I am always amazed when people ask me for travel advice. I will often turn around to see precisely who they are talking to. Even if it’s in an email addressed to me, I’ll do a quick check over my shoulder just to make sure there isn’t someone better equipped to answer the question…
In my younger years (of which I have increasingly more and more … TIME, SERIOUSLY, CUT IT OUT) I often dreamed of spending New Year’s Eve in Times Square. I’d be huddled alongside the masses, and it would be cold and clear and wonderful. The ball would drop, the crowd would cheer, and I’d have…
It’s rare that I have direction when I travel, in any sense of the word. I usually roam around the city, using my blessedly-large nose to seek out and follow the smell of baked goods, often to a happy end. But during my trip to New York last October, I had, for one of the…
I can, at times, be a little opinionated (I know, I know. Shocking, right?). I’ve found myself at odds with all sorts of people – local politicians, NFL referees, the judges of American Idol – due to our differing viewpoints. I can’t help it. I’m Italian. We’re a passionate bunch. Recently, a disagreement with someone had…
It’s January 6th – the epiphany. According to folklore, La Befana visited all the little children in Italy last night, bringing toys and candy to the good ones, and lumps of coal to the bad ones. (Yeah, I know. We get a kindly fat man dressed in red, and Italian kids literally get an old hag.…
On a flight back from New Jersey last week, I found an old boarding pass that I’d been using as a bookmark. It was, incidentally, for the same route I was currently on – Newark to Seattle. I needed something to write on, and I didn’t want the bother of opening up my laptop. Looking…
In my family, I have six male cousins, all of whom are older than me. Add to the mix my big brother, and I was left the sole girl amongst 7 boys. –
Hotel Balmes, where we stayed for a few days during our trip to Barcelona last fall, stands out in my memory not for its convenient location nor its seemingly bored-to-tears staff. No. The perfectly-adequate-but-still-lacking-jamon-serrano breakfast does not really jump out at me, either, and our view (of an air duct) leaves no distinct mark on…
It is the first Monday of the new year, and I am sure many of you, like me, are in the throes of a rather nasty vacation hangover. I can picture you, wherever you may find yourself (at the office; in a minivan full of children you don’t really know or like; in central holding…
Tales of Food, Feminism, and Fury
by Geraldine DeRuiter
Available Now!
In Hardback, e-book, and audiobook from these booksellers:
