I’ve had a good number of guides over the years. Most were pretty good, just a few were bad and some stood out as excellent. I have bad news for all of you: you have all been outclassed. Don’t take it too hard. It turns out that the perfect tour guide has almost 50 years [...]

Ah, when to get to a guide and when to work it all out on your own? Yours truly, for years, was a travel-solo-only snob. Why shouldn’t I have been? I research where I’m going with a level of neurotic obsession that has been suggested is, perhaps, a mental disorder. I’m a two hundred and [...]

The geologic rhythms of the earth create some of the most dramatic and breathtaking phenomena in nature. The beautiful lines of the Cycladic pearl, Santorini, are the result of a cataclysmic explosion more than three and a half millennia ago. In Hawaii, Mauna Loa is another place of such sublime beauty, though it has continuously [...]

Creating urgency is one of the most effective tools available in sales.  While supplies last. For a limited time only. Sound familiar?  Yet for reasons both real and imagined, the relationship of supply and demand is the very thing economies are based on. Sometimes the supply does go down resulting in your getting stuck paying [...]

Food was included on the trip and usually turned out to be some variation of catch of the day and taro. I supplemented this with occasional trips, between sun-soaked naps, by heading down the beach to a little hut selling native-made curios and offering English style tea, complete with cakes. On the second day, we [...]

Fiji. The word itself evokes visions of tropical exoticism. It’s a place far enough away to equate with any other locale that is truly difficult to get to, like Timbuktu or Tibet. For Australians, Fiji is little more exotic than Hawaii is for Americans.  In our ever shrinking world, it is not so difficult to [...]

Certain places in the world are old to humanity. Standing in Istanbul or Jerusalem, one is struck by the history of these locations and by the knowledge that even before the first histories were written, these places were well known by humanity. Other places, like Robben Island, have always been isolated, far off, and, for [...]

Our planet, as we now know, is a sphere. I have never faulted our ancestors for the fallacy of the world being flat. There are simply certain places in the world that seem to be on the edge. Places where geography, both political and natural, conspire to create a sense of being at the brink [...]

The Spice Bazaar in Istanbul, Turkey. One of the oldest bazaars in the city and the second largest covered market after the Grand Bazaar. photo by Martha Menk

All around the world there are people fascinated with the animal kingdom. Zoos are attractions in almost every major city. The best of these zoos are not only places where we can admire representatives of the vast biodiversity of our planet, but also places where scientists can do valuable work conserving species that are rapidly [...]

No trip to Romania would be complete without stopping in on the spooky and impressive “Dracula’s castle.” Located about 25 kilometers from the city of Brasov, Bran Castle is a perfectly intact Saxon Citadel dating back to the 14th century. More recently, the castle served as a royal residence until the expulsion of the royal [...]

The frite. The chip. The French fried potato. Call it whatever you’d like. Chances are that you love them. The potato is endemic to the Americas, coming to Europe via Spain. In Europe, one of the longest traditions of this internationally known treat can be found in the Netherlands. It’s been a while since I [...]