Travel

boats.jpgOn our recent trip to Chicago, my husband and I found ourselves fairly secluded from the outside world as we cared for my aging father-in-law while my mother-in-law got a much needed vacation. With only one day to ourselves – thanks to the brief appearance of his brothers – we decided to meet up with some friends on the shore of Lake Michigan, in Michigan. It would have been easier to hook-up on the Chi-town side of the water (they only live 20 minutes away from my in-laws), but since they were off boating there, we like to road-trip and I had never been to Michigan, we tentatively agreed to meet in a small town on the lake called New Buffalo.

Spontaneous is a word rarely attributed to me, especially when I travel. The advent of the Internet has been a godsend to my obssesive need to pre-plan and find exactly the right place to go before I leave my living room. Sure, I might miss the best local "whatever" that just opened yesterday or is too obscure to be on the web because of my control-freak nature, but I'm too old and particular to leave lunch to chance. If I'm going to make the effort and take the time, I want better than even odds that I'll enjoy the excursion.

Read more ...

pasopic.jpgIt’s all my fault. I’ve been telling people for almost a decade about this lovely wine region in the middle of California. Most of them had no idea where Paso Robles is – halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco – and had never heard of any of the wineries that call this region home. Until the last 3-4 years I couldn’t really blame them. Even though some people have been successfully making wonderful wine here for over 3 decades, their efforts rarely reached beyond the county’s borders.

Unless you made the trip, you’d have no idea what you were missing…and you are missing some of the best Bang-for-the-Buck wines being made in California.

Read more ...

2 ponte vecchio.jpgThe first time I ate at Coco Lezzone in Florence, it was at the invitation of film producer Dino De Laurentiis, who knows a thing or two about Italian cooking:

(1) He created the gourmet Italian DDL Foodshow Emporiums in New York and Beverly Hills about 20 years ahead of their time,

(2) His lovely granddaughter Giada, with many of her family’s recipes and great charm and skill, has become a best-selling cookbook author and very popular Food Network chef, and,

(3) He is Italian and always has been.  

We were in Florence because that’s where Hannibal was being filmed, and Dino asked my wife Elizabeth and me and some others working on the film to join him at Coco Lezzone for dinner.

1 arno.jpg

Read more ...

louboutin.jpgI walked right past Christian Louboutin last weekend.  He made an impression.

Louboutin is Paris’ most well-known ladies shoe designer, notable for his sky high heels and their trade-mark red patent sole.  Louboutin’s shoes eclipsed Jimmy Choo and Manolo Blahnik at the peak of the swinging hey-day of ‘Sex and the City’, and I can see why: every pair I own are well-cut, sexy, and outrageously comfortable (and, to be fair, outrageously expensive).

Louboutin was easy to recognize: I remember seeing pictures of him in an article about how he spends his free time drifting down the Nile in an over-sized Egyptian dhou, and I also knew that his Parisian flagship was just around the corner in one of the covered ‘galeries’ in the 1er. Of course, it didn’t hurt that he was wearing a well-cut khaki suit, accented by an outrageous and sparky pair of silver studded black leather shoes that flashed in the light as he hopped up onto the pavement.

Read more ...

old-style-suitcase.jpgI 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.

Read more ...