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Travel writing is a natural outlet for an American expatriate (seven years in England, Italy, Cyprus and Greece). However, my wanderlust dates back to highschool summers, when I worked as a hiking guide in the Pacific Northwest. Recently, my work has veered heavily toward guidebooks and teaching.
At the Seashore with Medea
A Marriage Unravels in Athens
Greece, A Love Story: 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.
Battle
of the Theme Parks
The Daily Mail: Walt Disney World Resort, the mouse-king of Florida tourism,
is losing ground to Universal Entertainment.
The
Bones of Dead Men: a journey in Calabria
Oxford Mail: "This is a land of earthquakes and malaria, where the brigand
Mammone refused to dine without a skull brimming with human blood at the
table: good a place as any to honeymoon."
Budapest's
bullies, baths and not-so-blue Danube
Athens News: Stunning design crippled by chaos and the people-handling
skills of a Communist thug.
Big
Rock Candy Mountains: Cappadocia, Turkey
Road and Travel: All the stonescapes have the sugarcoated hues of the
sweet shop: pinks, oranges and yellows in comforting childhood pastels.
City
guide snippets
Thisistravel.co.uk: Art Deco style blooms alongside animal sacrifice,
drug smugglers drift by beaches covered with sunburnt families. Underneath
that clubland veneer, things still disappear in the Everglades.
Four
decades of the Iguana
MSNBC and Moviemaker: 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. Other movies –
from Predator to Kill Bill Vol. 2 – have since followed
in the big man’s footsteps, capturing the area’s sugary beaches,
coastal cliffs and rainforest-swathed Sierra Madre.
A
hoss, a hat and haute cuisine: C Lazy U Ranch, Colorado
MSNBC: Riding a roan mare among the sweeping mesas and aspen glades of
the Continental Divide
Ischia:
The Green Island of Eternal Youth
Italy Daily: The warm informal "ciao" is on every lip –
and seems heartfelt. Locals stop and chat, heedless of unlocked doors.
It’s a small, safe place, determined to stay that way. The village
embraces tourism but doesn’t succumb to it. Sidebar
Lair
of the Bear: A hiker's experience in the Pasayten
Northwest Travel cover story: We gave no voice to the frustration. Yes,
the man had lied about his health, hiding those tell-tale white pills.
And we’d made a grave navigational error. But shouting accusations
would not get us out of the wilderness.
Petra,
Jordan: A life in ruins
Road and Travel: 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
sacred city re-emerging from the ruins
Athens News: Messolongi's soil is stained by the blood of heroes. The
town is mighty, but morbid and marshy: Not the most obvious choice for
a carefree holiday, in other words.
Santorini:
Star of the Cyclades
Road and Travel: Countless Greek promotional posters, which peddle the
whitewashed walls, azure domes and sheer volcanic crescent of cliffs,
cutaway like a child's diorama, revealing the Aegean's geological secrets.
Sweat
baths and skeeter-cures: Helsinki, Finland
Road and Travel: Below the calmness and chic design lies coffee-fuelled
eccentricity. Under the midnight sun, Helsinki heats up with vodka, saunas
and tango.
Summoning Spring in Oxford
MSNBC, Road and Travel: England’s 'city of dreaming spires' sacrifices its beauty sleep to celebrate May morning.
Village
People
Salon Magazine: Ye Olde England still exists in all its imagined splendour
– that is, if you overlook the busted pipes and bigoted redneck neighbours
Visit
the birthplace of a love goddess
Daily Mail: Aphrodite, goddess of love, is said to have sprung from the
sea-foam off the coast of Cyprus. Amanda Castleman explores the ultimate
Valentine's destination...
Wild
and wicket: extreme croquet
Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Players
take a genteel picnic pastime into all-terrain overdrive, hacking across
rotten logs and mole holes.
Zen and the art of moped mayhem
MSN: 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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