by Cheryl Dalhe In December of 2001, writer Cheryl Dahle visited the frozen continent with two polar explorers, Ann Bancroft and Liv Arnesen, whose story she was researching and writing. This is the story of her trip. The book about the explorers, No Horizon is So Far, is available from Penguin Paperback (www.bancroftarnesenexplore.com). * *…
I had the fortune of actually being at the Olympic Stadium to assist with the Opening Ceremony, and after a few seconds all my pre-Olympic scepticism about Torino’s adequacy disappeared. That night all of Italy was proud of Torino and most of all the Torinesi, who reveled in the chance to show their city to…
by Janet Bein, Young at Heart Diva When I first heard about Toscana Mia, a Bay Area–based group offering luxurious, customized tours of gorgeous Tuscany, Italy (with enticing names like “Live Like A Tuscan” and “Under Your Tuscan/Amalfi/Rome Sun”) I jumped at the chance to meet with the group’s founder and tour leader, Serenella Leone,…
by Sarah Naimark It was a painfully cold afternoon in Val Gardena, an Alpine border town where it’s hard to tell the Italians from the neighboring Austrians. The Dolomite mountains are mammoth, with rounded peaks and patches of snow, as different from one another as faces; they appear close enough to touch. It looks like…
by Wanda Medina My first taste of the pura vida began on Playa Espadilla in Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica. It was there that I was able to overcome one of my greatest fears and truly understand what I was made of. I had always been petrified of waves, and an incident in Mexico years ago…
by Gigi Ragland In June of 2004, the Tour de France occupied much of my thoughts. The race—on its ninety-first anniversary—marked Lance Armstrong’s bid for a record-breaking sixth consecutive win. That same year, I was training for a cycling tour of my own. Yet whereas the Tour de France consists of twenty stages of grueling…
by Jennifer Anthony A few months ago, I purchased a book entitled 101 Things to Do Before You Die by British author Richard Horne. Though morbid-sounding, it’s actually a fun, cheeky book that contains an array of must-do activities, ranging from the feasible (“read all the literature ‘classics’”) to the rather silly (“meet someone with…