Category: Travel Planning: What to Do
Travel Planning and Travel Stories; What to Do + Activities
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We spent our first full morning at the Paro Sunday Market where we joined the locals selling and buying different kinds of produce. We just had breakfast in our hotel, but as soon as I saw one of the sellers eating momos with chile sauce, I asked Dorji where we could buy them. He eventually…
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After a long flight from New York to Dubai and a brief stop in Kathmandu, Nepal, we boarded a small plane to Bhutan. We were on a small propeller plane and saw Mount Everest. It’s the world’s highest mountain at 29,029 feet and it’s that black one towards the left. The view blew every Instagram…
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Kara handed us two empty plastic quart yogurt containers from Trader Joe’s: If you have to go in the middle of the night and you don’t feel like getting out of the treehouse. I looked at my travel partner to quietly tell him that there was no way I’ll be squatting and peeing right next…
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Our last full day in Stockholm, Francine and I hit the hotel breakfast buffet to power up with more herring, more fresh fruits and more charcuterie before we walked around the hip Södermalm neighborhood. We scoured so many stores that we forgot to eat lunch. Towards mid-afternoon, we walked by Louie Louie and decided to…
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Swedish efficiencies were immediately experienced upon our arrival six hours after taking off from JFK: no immigration forms, no lines at customs, a superfast Arlanda Express train to downtown, smooth check-in at the Nordic Light Hotel conveniently located right next to the train station, a much larger shared room than expected, a good breakfast of…
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I woke up extra early today to have coffee and fresh fruits at the restaurant before an ungodly start of 7:30am to our Valley of Desolation and Boiling Lake hike. Because most of the guests signed up to hike, yoga was cancelled. I had asked Joanne in the kitchen last night to boil two eggs…
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I fell in-love in Dominica. With my mosquito net. I woke up my second morning with my room bathed in morning sunlight and shadows on my bed created by my mosquito net. I quickly noted to myself to find a way to install one back in my New York City apartment. After a morning shower…
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It’s okay, Keith the driver said. The rain will stop after we pass the forest. And it did. One thing I learned during my stay in Dominica was that the weather was never what it seemed. I had a view of the Atlantic Ocean from my cottage and more than a few times I watched…
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Good thing Daddy knows how to drive stick!, the Dr. beamed proudly as we took another sharp turn on Sintra’s curvy roads. It took us at least an hour to find Casa Miradouro from Lisbon. We drove through the narrow stone streets of Sintra with its numerous forts, monasteries and castles and we kept getting…
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After reading about Bon Appétit, a sustainable-minded food catering company based in–of course–California, and its efforts to get even more local by switching the roles of some of their managers and chefs to “foragers”, I immediately thought, Well, they should call Wildman Steve. I don’t remember how I first heard about Wildman Steve, but I’ve…
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I just summitted Kilimanjaro. I just summitted Kilimanjaro. I just summitted Kilimanjaro. I still can’t believe we did it! After five days of hiking from camp to camp we finally made it to Uhuru Peak, the top of Kibo and the highest point in all of Africa at 19,340 feet. Around 11pm, I heard Peter…
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We scaled Barranco Wall using mostly our hands to hoist ourselves up. It reminded me of my days bouldering in the city gym on 59th Street: hands getting rough and calloused just to get to the top only to come back down again, all without chalk, harness or someone belaying below. The path was sometimes…