Dear Don
dated 2010-01-11 | posted in columns | topic Travel | permanent link
Dear Don,
I’m so disappointed that we didn’t spend the New Year’s holiday together. I was all packed and ready to go with you to Paris. Then, mysteriously, you arrived there, and I didn’t. I spent the next ten days wandering around airports and sitting in dank, dark rooms looking for you. I know that you called the Lisbon and Paris airports every day looking for me. But I was hidden in a dark corner and could not get ...
Alone in China
dated 2009-08-22 | posted in columns | topic Travel | permanent link
I’ve just returned from the most exciting six weeks of my life. I taught conversational English in Wuhan, China through the Teach for Friendship Foundation
( www.teachforfriendshipfoundation ) .The first Chinese I saw were six masked, hooded and white coated officials who entered the airplane minutes after we landed in Shanghai. They carried electrical instruments to take our temperatures, swiping our foreheads with red infrared rays. Fifteen m ...
Another Well Kept Secret
dated 2009-05-19 | posted in columns | topic Travel | permanent link
“You’re going to Ireland?" my friend Susana queried. The emphasis on the word “Ireland” made me nervous: what was so wrong with the country to deserve such lambasting?
Turns out: nothing. Five days there last week rendered a country full of luxurious grass, a tumultuous but mesmerizing sea and best of all the friendliest Europeans that side of Lisbon. The Irish mafia, the potato famine and the fact that Ireland defeated the Lisbon Treaty w ...
China Revisited - Part 3
dated 2008-12-01 | posted in columns | topic Travel | permanent link
China Revisited: Part 3: Tibet
On the sleek China Air Airbus A319 flight from Chengdu to Tibet’s Autonomous Region capital, Lhasa , Don and I told the orange clad monk sitting near us about the Dali Lama’s two recent visits to Lisbon. Others on the flight stared beyond the shiny silver wing as we flew over snow covered mountains. A Swedish woman told me she worried about the recent uprisings and hoped we wouldn’t have any political rest ...
China Revisited - Part II
dated 2008-11-17 | posted in columns | topic Travel | permanent link
China Revisited: Part Two, Xi’an (Warriors), Chengdu (Pandas)
After the sights of Shanghai and Beijing, I thought we’d seen the best of China. However, our next two stops, Xi’an and Chengdu made me reconsider. Xi’an is best known as home to the famed Terra Cotta Army, often called the Terra Cotta Warriors. Even getting there was an adventure. Our tour company Overseas Adventure Travel (OAT) (www.oattravel.com) made sure that our transp ...
China Revisited - Shanghai and Beijing
dated 2008-11-03 | posted in columns | topic Travel | permanent link
Most of my preconceived ideas about China were wrong. Instead of the rice paddies and pagodas I’d imagined, I saw skyscrapers and super stores, inhabited and frequented by vibrant, hardworking and dynamic Chinese. Over a year ago, friends from the US asked Don and me to join them on a tour of China and Tibet. The idea of a tour was new for us and bothersome. We wondered how much control the tour would exert on our days and nights, balked at compu ...
Life Happens
dated 2008-03-09 | posted in columns | topic Travel | permanent link
Life Happens
“Life happens while you’re making other plans, “a friend told me recently. How right she was last week as Don and I visited Madeira for the first time. After a smooth 1hour and thirty minutes flight, from the new Terminal 2 in Lisbon, we landed in Funchal and took a taxi to our hotel: Choupana Hills Resort and Spa, the newest resort on the island and the only one nested high in the hills above the capital city.
Why Choupana? ...