Sorrento For Me

I’m often asked what is my most favorite place I’ve ever visited and, without hesitation, I always answer Amalfi. But it’s not for the reasons you think. Before reaching the picturesque coast, I traveled from Naples to Sorrento with five strangers and an Italian driver obsessed with disco in one of the best (messiest) car rides I’ve ever been in (and that’s saying a lot.) That prelude made reaching the coast all the more special.

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Whoosh You Were Here in Madeira

Spread appeared in Explore Magazine

It was a familiar sensation. The feeling of complete surrender, the incessant giggling, and the particular sound that skating over pavement makes. It wasn’t until my toboggan reached the bottom of the five-kilometer hill that I remembered why. I had recreated my favorite childhood pastime (to the detriment of my mother’s nerves): riding a skateboard while being towed by a friend on a bicycle.

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Luxembourg Syndrome

Paris welcomes more that forty million visitors per year.

Forty million.

Forty million people attracted by the Parisian mystique, delicious food, avant-garde fashion, Gothic architecture, and extraordinary history.

Out of those forty million, there are 12 people who don’t like it.

Twelve.

Twelve Japanese tourists, on average, every year suffer the devastating blow of disappointment known as the “Paris Syndrome.”

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At Home with the Medicis: Villas of Tuscany

Filippo Brunelleschi’s dome over the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore. Sandro Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus, which hangs in the Uffizi. Michelangelo’s Madonna of the Stairs that is on exhibition at Casa Buonarroti. The incomparable Boboli Gardens dreamed up by Bernardo Buontalenti. Each one commissioned by a member of the Medici family.

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On Barcelona Time

Barcelona is in charge. No matter what is on your agenda, she seems to dictate what, where and when. Dinner will start and end whenever she tells you. The most direct path to where you want to go will always be subject to her whim. On certain days, you may end up spending more time at the market than La Sagrada Familia.

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