All posts in the ‘ Travel ’ Category

Shopping at the Bodega supermarket in San Miguel de Allende was efficient but a bit prosaic as an experience. The Tianguis de los Martés–the Tuesday Market–was another matter. Who knew what lay in wait under those hangars? On the outskirts, vendors tried to keep live chicks from scrambling out of their crates. Inside, was a glorious mix of the beautiful and the mundane. Tables of pottery, embroidery, baskets, toys, and boomboxes stood side by side, while remote controls and …Read More

“We shop at the Bodega,” I told an American that I met in San Miguel de Allende. Her lip curled. She wanted to know why we didn’t go to the upscale supermarket patronized by lots of expats. Simple–it was too far away, whereas we could walk to the Bodega. Granted, the shortcut from the Bat Casa was a path where you had to brace yourself to keep from skidding on the downhill parts. Once there, however, we found that …Read More

I’m dreaming of pre-pandemic Mexico. We didn’t have a car in San Miguel de Allende, and it was just as well. Not that the walking is easy there: the narrow sidewalks and cobblestone streets require you to pay close attention so you don’t twist an ankle or come crashing to the ground. On foot, though, you’re up closer to the street murals, the trim on the doorways, and the bougainvillea that tumbles down the walls.   For longer errands, …Read More

January 2019: Pre-pandemic, pre-takeout only, pre-having to keep six feet away from the next person. The restaurants in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, are in full swing, offering food for stomach, eye, and spirit. We take the bus to the historic centro and explore. At the famed eatery called Hecho in Mexico, the food is artful–and so is the wall space.                 It’s hung with the paintings of Canadian Olympic skater and human …Read More

“Wanna go to Australia?” Will asks after dinner. “Sure,” I say, and we settle down to binge-watching A Place to Call Home. This addictive TV melodrama with its gorgeous 1950s clothes and cars is the closest we’re going to get to Sydney, at least for a while. Otherwise, traveling these days is a matter of watching Rick Steves reruns and sorting through photographs. There are a lot of those, especially from the last time we traveled for real. …Read More

  Report from the Western Front Lunch is delicious: venison in a root vegetable sauce, rosettes of garlicky whipped potato, fruit sorbet topped with a swirl of chocolate. The wine flows, as do the Belgian beers.  The point of this river cruise, however, is not a gastronomic extravaganza, but a commemorative tour of the Western Front, the main theater of war during World War I. In the next few days, we’ll see cemeteries—lots of cemeteries—and spectacular memorial structures. …Read More

“Spectacular!” “Amazing!” “Fabulous!” “Exquisite!” “Unreal!” A visit to the Chihuly Garden and Glass installation in Seattle last month made me think my superlatives needed to be traded in, the same way I feel about my clothes. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious came to mind, but songwriters Richard Sherman and Robert Sherman beat me to that one. Dale Chihuly’s work inspires activity in different media, and the programming at the Garden reflects that. They’ve got workshops in dance, photography, drawing, and yoga coming up. …Read More

The cemeteries of the Western Front tell a brutal truth: the sheer scale of the killing in World War I.  You wander down row upon row upon row of identical white headstones or crosses, gaze up at commemorative walls listing name after name after name. Huge monuments in honor of the dead went up in Belgium and France in the 1920s and 1930s, and stonemasons were still carving names on them when the second world war broke out in …Read More

One of the stops on our recent tour of World War I battlefields was the “Advanced Dressing Station” at Essex Farm, near Ypres, Belgium. It was here that Canadian military doctor Lieutenant-Colonel John MacCrae wrote the iconic poem “In Flanders Fields.” I mentioned this visit to a friend the other day and she instantly started reciting, “In Flanders Fields the poppies blow, between the crosses, row on row…”  The Great War still has its stamp on us. Since I’m …Read More

Verdun. For many Frenchmen, the ten-month battle that took place here from February to December, 1916, symbolized the whole Great War. Verdun was where the Germans aimed to “bleed the French white” and where the French vowed, “they shall not pass.” Like much of the Western Front, the area of Verdun is consecrated to teaching about and memorializing the first World War. Here, our group stopped at an information board telling about the “Voie Sacrée”–the “Sacred Way” that …Read More