Twitter lit up overnight with the news that the Japan National Tourism Ministry was considering a plan to give away free round-trip airfare to 10,000 foreigners (preferably bloggers) who can spread the myth back home that Japan is (still) a safety country.
Travel
87 posts
New York City has pretty much everything a modern consumer could possibly want, and you can get almost all of delivered right to your apartment. However, you can’t get everything in the city. Fresh air, quiet, and nature are in short supply. Fortunately, you can get all of those things, plus delicious fruit and gorgeous produce only an hour and a half from New York City at Fishkill Farms in East Fishkill. Continue reading
This is a recipe for banh xeo, aka sizzling Saigon pancakes. The story is about how we had them in Vietnam on our trip there earlier this year. Continue reading
There’s nothing like the salt.
Every August since 1949 the Southern California Timing Association has gathered on a dried salt lake bed on the Utah-Nevada border for Bonneville Speedweek. Every year thousands of hot rodders, motorcyclists and general speed demons descend on the salt flats to go fast and hopefully break new land speed records. Anyone who shows up with a vehicle, pays a small entrance fee and passes a safety inspection can run all-out on one of the salt flat’s legendary 7-mile course. Continue reading
The ones who travel many miles, hours and hours on an airplane, even, and when they arrive they have no clue what they want to go see? Don’t get me wrong, I love to see friends and (pretty much) family show up to stay for a few days. Evenings are great, good food and booze and conversation.
But why do they sit there like bumps on lumps waiting for me to decide what we’re doing during the day? Continue reading
Fire Island, for those who don’t know, is a barrier island off the South Shore of Long Island that has evolved from a tiny summer community to a combination Gay Mecca / Family Circus. And away we go!
This narrow strip of land is awash in Gay History, and sun-spangled waves, and lovely white sand beaches. There are several communities here, but I will focus on the two I visited most recently: Cherry Grove and The Pines.
Astronomers are ridiculous and scientists are crazy, so what’s next from the people who brought us the THEORY of gravity and a poorly made film set in New Mexico in 1969?
A couple of these guys are coming out of their crazy closet and saying that the Earth may have once had two moons. Continue reading
I only lived in downtown Burlington for about 6 years, but it’s one of those small cities where even if you move a little bit north or a little bit south, once you hit the intersection of North Winooski and College Street, you know you’re home.
A friend of mine once summed up the reason that he lived in Burlington like this: “It’s the only town I’ve ever seen that has two sunsets. One over the lake, and one reflected over the mountains.”
What do you do if you are Hamad Bin Hamdan Al Ahyan, a super-rich Arab sheikh who is the president of the oil-rich United Arab Emirates? You are rich. You are bored. You own your own island. Are you getting any ideas? Continue reading
Our urban centers – especially New York City – have a reputation for being Crazytown. One minute you’re giggling at an Italian comic opera, and the next you are being accosted by a toothless hobo screaming obscenities with his hoo-hah out. Then, glancing at the Playbill clutched in your white-knuckled hands, he bursts into an aria from The Barber Of Seville.