AC Companies Offer Special Savings

The member companies of the Adventure Collection are profoundly committed to providing transformative travel experiences around the globe. In a time of economic challenge, they are also committed to offering an assortment of special value trips that can enable travelers to continue to build bridges of discovery and connection around the world – and can [...]

Cafe du Monde

I’m sitting at the Caffe Strada in Berkeley, one of my fsavorite cafes in the world, a sun-dappled terrace that looks right onto the campus, and realizing again how small the world is. On my right two twentysomethings are speaking Norwegian; a trio behind me are speaking French; and on my left a diminutive student lost [...]

Happy Birthday, Mr. Darwin!

Today is Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday. This year also marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of  “On the Origin of Species.”  These anniversaries are being celebrated around the world, but with special fervor in the Galapagos — the Enchanted Islands that Darwin put on the global map.
The Galapagos is like an alternate universe, an [...]

Great Gift Books: Part One

Over the next couple of weeks I’ll spotlight some of my favorite coffeetable books of the year. These make exceptional gifts for the special people on your list — or for yourself!
First is the beautiful Wild at Heart, a collection featuring photographs by Chris Johns and essays by Peter Godwin, with a foreword by Nelson [...]

Road Notes: On Adversity

In these challenging times, I keep thinking about some of my own most rigorous journeys. There are always moments when you think you can’t climb another step up the scree of Kilimanjaro, can’t force yourself out of bed one more morning to teach a group of sleepy Greek students, can’t ignorantly navigate the intricacies of [...]

Happy Thanksgiving

We’re just back from a glorious Thanksgiving celebration at the Porters. This was a multi-family affair, and a very happy gathering of friends old and new. Philip and I reminisced about good old days playing tennis in the summer, enjoying carefree times that we didn’t realize would seem so precious so many years down the [...]

Connecticut in November

We’ve arrived, and once again I’m enraptured by the bleak November beauty of Connecticut. Probably you have to have grown up here to appreciate it. It’s easy to celebrate the bright glory days of Connecticut in September and October, when the trees flare all red and yellow. But the barren days of November require a [...]

Connecticut Bound

Tonight we’re taking the red eye to Connecticut. I’m looking forward to being back in the Old Country, with the entire family, for Thanksgiving. Somehow Connecticut seems like the right place to celebrate Turkey Day. I remember long walks in the woods behind my childhood home, and playing touch football up the street at the [...]

The Changing Travel Publishing Landcape

As I continue to work on the Travel Writing book, I’m struck by how the landscape of travel publishing has changed in just the three years since the book weas published. In particular, the proliferation of web sites devoted to travel and, especially, of travel blogs — like this one! — is astonishing.

The Art of the Arc

These days I’ve been thinking about the narrative arc. Most stories follow the same formula — a lede that captures your attention by describing some climactic experience from the middle or end of your trip; fill in the backstory; describe the trip by pulling out the most relevant anecdotes, propelling the quest as you do; [...]