My Visit To Israel: February 2013
The best way to visit Israel is with a fluent Hebrew speaker. That’s why I brought my thirteen-year-old son along, since he goes to a Jewish Day School and spends half each day speaking only Hebrew. Unfortunately, I had over-estimated his capabilities, so taxi rides...
A Recap Of My Time: Oahu, Hawaii
This is for those of you who want more out of Hawaii than sun, sea, sand and surfing. For the three of you still interested, I’ll begin. Oahu is not the island paradise of Maui or Kauai. Its southern-side beaches around Waikiki are too crowded and too small, and, due...
The Many Faces Of Angkor Wat
Siem Reap, in northern Cambodia is today what Saigon or Bangkok would have been in 1970 – a few intersecting streets that comprise a dusty town. The whole area could be circumlocuted in an hour by foot – but nobody travels around this town aside Angkor Wat in that...
Montreal: Many Museums And Much Food
When you live somewhere southern and fairly warm most of the year, what better place to spend Thanksgiving than somewhere northern and fairly cold most of the year? Also, I was homesick for a bit of Europe. So off we went to Montreal. We had enjoyed a splendid...
Oh Boy, I Liked St. Croix
The week before we left for St. Croix, my husband turned to me and said worriedly, "I've been reading reviews of the island and there's really NOTHING to do there, you know!" He was concerned about our trip as he knew how bored I'd been two years earlier on Nevis,...
Wet and Wild in the Jungles of Venezuela – An Excursion to Canaima
The Amazon jungle of Manaus in Brazil, the Grand Canyon in Colorado, the Tiz Gorges in Morocco, the Dogon country in Mali in West Africa – none are equal in natural beauty to landscapes found in the national park of Canaima, in southern Venezuela. To get to Canaima,...
Surfs and Zips in Costa Rica
As someone with a love of theatre, art and country music, it was with trepidation that I learned my husband had booked our family into an AirBnB house in the province of Puntarena, Costa Rica's most southern and isolated part, for a week over the Christmas holidays....
Money And Material Matters In St. Maarten
Is it St. Maartens, as the Dutch call it, or St. Martin as per the French the island has changed hands so many times, it is hard to know what to say for your final destination as you board the plane. Half the island is Dutch and half French. The Dutch have the...
Crossing The Western Sahara: Minefields Without Maps
I wouldn't like to be stuck in a minefield after dark without a map, native guide or bomb detection kit, but that is exactly the position I found myself in on the twenty-fifth of August last year. I had been travelling overland from London to Africa with a couple of...
My Trip To Curacao: December 23rd–30th, 2010
What really made this a great holiday for us was the hotel, the Hyatt Regency on the Santa Barbara plantation in Nieuwpoort, on the south-eastern tip of the island. Well, what else would you expect from an island where, bang in the centre, there is a great big oil...