Amsterdam is a city where just about anything goes. American rules and a considerable list of things you’ve always been told are illegal are perfectly fine to do there. If you want to smoke marijuana, you can walk into a coffee shop and pick anything you want off the menu. If you’re looking for psychedelics, there’s smart shops. If you want some...
It was a few minutes after 1:00 pm and I was sitting in the oldest restaurant in the world. I’d been sampling a glass of tinto and munching on green beans and suckling pig. Hemingway wrote about it in several of his novels and Sobrino de Botin is in the Guinness Book of World Records for being the oldest continually running restaurant in the world (since 1725)...
As the car pulled out,I waited until the last possible moment to run through the gate so the driver wouldn’t see me. I half expected an alarm to sound. There were lots of cameras. Who sneaks into an insane asylum? Okay, I’ll admit, I wouldn’t normally do such a thing, especially if I wasn’t even sure if I’d be able to get out. But, truthfully, this was no normal...
WHY STAY SOMEWHERE ORDINARY? It was almost midnight at the palace where we were staying. The ancient wooden floors creaked with each step as we slowly navigated our way through the dim halls and centuries-old parlors. It was the perfect setting for a ghostly photo shoot. The room we had booked was even grander than the opulent chateau’s common spaces. The bed wasn’t...
It was my second trip to the amazing island of Zanzibar but I wasn’t at my best. After 2 weeks of safaris in Kenya and Tanzania, my immune system had suddenly gone south. Did I have malaria? Food poisoning? I just knew that getting out of the bed of my hotel in Stone Town wasn’t a very exciting option. My travel mates were concerned. I’d been their...
