New York City's St. Patrick's Day Parade showcases planning and execution at its finest, followed by a less fine display of drunkeness and disorder at the bars near the parade route. But New York's Easter Parade is the opposite — it's a much less formal affair with a rather sober aftermath. Every Easter, the city […]

I wish I could say that getting to the Cano Negro Wildlife Refuge was half the fun — as I described in yesterday’s blog post, I enjoyed the two-hour ride through the Costa Rican countryside with a stop off at the Iguana Tree. However, our boat trip was on the Cano Negro section of the […]

When I was planning my trip to Costa Rica, I kept reading about how I should take a day trip from Arenal to the Cano Negro Wildlife Refuge. It was hard to tear myself away from the hot springs at Tabacon, but I'm very glad that I did. As our boat rode up and down […]

In Costa Rica, zipline tours (also called canopy tours) are popular tourist attractions: they hook you up to a harness and then you glide through a network of wire cables high up in the trees. Although I liked the idea of getting a bird’s eye view of the rain forest, I had no interest in […]

The last 20 or so hours of my trip to Costa Rica were spent in the beach town of Jaco. I had been warned that Jaco would be touristy, crowded and Americanized, but we decided to spend our last night there anyway so we would have a quicker trip to the airport than we would […]

It's my last night in Costa Rica, and thankfully I have wireless internet access again as I'm now at the Poseidon Hotel in Jaco. (How come the cheaper hotels always seem to have the best — and free — internet access, while the more luxurious ones either charge you extra for it or it doesn't […]

My husband and I are big volcano fans. When we were in Hawaii for our honeymoon, we took a helicopter ride over Kilauea and hovered over the mouth watching lava spill out. When we were in Santorini, we took the boat over to Nea Kameni and walked around. So on Wednesday, our second day in […]

So, I’m still in Costa Rica — and still loving it. But in the blog world I am over at Brian Peters‘ NoDebtWorldTravel.com talking about a road trip I took with some friends to Montreal this past fall. (As you may remember, I interviewed Brian all about his awesome four-month trip around the world that […]

Right now, the world’s largest parade is taking place: the 248th St. Partick’s Day Parade in New York City. It’s a beautiful day in NYC, and I enjoyed being one of the estimated 2 million people who watch the parade — especially because I was standing toward the end of the route near the Metropolitan […]

Some people love Vail. Others love Aspen. Or Gstaad. Or Burke. But when it comes to Colorado ski/snowboard resorts, Breckenridge seems to be the one for me. A big part of that is because it's an intermediate skier's paradise with plenty of long but challenging enough blue runs. Advanced skiers won't get bored though — […]