I love to travel, but I hate being a tourist. Most especially, I really don’t like being one of 50 or 60 tourists going from one historic site to another in a bus. A gaggle of people, piling off the bus, gawking at whatever it is we’re there to see . . . it’s just…
SEATTLE–Well, first there was the disappointment of not having a parlor car on the Coast Starlight coming up from Oakland. Now there is the disappointment of realizing that Assaggio’s, my favorite restaurant here in Seattle, where I was planning to have dinner tonight, is closed on Sundays. I discovered Assaggio Ristoranti by accident probably…
I tend to start planning my travels well in advance. I work up a rough itinerary and spend the next several weeks, or even months, tweaking it . . . adding a day here, checking out various hotels there, looking at train schedules and, assuming it’s Europe, considering different trains based on their arrival or…
I had a terrible time finding the Hotel Flora here in Venice. I knew that was going to happen because the hotel provided a very explicit set of directions which contained the phrase, “You can’t miss it.” Trust me: Yes, you can. The…