and yellows in comforting childhood pastels.
Carbonated
coffee and other Transylvanian treats in Romania
I rent a clapped out Mercedes sedan, quite possibly older than me, and
head for the hills – or rather the mist-shrouded Carpathian Mountains.
Cinema City
"Hollywood on the Tiber" survives bombs, near-bankruptcy and blockbusters with bella figura.
City strokes
The lake has become a private playground. Each day, at dawn and dusk, needle-nosed shells navigate this secret world, smack in Seattle's center.
Coffee bribes in the former bloc
Nyugati station is an odd blend of Victorian ironwork, eastern Bloc grime and a slick blue-glass mall. This mishmash, not without its charms, is repeated throughout Hungary's capital.
Croatia: Stone Cold Beauty
After a breakup, some women binge on chocolate. Others buy shoes. I went to the Balkans: substituting wander for lust. Oh yes, I was in Feisty Femme mode, all right. Forget heartbreak. Bring on the beer and borscht!
Eastern Ireland: myth and melancholy
Bones bleach into fable. Whiskey washes away fact. Then ivy muffles it all into mythology.
England's Coal Coast
The scion of Serenity Hall is silent. I am neither a tree-hugger, nor, it seems, tree-hugged. But I do take away something deeper from the coal coast, so stripped by the sea and corroded by commerce: a harsh and haunting landscape that somehow preserves the calm after the storm.
Electric Ladyland: Medellin, Colombia
NEW: Never mind that smugglers, paramilitaries, leftist guerillas and government troops still clash in the corrugated countryside. A new nose or cleavage costs about 60 percent less than in the States. Andale!
Four
Decades of the Iguana: Sun, Sin and Celluloid in Puerto Vallarta
Forty years ago, John Huston’s gritty Night of the Iguana put Puerto
Vallarta, Mexico, on the paparazzi map.
Hollywood North by Northwest
Drama in the drizzle: Vancouver, B.C., has nurtured Boris Karloff, Star Trek's Scotty, Pam Anderson and the continent's third-largest film production center.
Honduras: Calm as a Hurricane's Eye
Everything in Honduras is slow, slow as I've never experienced. Heat leaches muscle fiber, skeletal strength and all ambition. Coral sand grits under my bare feet, after the espadrilles unlace. Even the lightning pulses long and lazy on the ocean's horizon.Tropical diving downshifts yet another gear, if such a thing is possible.
Hong
Kong: It's still eastern Hollywood
Big thunderclouds boil across this neon-swathed cityscape. Brooding, bright and quicksilver, the landscape perfectly personifies the Fragrant City's cinema.
A
hoss, a hat and haute cuisine: C Lazy U Ranch, Colorado
Riding a roan mare among the sweeping mesas and aspen glades of the Continental
Divide
Hysteric
glamour: Hong Kong, China
Glitz and grit collide in the Fragrant City. This cosmopolitan consumeropolis was once a pirate outpost, then a port trading in tea, silk and opium. From a barren rock, Hong Kong grew into one of the world’s densest cities with seven million residents.
Kefalonia:
Corelli's uncorrupted Greek isle
You'd expect the island – where Louis de Bernieres set his best-selling
book – to be a tacky theme park of star-crossed Mediterranean love.
It's not.
Messing
Around in Boats
A British narrowboat excursion certainly ranks among a few of the world's
favorite things, along with bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens.
Muddy
Waters, Budapest, Hungary
Everyone tries to like Budapest. Eastern Europe is trendy – and the
recent EU expansion only added cache.
Mushing in the Rocking Mountains
The spotted mongrel lunged, twisting on the tugline: just one bell on the tangled wind chime of baying hounds. Then – hike! – the team shot forward over the crusted powder.
Norway: Old Brave World
The Zodiac slaps up the fjord. I crouch in the bow, one hand laced under the plastic lifeline, the other holding my fleece hat. Norway smells of firs and salmon and saltspray. The Arctic breeze holds an undertone of iceberg too.
Mining, music and moonshine
Banjo notes cascade over the bourbon-colored river. Hidden among the oaks and magnolias, a fiddle embroiders the Appalachian folk tune.
Petra, Jordan: A life in ruins
Hooves tattoo down the Siq, that sinuous half-mile crack of canyon. Dusk drips down the walls. Gods squat in the shadows; ancient desert lords hacked into the scarlet sandstone. We cower, alone and forsaken.
Naughty and Nice in the UK
England's movie industry stretches far beyond slick spires and wheezing wizards.Oxford is a town that has it all.
Romantic Rendevous
From the Queen Mary 2 to a French Kissing Festival, Claddagh rings to Crusaders' castles, here are top picks for romance in the stone streets of Europe.
Seattle Coffee: Are You Experienced?
Forget Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain. Ignore Bill Gates, even if he's the planet's arch plutocrat. The split-tail mermaid overshadows them all.
Skimming the Surface
NEW: The [four-person racing kayak] arrows across the lake. The glide is like that of a rope swing, except it goes on and on, and we never splash land. Caught in the midsummer night's dream of it all, I find the sport irresistible.
Spoonful of sugar
Slovenia's first design-hotel and spa
NEW: The spa's list echoes its broad-church ethos, stretching even toTibetan gong treatments. The clear-eyed, beaming therapist places bronze-colored cauldrons around my body, then taps them with a padded mallet. Apparently the "singing bowls" are harmonically aligning my aura. "Some tart's banging pots on me," the Monty Pythonesque part of my brain trills.
Summoning Spring in Oxford
England’s "city of dreaming spires" sacrifices its beauty sleep to celebrate May morning
Surfing the Wild Pacific Rim
NEW: Tofino – halfway up Vancouver Island's west coast – is one of the world's premier cold-water surf sites. Squeezed into wetsuits, hoods and booties, the locals ride year-round. Even during a winter storm surge.
Sweat
baths and skeeter-cures: Helsinki, Finland
Below the calmness and chic design lies coffee-fuelled eccentricity. Under the midnight sun, Helsinki heats up with vodka, saunas and tango.
Taming the Italian stallions
Dressing to defuse trouble in the Eternal City
Tangled up in Wild Blue
NEW: I am not a true daughter of this earth. But I moved here young enough to bear its brand. I've raced 100mph over the salt flats. I've climbed glaciers in the same county where I primped for my junior prom. I've seen my reflection fragmented by blackberry brambles in flooded fields. The scent of this coast signals home to me, more clearly than any channel buoy.
The tide's out and dinner's on
Harvesting seaweed on the shore
NEW: My foot hooks the prey and draws it close. Then I cut through the cold, satin flesh of a bullwhip kelp. I am licensed to kill with an $11 shellfish and seaweed permit. Earthwalk Northwest, a School of Primitive Living Skills, is teaching me to "eat the beach" on Lopez Island in the San Juan archipelago.
The
Venice of Scotland
Explore the magical coves that inspired Never Never Land
The
volcano’s sapphire heart
The caldera islands of Santorini
Venus on a half shell
Follow in the footsteps of Aphrodite to rediscover romance on the shores of the Mediterranean.
Zen and the art of moped mayhem
All roads do lead to Rome, specifically to Piazza Venezia. Buses blast around the rotary, as tiny Fiats dart across the undefined lanes. It's a swirling, sucking whirlpool of metal. And I'm riding the wave bareback on a beat-up moped. This is Italian traffic, al fresco
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