Europe

Red Gold: Finding Saffron in Tuscany
by Jenny Miller

I’ve just arrived in Tuscany when the driver taking me and my friend to our hotel in the countryside interrupts. “See those towers?” he asks, pointing. “That’s San Gimignano; they call it ‘the Manhattan of the Middle Ages… Read more >>

Stumbling Through Fear on the Way To Santiago
by Sunshine Jen

Australia is not a bad place to find out you have a fear of falling. The people are kind, and there’s plenty of beer… Read more >>

Catacomb Chronicles
by Alycia Kravitz

The beam of Joca’s headlamp cut through the darkness and disappeared down the small hole in the side of the railroad tunnel. He nodded in response to our wide-eyed stares: oui, c’est ça… Read more >>

A Venetian Adventure
by Jacqueline Harmon Butler

The friendly and very handsome owner was nowhere to be seen when my friends and I arrived at the Bai Barbcani Ristorante. The last time I had visited his elegant Venetian restaurant he had flirted outrageously with me… Read more >>

Ylli’s Gifts
by Jann Huizenga

“Your name.” I say. “What’s your name.” The goatherd’s chocolate-chip eyes register confusion… Read more >>

Travel lust is a major component of my genetic make-up, inherited from my mother’s side of the family. Poppop King was a railway conductor and, in his spare time, a homing-pigeon breeder; so you can see that travel was both his vocation and his avocation… Read more >>

There is no better country to test your commitment to eating meat than taking a culinary tour of Iceland. Not a destination necessarily known for its cuisine, traditional Icelandic food offerings include such “enticing” specialties as rotted shark, smoked puffin and roasted whale meat… Read more >>

When we got off the train the air was warm, more like spring than November. The station looked the same as I remembered it; unlike everything else in Florence, it is spare and modern. The light was a sheer golden curtain, making even the cement pillars that lined the platforms into gleaming sculptural shapes… Read more >>

First I must learn the art of waiting. It is what we seem to do here in this Neapolitan town. We walk, and we wait. We congregate, and we wait. There is always someone missing whose presence is essential, some preordained time that has not yet arrived, some inexplicable sequence of events that must unfold… Read more >>

When I first approached the 700-year-old farmhouse of Daniele Mazet-Delpeuch, I wasn’t sure I’d come to the right place. The address she gave me when I first called to set up an interview was simply… Read more >>

Ron and I had just arrived in Prague and needed a room for the night. We parked our car and walked for more than an hour, looking for a vacancy… Read more >>

On Christmas Eve I sat on steps outside the Roman Coliseum. I opened my new yet already worn Italy guidebook to study a vague map… Read more >>

Anogeia, on the Greek island of Crete, is a town shrouded in the color black. It is a widows’ town, haunted by the absence of men. Near the end of a week vacationing on the island with my husband and both sets of parents, we had met a British expatriate who recommended Anogeia… Read more >>

I hand my two coins to the man at the gates and step gingerly through. After descending the spiral staircase, I continue along a gritty tunnel, which darkens and narrows as it twists deeper under the earth… Read more >>

My friend and I were a couple of weeks into a European trip, and our clothing had achieved a level of stiffness that made us look like we were always standing at attention… Read more >>

“Jilly, look at this one,” my friend Simone says, stroking the fabric of a pale, pink dress. We’ve just entered a weird little Viennese storefront and I’m having a Laura Ashley flashback circa 1973… Read more >>

Paris owes both its development and much of its visual appeal to the Seine River, which weaves through its heart. Each bank of the Seine has its own personality; the Rive Droite (Right Bank), with its spacious boulevards and formal buildings, generally has a more sober and genteel feeling than the more carefree and bohemian Rive Gauche (Left Bank) to the south… Read more >>

There is nothing better than exploring the city on your own. As the old song say, Paris is at its best in springtime, even if it is sometimes a little wet. In winter Paris, has all sorts of cultural events going on, while in summer the weather is warm and lazy, sometimes sizzling… Read more >>

“Before you even attach a lens or focus a photograph, take the time to pay attention to where you are.”… Read more >>

It all started out as an ordinary day, much like any other Sunday, but ended with weeping in the streets of Siena… Read more >>