There’s a newness every morning in Mexico City, as store owners wash their sidewalks and prepare storefronts, the sun peeks over the horizon into the cool blue sky, and vendors take their bikes and carts to the streets to sell tamales, coffee, and more, filling neighborhoods with sounds and smells like urban birds singing. Opportunities to experience this unique and beautiful culture are served up, rolling by, on street corners and peeking out of unexpected places – yours for the taking. The beginning of my Mexico City love affair My senior year of college, with and insatiable sense of curiosity […]
Letter to My Daughter: Leave While You’re Young
The photos of your new life are breathtaking. You decided to leave with a one-way ticket, to get a change of scenery. Some fresh air in your lungs. It was time. Your family misses you, and although my advice may not be popular with them, I just wanted to tell you…don’t come back. Don’t even consider it. Not yet. You have to leave while you’re young. This is your time. You were born with a great restlessness that many never know and most won’t understand, and they’ll try to lure you back. Being away from everything you’ve known will allow […]
Germany: Oceans Away, a Clear View of Home
I went to Germany last month on a real vacation. No work, no real planning, no agenda – just me and a good friend, and a chance to experience a new place. It was relaxing and tiring and amazing, and I though I fully expected to return home with renewed vigor and blog ideas burning my fingertips, I experienced quite the opposite. In my week away, the first like it since I got married and had my baby, I was able to step away from the noise – bills, meals, housekeeping, landscaping, marketing presentations, rides to and from here and […]
A Love Affair With My Car & Saying Goodbye
I love my car but am selling it because it’s time. With it, I’m bidding farewell to a carefree, unattached, adventurous version of me. But it’s time. In the early 2000s, with my own money from my first job, I bought my own car. I was a border-town photojournalist during the week (so you can imagine, I had to scrimp), but on the weekends, I went country. We rode horses, went off-roading, had bonfires, danced, and rabble-roused all weekend every weekend, and I needed a car that could keep up. While on vacation with my family on Coronado Island, California, […]
A Huge Border Wall is Not the Answer
In the late 1800s, my family came from Solingen, Prussia and built their homestead in a canyon on the Mexican border before Arizona was a state. At that time, Nogales was literally a walnut grove bisected by an international line with little more than a railroad station and post office. My grandmother and all her siblings were born on that land, as was my father and his siblings, and it’s where we spent summers when my mom dropped us off with family and went to work. When I was growing up, the fence, as we called it, was literally a […]
You Know Nothing About Cuba
No matter how many books you read, classes you take, or how up on current events you are, there’s no way to understand Cuba, even if you’ve been there. It is a country of contrasts and incomparable warmth and beauty. I studied and was obsessed with the country – its politics, revolutionary history, intellectual capital, and culture – for about 15 years before I had the opportunity to visit the island. After a week in Cuba, the one thing I knew to be true, in the words of Aristotle, was “The more you know, the more you know you don’t know.” I began studying Cuba at the university […]
Skip the Lines and Become a Trusted Traveler
Travel used to be easy. Lines were short, and the process was uncomplicated. In fact, I lived close to a small airport and could roll in with my carry-on a half hour before takeoff and be fine. No longer. Recently, security lines at Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix have been getting me down. But my last international trip sealed the deal for me – it was time to become a trusted traveler. If you’re traveling anywhere, and especially internationally, it behooves you to become a trusted traveler. Luckily, in four relatively easy and definitely worth-it steps, I gained a […]
Create a Moment: Spa on the Road
If you’re single and your time is all your own, enjoy it. For the rest of us, we have to take full advantage of the intermittent and fleeting moments of respite to self-indulge. Business trips, for me, are long days of hard work and evenings in the home-away-from-home spa. Seize the opportunity to create a relaxing experience when and where you can. When I travel, I’m most often in 4- and 5-star hotels, far nicer than anything I’d be able to afford on my own. And although I’m working 10 to 12 hour days talking to people and wishing I […]
Learning to See Through a Child’s Eyes
Over the long holiday weekend, we decided to escape the triple-digit heat in the Valley of the Sun and retreat to the pines, filling our lungs with clean air and disconnecting, if only for a few days. Excitedly anticipating a poor network connection, and being too Type A to not to have an agenda, my main business item was to clear out the photos in my iPhone. Easy enough – my idea of relaxing. I also had a list of attractions in the area to visit if the fancy struck us, to make the best use of our limited fun […]
Stayin’ Fly with Toiletries in Check
When you spend a lot of time on the road, you develop efficiencies so you can sleep that extra half hour, get through security quickly, roll up to the gate just as the doors are closing, and arrive at your destination with all your belongings intact. Whether I’m planning an overnight trip or a two-week vacation (I wish!), I’m happy to share my system with you for smooth travels, as far as travel toiletries are concerned. Be ready to skip town: I always leave a set of travel-ready toiletries packed and ready to go waiting patiently in the closet for […]