Mauna Kea Magic

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

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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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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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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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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

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