Furthermore from Equinox, April 2017
A round-up of culinary cycling tours, where you burn off what you eat, each day on a bike. (Furthermore from Equinox, April 2017)
Tasting Table, April 2017
A round-up of six of the world’s best active culinary vacations. (Tasting Table, April 2017)
BootnsAll.com, December 2002
Nothing makes you crazed at the beginning of a trip to Europe than having the airline loose your luggage.
From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted July 22, 2004
DAY 273: The sun came up over the Rhône as I waited for an early morning taxi on the riverbank. I was the only one awake in probably all of the Ile de la Barthelasse at 6:30, other than security guards or groundskeepers. I was the only one on the island trying to get an early train out of Avignon to move onto another destination.
From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted July 25, 2004
DAY 274: Firenze, more commonly known in the English-speaking world as Florence, lies in the scenic hills in Tuscany, the northwestern province of Italy. Florence has attracted many people for centuries, particularly in the 14th and 15th (A.D.), when it became the center point of the Renaissance, a place where the masters of thought, astronomy, literature, art and architecture came to be. Nowadays, the city of 376,000 residents attracts tourists from all over the world, each bringing home his/her own personal memory of Tuscany.
From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted July 25, 2004
DAY 275: Florence holds one of the world’s most famous sculptures, Michelangelo’s David, which one art critic hailed, “Nor has there ever been seen a pose so fluent, or a gracefulness equal to this, or feet, hands and head so well related to each other with quality, skill and design.” I don’t know what that guy was talking about; all I focused on was how disproportionately big Dave’s head was.
From the trip blog: "The Global Trip: Two in the Boot and Beyond"
Posted July 04, 2007
PART 1: Ah, Venice. Arguably the most romantic city in the world with its winding alleys, endless canals and wandering gondolas, it couldn’t have been a better locale to start a romantic getaway for a couple of “jetsetters.” Steph and I had decided to use Venice as our rendezvous point as it’s common ground; we’d both been there before already and it was a small enough city to get around on foot — when you’re not lost of course, or trying to find each other. Steph had arrived about an hour before me from Tuscany, only to wait for me at the jetty that I didn’t arrive at from the airport. Meanwhile, I had arrived at a different jetty and had gone to our room in the eastern-influenced-but-classicaly-Venetian three-star Hotel Noemi, only to find it empty. Our first hour in Venice was simply a game of text message phone tag:
Meet me here
Im walking there
Im here
Im walking over
Where are we meeting?
etc.
From the trip blog: "The Global Trip: Two in the Boot and Beyond"
Posted July 05, 2007
PART 2: “Have you seen The Amazing Race?” I asked Steph as we jogged with our packs on our backs to the ACTV water bus stop at Venice’s Rialto Bridge. She wasn’t too familiar with it and I explained how it was the Emmy award-winning CBS reality show — called by some critics as the only reality show worth watching — in which eleven teams of two race around the world, following clues to markers and pitstops in faraway destinations. Each pair has a different relationship dynamic (i.e. father/daughter, married gay guys, boyfriend/girlfriend, etc.) that the drama of travel can make or break. In The Amazing Race, traveling in haste can really cause people to crack under pressure.
From the trip blog: "The Global Trip: Two in the Boot and Beyond"
Posted July 07, 2007
PART 3: “Do you realize we’re going on what is most people’s honeymoons?” Steph said to me in Venice. “A [romantic] romp through Europe.”
True, our mere summer romantic getaway was very honeymoon-esque, particularly at our next destination, the Isle of Capri, Italy’s resorty island off the coast of Naples, a place that my friend Alan (a.k.a. LovePenny) called the highlight of his honeymoon. “I think Venice was his second highlight,” I told Steph. “And we just came from there.”
Capri wasn’t originally on our itinerary until Steph’s mom told Steph that she loved Capri so much, she’d pay for our hotel if we decided to go there.
“I think we should go to Capri then,” I said, prompting our travels to southern Italy.
From the trip blog: "The Global Trip: Two in the Boot and Beyond"
Posted July 07, 2007
PART 4: The Isle of Capri was the last place that we’d set in stone in our pre-departure planning, and the unknown, spontaneous part of our trip was upon us. “Can we go to Pompeii?” Steph asked me.
“I was actually going to ask you that.” Pompeii, another place neither of us had visited before, was only a couple hours away by car — fortunately, we had one.
From the trip blog: "The Global Trip: Two in the Boot and Beyond"
Posted July 09, 2007
PART 5: “Wouldn’t it be great if I just turned on the radio and that song came on, Riding along in my automobile…. duh nanana nah na nuh naah… No particular place to go…?” I said to Steph, humming that middle part of the Chuck Berry song. It would have been the most appropriate song as we departed Pompeii and head south towards Sorrento and the Amalfi Coast. However, without the song, we just settled on what we could get on Italian radio and the Harry Belafonte CD.
“Here’s the map,” Steph told me, navigating from the passenger side. “We can go down this road that goes down the coast. See, it goes, ‘pretty pretty pretty pretty…’” she continued, tracing the road with her finger. “You have to say that when you drive along it. It’s the Amalfi Coast song.”
“Okay.”
From the trip blog: "The Global Trip: Two in the Boot and Beyond"
Posted July 09, 2007
PART 6: When I was on the island of Naxos in Greece, I was sent on a quest by my friend and former boss Tracy to find a nostalgic, almost mythical place from his past: a tiny hamlet where he’d spent many fun-filled and memorable summers in the company of friends and an old jovial man named Vasillis. Steph also knew of an old man, her jovial friend Franco from Vermont, who had grown up in a little Italian mountain town near the geographic center of the country, high up in the Apennine mountain range. And so, like I had done before her, Steph began a quest to find her curious, mythical town, a mere speck on our road map.
From the trip blog: "The Global Trip: Two in the Boot and Beyond"
Posted July 10, 2007
PART 7: “I’m really sorry we missed it,” Steph apologized as the only ferry to Croatia’s Hvar Island had already departed from Pescara, Italy. We had arrived only ten minutes late for the once-a-day 10:30 a.m. ferry across the Adriatic — the next was twenty-three hours and fifty minutes away. Up until we knew this, I wasn’t worried because I figured there was probably another ferry at some point leaving from Pescara, but I was wrong.
“It’s okay,” I told Stephanie, clueless as to how our day would turn out that morning. “This’ll be one of those unexpected detours I wrote about on my blog. It’ll be fun.”