Big, fancy resort hotels are normally not my thing. There is a sanitized sameness to many of them, detached from the life and culture of the places where they are located, that leaves me cold. So when I encountered the sprawling, 252-room Mauna Kea Beach Hotel during my family’s first visit to Hawaii’s Big Island
California
Shaking Things Up in Palm Springs
One of the best things about travel is the opportunity it provides to discover new things. Especially delicious new things. Our trip to Palm Springs over Thanksgiving week included such a discovery: Palm Springs’ iconic date shake. But at the time, I had no idea that date shakes were a thing let alone iconic. And if
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Ireland
A Taste of Ireland
With the map of Ireland spread before me like a buffet table crammed with one delicious dish after another, I struggled to decide where to go on my family’s first visit to Ireland this past March. From Donegal in the far north to Cork and Kerry in the south, from the west coast’s Cliffs of
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Colorado
Uphill Skiing With Astrid at Ashcroft
We had barely gotten started and Astrid was already done with cross country skiing. “I hate this!” she yelled in frustration, her long, narrow skis and poles splayed in four different directions as she slid slowly backwards down the hill. I was about to launch into another explanation of how to go uphill on cross
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California
Friends, Horses & Paparazzi in Half Moon Bay
The main reason for our visit to Half Moon Bay was to see Ondine, my twelve year-old daughter, Astrid’s, best friend. Half Moon Bay is approximately half-way between San Francisco, where we live, and Davenport, a speck of a strawberry-farming town along the so-called “slow coast” just north of Santa Cruz, where Ondine’s family moved