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

Read More

A Laissez Faire Approach to Wine Tasting in the Médoc

It was a hot night in late July as my husband, Matt, and I gathered for aperitifs with our friend, Caroline, and her parents at their two-hundred year-old, ivy covered house in St. Seurin de Cadourne. Across the road, the Gironde Estuary flowed north-west to the Atlantic, while millions of ruby-red grapes slowly ripened on

Read More

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

Read More

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

Read More