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WITS Virtual Tour: Prague Jewish Quarter
Of all the virtual tours I participated in during the 2021 Women in Travel Summit, touring the Prague Jewish Quarter was the most touching and culturally resonant. Focusing on just a tiny portion of one of Europe’s most scenic waterfront cities, it offered an up-close look at life during the Holocaust, and how the city today remembers this dark chapter of its history. Our guide for the tour was Nikola Moustafa of Prague City Adventures, who walked us through some basic history: Jews first came to Prague around the tenth century. It didn’t take long for violent riots to break out, and the new residents to be ushered into a…
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WITS Virtual Tour: Phoenix, Arizona
For all the traveling I’ve done, I’ve yet to spend much time in the Southwest. Sure, I visit my sister’s family in San Antonio every year, and I’ve taken a couple trips to Southwest-adjacent Salt Lake City, but that’s been the extent of it. Yet I’ve had dozens of Southwestern destinations—from Santa Fe to White Sands National Park, Sedona to the Grand Canyon—on my must list for years. What this means: it’s high time I get out there and start exploring. And a good place to start is Phoenix, which lies along the Salt River. The first of my virtual tours at this year’s Women in Travel Summit came courtesy…
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Hiking Hanakapiai Falls | Napali Coast, Kauai
The water roared through the carving in a cliff face, tinged green with mosses and lichen. Though I sat at least 50 feet from Hanakapiai Falls, I could still feel its spray against my skin. I cursed myself for not having worn a bathing suit. Hot, tired, and sticky with sweat, I’d have given anything to wade into the waterfall, letting it plaster my hair against my scalp and rinse the perspiration from my limbs. But the 4-mile hike back would be misery in wet gear. I settled instead for wading, thigh-deep, into a rocky pool the color of deep chrysoprase and splashing the water onto my arms, neck, and…
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Mushroom Hunting in Soria
As a family goes mushroom hunting in Soria, in northern Spain, their writer daughter-in-law seeks not only the treasures of the forest, but also human connection. “Aquí!” I shout, partly out of economy, and partly because in my moment of excitement, I’ve lost the ability to say “I found a bunch of mushrooms” in Spanish. The smooth, rusty heads of three porcinis stare up at me from a mossy patch of forest floor of the Urbión National Hunting Reserve in Navaleno, in the north-central province of Soria, Spain. With my fingers, I grasp the solid stem of the closest mushroom and wiggle it back and forth until it pulls free…
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A Sort of Sea-Feeling: On Being the Writer-in-Residence at Herman Melville’s Arrowhead
I am not easily “whelmed,” let alone overwhelmed. As a lifelong Northeasterner and an international traveler since the age of eight, hard-headedness and enough curiosity to kill an entire colony of cats are baked into my DNA. So while I was excited by the prospect of being the summer 2020 Writer-in-Residence at Arrowhead, the historic home of Herman Melville, and the program’s first travel writer, I was certain that working in Herman’s office would feel pretty much like any other work-at-home-day—which is most days for me. But once I sat in Herman’s study, looking out at the same view of Mount Greylock that is reputed to have inspired Moby-Dick, I felt an…
Writing the waves of coastal travel
