Today I was interviewed on ABC News Now about how to make flying with children under the age of two as painless as possible. Thanksgiving week is one of the busiest travel times of the year, and everyone is dreading flying — especially families! My son is about to turn one, and I have flown with […]

My dad has always raved about real Philly cheesesteaks that are made (and eaten) in Philly, but I must admit that they’ve never appealed to me. Well, it turns out that the cheesesteak is not Pennsylvania’s only famous sandwich. Foodies will delight in this virtual sandwich tour of a guest post. Legend has it that […]

When my friend Brady Russell, the artist behind the webcomic “Eat the Babies!”, told me that he went to Nice and stayed in the best hostel in France, I was immediately intrigued. Yes, that’s right Nice’s Villa Saint Exupéry Gardens (named for Antoine de Saint-Exupéry who wrote Le Petit Prince) has won the HOSCAR (Hostelworld.com […]

I thought I loved volcanos — I’ve helicoptered over a bubbling Mt. Kilauea in Hawaii on my honeymoon, hiked over a hissing Nea Kameni in Santorini and gotten close enough to hear the boulders rumbling down Mt. Arenal in Costa Rica. But as I hear about Sicily’s erupting Mt. Etna, which has already exploded six times […]

Sure, the Christmas Tree at NYC’s Rockefeller Center may be a tourist mecca, but I love it anyway. While that massive tree is one of the world’s most famous Christmas displays, most cities around the world deck the streets, parks and squares for Christmas. A round-the-world tour for the month of December to see all […]

I eagerly followed along Nancy D. Brown‘s travels through Norway this summer on her blog, What a Trip. I’ve never been to Scandinavia, so I really enjoyed reading about her experiences in Oslo, Bergen and Trondheim. But it somewhere that I had never even heard of – Alesund, a small city on Norway’s western coast – that […]

Victoria Chao (whom you may remember from her guest post about attempting to swim in Taiwan’s Sun Moon Lake) contacted me to tell me that she wanted to share a positive experience with United Airlines customer service. (Someone wanting to praise an airline is rare indeed!) In mid-June, she had to book a flight at […]

When I made Switzerland a stop in my post-college backpacking spree 10 years ago, I was immediately impressed by how clean, beautiful and orderly it is. I went to Leysin, Interlaken and Lucerne. I didn't make it to Zurich, which is apparently so lovely that on Sunday a circus elephant escaped just to take a […]

Don't you hate it when you come across a cactus without a name? Me too. Cacti are prickly enough to begin with that you don't want to worry about rubbing them the wrong way by saying "hey you, over there, the tall green one with the needles". When they have names, it's just easier for […]

Oh Jersey Shore. I hated the first episode, but then my friend Caitlin insisted I give this MTV reality show another chance. So I did and I soon became completely obsessed with this group of 20-somethings who proudly called themselves Guidos and Guidettes (pictured above) as they lived it up in MTV's beach house in […]