A newsletter about travel after kids.
How unpropitious to have the time to write about the travels that followed my first yoga retreat at the time when my second was cancelled due to the ever-changing global environment. Today’s news, quite disparate from that of the time I was in Portugal in August of 2019, is crowded with coronavirus updates, travel bans, and general lack of social contact due to the evolving pandemic situation.
Read MoreIf there were a clock hanging on the wall in our white, skillfully designed room at Cocoon, which, of course, there isn’t - it would only show three times. The clock would read 7:30, 13:00 and 17:00. The hand would cross those hours leisurely, lazily to announce to the few people and many animals in the vicinity the start of yoga at 7:30 (followed by breakfast), lunch at 13:00, and yoga at 17:00 (followed by dinner). On this farm in Portugal I entered, for the first time, into a world in which the itinerary is reliably engorged with necessary bouts of empty time. Blank space in a life that until this week has been crowded to the absolute brim with an engagement, a new job and the faithful commitments that are summer in the city. But not at here at Cocoon.
Read MoreYou might imagine my surprise at the rental car agency in San Diego, fresh off a cross-country flight from New York, when the attendant calmly rattled off the places on the rental form for us to sign. “Sign here that you have insurance… sign here that you are not taking the car to Mexico…” Joe and I shot one another a defeated look upon the prompt realization that the meticulously planned weekend trip from San Diego in which we would cruise across the Mexican border in our sturdy SUV had disappeared.
Read MoreIt may be that I reside in Manhattan, arguably the most overwhelming metropolis on Earth in which to live. It could be the unending, alluring way in which travel invigorates the need to see and do more. Whatever the reason may be, gradually but conspicuously, the travel experiences that leave the most lasting affect on me are increasing those in smaller and lesser-known places as opposed to major capitals or commercially visible locals.
Read MoreThe road trip to Germany started out like a dry joke with a recognizable punch line: what happens when a couple with German last names drives through Denmark to get to the Northern part of Germany? You get Kellner (translation: “waiter”) and Klein (translation: “small”) lost in translation and lost in an random German village.
Read MoreInitial impressions of Copenhagen were the remarkable cleanliness, the smoothly run public transportation, the distinctly influenced architecture and wow, the good food. Over a long weekend we embarked on the Grand Tour of Copenhagen and then took our own walking tour, one that skipped many of the touristy spots and instead focused on emphatically personal experiences.
Read MoreOn every mention of the upcoming travel in the months leading up to my Denmark trip, my mom would remind me sternly but longingly to “eat all the Danish pastries for her!” Evidently her childhood family vacations to her mother’s hometown of Copenhagen conjured memories in which the sweet breads with assorted fillings were just as delicious decades later.
Read MoreI arrived in Denmark the way that I imagine my grandmother arrived in New York City in 1955: eyes wide to take in a place I had never been which, somehow, would be home. Riding the immaculate train for the first time from CPH Airport to the Kongens Nytorv station there was a strange twinge of déjà vu and the feeling of coming back.
Read MoreYears and years of friends’ Birthright trips to Israel filtered through social media showed jaunts to the hyper-saline Dead Sea. Consuming the images of bright blue sky and eerily buoyant water, it hadn’t quite occurred to me that if one were to follow the Sea up and around they would encounter the occupied Palestinian territory of the West Bank and, eventually, run right into the environmentally diverse country of Jordan.
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