Travel

If you ford a river with the crowd, the crocodile cannot eat you.
         –Malagasy proverb

My husband, Bill Rollnick, and I were part of an American Red Cross team traveling to Madagascar to help implement the global Measles and Malaria Preventive Initiative. In October, our team was part of a joint partnership led by the American Red Cross, the United Nations Foundation, UNICEF, CDC, WHO and the Malagasy government in which millions of Malagasy children, ages 9 months to 5 years, received measles vaccine, Vitamin A, de-worming medicine and insecticide-treated mosquito nets.

Recently I visited one of the U.K's most celebrated cities and there enjoyed the old and the new in hotels and cuisine. I must admit I do try to find little known places where grace and charm can still be enjoyed, and the passion of chefs is translated into wonderful food. Edinburgh is a truly lovely city. Glorious buildings abound built in grey stone and there are many townhouses which have been converted into elegant hotels.

The Howard is one of the Edinburgh Collection Hotels and offers luxury accommodations unparalleled in Edinburgh. Besides providing traditional Georgian pampering with your own dedicated butler service, each one of the eighteen individually characterized rooms uses the finest of fittings, fabrics, paintings and antique furniture and features exquisite body care items, thick white cuddly towels and towel coats – you know all those things that make you feel pampered and cared for! Of course for the techies, there are e-TV, DVD, video, games and hi-fi systems.

Downstairs you can enjoy high tea and, a little later, cocktails in the warmth and comfort of the Drawing Room with its wood burning fire, deep comfy couches and armchairs in deep golden hues. Breakfast and dinner are served in 'The Atholl', the small, elegant restaurant which is the original dining room of this once private residence built in 1820 – naturally it has been renovated but a mural painted in 'Watteausque' style at that time still survives.

“We’re sliding smack dab into the inevitably expensive tourist trap,” you say as the taxi driver curses and swerves through the gridlocked traffic of Ipanema Beach’s main drag Avenida Vieira Souto (with its famously geometric-patterned sidewalks) and onto the narrow traffic-choked streets of the city.

Your destination was suggested by our hotel’s concierge whom you had asked for a suggestion for authentic Brazilian food. You were hoping for a cozy hole-in-the-wall filled with smoke, grumpy locals and slow waiters.

The restaurant, Porcão – which you immediately translated to Poor Cow – was just the opposite of that. Poor Cow was all you feared, expensive and a tourist trap (adding to the blah decor was a wall-size TV playing a silent futbol match), exactly like those places that have popped up all over major U.S. cities where frantic waiters bring huge stumps of grilled meat to your table, where they slice off chunks in perpetuity until you feel as if you’ve ingested a small cow. But you were hungry and jet lagged and needed to get out of the hotel or you would have gone right to sleep only to wake up in the middle of the night, hungry and jet lagged. You felt like a bad tourist, but the outing served its purpose and besides, you have something special to look forward the next day – Cook In Rio – a one-day cooking class at some lady’s house in Copacabana that you had found online. An authentic Brazilian experience was promised and this time you are not disappointed.

I have a horny wanderlust, always insatiable, perpetually unrequited.  Oh sure, I’ve had my trips on locations:  from the gentler parallel reality of Canada to the third world intensity of Jamaica.  And vacations to the usual European locales — Italy, Ireland, Scotland, England, France for business and pleasure.  But I want moooore!  Although currently landlocked until the dollar heals, business prospers, travel improves, and fuel cheapens, I can best trip out by visiting friends from other cultures.