By Andrea Lee Negroni – I’ve traveled all over the world, but one country encompasses everything I love about travel and that’s Australia. It is astonishingly beautiful, with great food and wine. It’s got weird wildlife; deadly stingrays and jellyfish in Queensland, crocs in Darwin and the Outback’s kookaburra, need I go on? But more than all of this, it is the Aussie attitude that keeps me coming back. Below are nine uniquely Australian notions that captivate me, but I bet you can add some of your own. Gentle mothering – Even before I arrived down under, the welcoming flight attendants on Virgin Australia were urging those… Read More…

There’s nothing original about our present-day affection for the spa. People have been enjoying a communal soak for millenia, and nowhere is that more clear than at the bath so famous England named a town for it. While the Celts apparently discovered Britain’s only natural springs in 600 BC, it was during the Roman occupation that the water source was used to create a complex of pools, health areas and temples. Much of this survives to this day, drawing a million tourists a year to Somerset County, about 2 hours drive south of London. These days though, the water is a brownish/green and it no longer looks inviting though… Read More…

  Mexico has its playas, the Caribbean its beat, but Americans are prone to overlook the charms of the neighbor to the north. I’ve already had a healthy dose of the remedy to that affliction with visits to two of Canada’s largest cities; Calgary and Vancouver. Soon, I’m off on a four day journey back across this great big land on VIA Rail, Canada’s version of the Orient Express. A full report on the train trip will follow my arrival in Toronto, but I already know it will be a far different experience from the ones I’ve had so far. While a tour by train… Read More…

NUFOOT TRAVEL SLIPPERS I have been known to drink the water where I should not, and go out alone when I should not, but there is one travel precaution I always heed; don’t go barefoot.  For me, this is easy advice to follow, I simply don’t like walking around without something on my feet. So as I explained in an earlier post, no matter how light I pack, I always include a pair of travel slippers. So how could I say “no” when Nufoot offered to send a pair of neoprene sock/shoes for me to try? Grant Landis, the company PR guy described them as offering the “stability of walking… Read More…

I’ve written before about my affection for the photo series Earth from Above by Yann Arthus-Bertrand. So I was alert when I read this quote from Joseph Corbett of the US Postal Service. “Once you’ve seen the world from above, you never look at it quite the same way again.” He’s right of course. Corbett makes this observation by way of introducing a new series of postage stamps that show us the world as viewed from airplanes and satellites. The artists who put together this beautiful collection of stamps have taken familiar subjects and given us a new perspective by with a top down angle…. Read More…

I couldn’t know it at the time, but that dinner served to me on Air China Flight 982 to Beijing would typify my experience during my week long stay here. It was an unassuming little plate of vegetables, cooked vegetables, not my favorite way of eating greens frankly. But I took one bite and was pleasantly surprised. They were delicious. On first glance, Beijing is the same way, vaguely familiar as large urban centers are anywhere in the world, some traditional buildings, some modern, some over-the-top, “what was that architect thinking?” and lots of people. This is China after all. It’s the second glace, the… Read More…

There are two ways to get up to China’s Great Wall at Mutianyu, north of Beijing. One can climb the 2,500 feet to get to the access point or do as I did and take the cable car. Later, after more than an hour on the wall, as I gasped for breath and did a hand-over-hand final push to scale the last steps to the point where further access was restricted, I realized I’d made the right decision by riding the first leg. That I, a woman who walks 4 miles every day before breakfast, was puffing like a steam engine on the final stretch… Read More…

If you saw my story in the Travel section of The New York Times last month, you might get the impression I’m eager to get in and get out of airports as fast as I can. That would be wrong. My affection for airports goes back to the days when my dad would throw the plastic webbed lawn chairs in the back of the pickup truck and he and mom and the four of us kids would all go down to Miami International Airport and have a picnic at the end of the runway.  We would watch planes take off and land until it was… Read More…

Spend too much time at the big airports as I do, and its easy to slip into believing that behemoth centers of people-moving is what flying is all about. It’s not. On a beautiful, sunny summer day here in the southern hemisphere, I was reminded how wonderful it is to power down by visiting two small airfields in Chile where flying remains true to the poetic narratives of Antoine Saint Exupery, Richard Bach, Ernest K. Gann and others. Today, I spent the afternoon at the Club de Planeadores de Vitacura in Santiago, Chile – an 82 year old club for sailplane flying. While a steady… Read More…

My friend Jim Karsh is my kinda’ guy in a number of ways; he’s an avid traveler who gets down and dirty wherever he happens to find himself, he loves airplanes, (flies a big one in fact for a major American carrier) he likes chocolate (’nuff said) and he is creative; a photographer and an aspiring writer. Today I’m turning Go How over to Jim who files this guest post on his recent visit to the Philippines. The Peninsula in Manila is a swanky hotel in whose ornate lobby I have on past visits seen none other than Imelda Marcos having cocktails. When I fly… Read More…