JAMAICA – Last Christmas I realized I needed a little sun. I regretted missing two invitations to go to Jamaica — here was my chance! I enlisted one of my best friends to share in the adventure. We chose Negril, the beach resort for locals on the island (it's their Malibu or Montauk). Negril used to be a hippie enclave and has slowly evolved into a boho jet-set destination with great Chris Blackwell hotels and restaurants — my music video … [Read more...]
Pencils In The Land Of Flowers
After hopping off our motorbikes we made our way down the dirt road leading up to the ocean. With the mid-afternoon sun blazing, the smell of yesterday's drying fish was stout. As we passed by the makeshift shops and shacks, we captured the local women's attentiond. They were all seated upon dusty edges raised above the junky, polluted streets (every other one with a newborn plugged into one of her breasts) and quietly began whispering. Stopping … [Read more...]
Conned By An Entire Community?
We'd been in Nepal's bustling capital city less than 24 hours. In what has become routine upon arriving in a new city, I was up around sunrise eager to wander out and explore the streets of a place that's been a dream of mine for over a decade. Like every other SE Asian country's capital, Kathmandu's streets are chaotic. Chaotic, I said. The roads are awful. Resembling heavily bombed strips of concrete, the streets are extremely fractured and … [Read more...]
How Voluntary Work Can Change Your Life and Travelling
There are as many different ways of seeing the world as there are people keen to pack a bag and head off to explore distant shores. However, how many of these ways end in a lasting benefit to both the traveller and the place they spend time in? Wouldn’t it be great if we could enjoy travelling the planet while leaving learning something valuable as well? I discovered that this is possible when I went to do voluntary work in the rainforest in … [Read more...]
Capital of Ghosts
What was Parisian-Style Boulevards, Empty Eight-Lane Highways, and Chistendom's Highest Chuch-All Dead Ending in Jungle? I was working for a magazine in Abidjan, the principal city of Cote d’Ivoire (better known as the Ivory Coast), when some co-workers and I set off on a pilgrimage to one of the strangest ghost towns in Africa: Yamoussoukro. The official capital of the country since 1983, this modern “lost city” is the architectural … [Read more...]
A Bittersweet Roman Holiday
Rome: probably my favorite city on Earth, if I had to choose only one. Our time here was emotional and bittersweet, but Rome's beauty did what it could to try and ease the pain. We planned the last month of our round-the-world trip to be mostly a family affair. We saved Italy and Austria for last, because we thought it would be comforting to see some of my relatives after being on the road all year, and because it would be a smooth … [Read more...]
The Kenya Not Many See
When I was in Kenya this May, I didn't go on a tourist's safari. I didn’t ride in a Jeep with a group of other people, traveling across wide open plains, snapping pictures of dozens of wild African animals. I experienced that seven years ago, and though I would love to do it again sometime, this year there was neither time nor money in the budget. You may be asking yourself, “So why did you go to Kenya? Doesn’t everyone go for the … [Read more...]
Sacred Guides
The eighty degree weather we’d had at breakfast in a California border town transitioned sharply into the fifties by lunchtime at the Grand Canyon. I exchanged my flip flops for socks and hiking shoes, threw a jean jacket over my summer dress, and donned a beanie, the only warmer things I had easy access to. My dress whipped around my legs in the chilly wind. The weather was unexpectedly far from ideal for sightseeing, but we couldn’t drive past … [Read more...]
Basking in the Warmth of Santa Catalina Island
Catalina provides the calm, quiet and the rural contrast to the urban 24/7 hum of the city of Los Angeles. The Ying and Yang of urban versus rural environments, if you will. Catalina is world's away yet still within the confines of Los Angeles County. In reality the island is only approximately 50 miles away from the extreme contrast of pulsating clubs and the craziness of late night parties on Sunset or Hollywood Blvds. We conveniently stayed … [Read more...]
If You Can’t Beat ‘Em
My husband Gaz and I donned our raingear and headed to Nanjing Lu, the main pedestrian thoroughfare and shopping district of Shanghai. Big, bright, neon and modern, much of Shanghai’s architecture resembled a caricature of what someone in the 50s thought “The Future” would look like. Shimmering glass buildings covered in a rainbow of glowing signs flanked the wide walkway. The streets heaved with people, and in the sea of short, black haired … [Read more...]
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