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Oct 25, 2009 Santiago, Chile, Is Hardly Asleep Anymore - The New York Times WHAT would Pablo Neruda say? The Chilean Nobel-prize-winning poet and devoted Communist had a love-hate relationship with his hometown of Santiago, Chile, which he once described as “asleep for eternity.  More ... May 14, 2009 Have Mop, Will Travel - The New York Times IF the image of a caretaker brings to mind a creepy, solitary character from the pages of Stephen King or Harold Pinter’s 1960 play, meet a new breed who travels the world fighting rodents, loose roof tiles, burst pipes and other harbingers of second-home apocalypses.  More ... Feb 06, 2009 A Spa for the Unpretentious - The New York Times THE woman approaching the hot spring was wearing nothing except for my missing gray ski hat. I had been shivering in my sleeping bag all night without it. The dawn still hadn’t lifted the chill from the valley, which is encased like a tomb by snow-topped mountains.  More ... Jan 18, 2009 Sunday in the Forest With Parisians at Play - The New York Times WANDERING off the path and heading up one of the house-sized granite formations that rise up from the pine-needle floor of the Fontainebleau forest, I came face-to-face with two French painters who had made the local scenery internationally famous with their lush canvases, Théodore Rousseau and Jean-François Millet.  More ... Nov 16, 2008 36 Hours In Santa Barbara - The New York Times SANTA BARBARA, Calif., may be tiny — its 90,000 residents could be seated in the Los Angeles Coliseum — but it packs Oprah-like cachet. Indeed, the queen of daytime TV and other A-listers have made this former outpost of Spain’s American dominions their second home.  More ... Sep 28, 2008 36 Hours In Brighton - The New York Times NOT long ago, the English port town of Brighton was considered louche and seedy, a has-been resort with crumbling piers and weathered hotels for so-called dirty weekends. But with cosmopolitan London just an hour away, it was a matter of time before this funky town regained its color.  More ... Aug 29, 2008 Deep Roots and the Lure of Food on a Stick - The New York Times IN Minnesota this weekend, excitement will be at a fever pitch, with the Twin Cities about to host a large and historic gathering of campaigning politicians, who will engage in some colorful grandstanding, review the economy, agriculture and family values, and possibly debate a vital question: Should spaghetti and meatballs be served on a stick? It’s Minnesota State Fair time, and from last Thursday, the 21st, through Monday, which also happens to be the first day of the Republican National Convention, the imposing fairgrounds by the banks of the Mississippi will be the focal point for Minnesotans the world over (we get around).  More ... Aug 08, 2008 Oklahoma City Is Booming With Oil and a New Exuberance - The New York Times IT took approximately a day for the song — and who doesn’t know that song? — to clear my head once I’d arrived in Oklahoma City. This revitalized metropolis does seem to have a constant wind that comes sweepin’ down the plain, but the windfalls from its booming economy have brought enough new grand urban projects, gleaming museums and sophistication so that one suspects the only folks tempted to yell “Ayipioeeay” are visitors.  More ... Feb 19, 2008 Mammoth Mountain Ski Guide - The New York Times Mammoth Mountain Ski Area   Mammoth Mountain is as funky, innovative and fun-loving as its state, and it has been that way ever since 1955 when Dave McCoy defied all naysayers by getting the National Forest Service to let him sink a ski lift into this remote mountain where he had found consistently superior snow and great weather.  More ... Jan 11, 2008 For Many a Follower, Sacred Ground in Colorado - The New York Times “TRUST an unknown future with a known God,” urges the sign in front of the Sangre de Cristo Christian Church on the outskirts of Crestone, Colo., which is close to a four-hour drive south of Denver off Highway 17.  More ... Jan 06, 2008 36 Hours in Melbourne, Australia - The New York Times IT’S hard not to feel some sympathy for Melbourne. Often overlooked by travelers as they sprint their way through Australia’s Big Three tourist attractions — the dazzling metropolis of Sydney, the startlingly beautiful Great Barrier Reef and the historic Aboriginal site of Uluru — this laid-back city is a place that takes some time to appreciate.  More ... Dec 28, 2007 The Spirit Moved Them - The New York Times THE SPIRIT MOVED THEM - Finn-Olaf Jones WHEN he was a sophomore at Santa Fe Community College in Gainesville, Fla., Martin Birrittella experienced something that changed how he would spend his free time for the rest of his life — and possibly longer.  More ... Dec 23, 2007 Next Stop: Adelaide A City of Churches Emerges as a Culinary Hub - The New York Times “WE searched all over the world for where we could start the kind of restaurant I always wanted to go to,” said Jim Carreker, who left his job as a chief executive in Silicon Valley to start the much-lauded gastronome hotel, the Louise, in the Barossa Valley in Australia last year.  More ... Nov 25, 2007 Pacific Palisade: A Scenic Los Angeles Enclave Without Glitter - The New York Times “Is this really still Los Angeles?” asked Hélène Rottier, a friend from Tahiti, peering across the Santa Monica Mountains obscured in the Wagnerian carpet of mist rising from the Pacific 2,000 feet below.  More ... Sep 23, 2007 Forget the Vespa: Making Your 2 Wheels a Bike in Rome - The New York Times CAESAR, clad in a bedsheet toga, lighted a morning cigarette next to a centurion wearing a plastic helmet. Both were leaning against a railing on the slope above the Colosseum. But before anyone snapped their photo, I had coasted 300 yards to the Colosseum’s deserted eastern plaza, where it was easier to conjure the lions’ roars and cheering Romans across 16 centuries.  More ... Sep 16, 2007 36 Hours in Geneva - The New York Times 36 Hours in Geneva Christophe Margot for The New York Times The United Nations office at the Palais des Nations. By FINN-OLAF JONES Geneva, the political and transportation hub of Europe, is one of those seemingly unavoidable cities.  More ... Jul 29, 2007 On the Edge of Copenhagen, a Place to Unwind - The New York Times "Are you nuts?" The Royal Shooting Club's ancient caretaker was furious with me. Wandering the club's secluded public gardens above the beach three miles north of Copenhagen I had stumbled onto a well-manicured range whose target was hidden in a hedge some 200 feet from a high-powered rifle mounted in the club's dining veranda.  More ... Jul 01, 2007 Bayreuth Without a Ticket; Opera-less in the Realm of Wagner - The New York Times "WHAT'S your favorite Wagner opera?” I jokingly asked the 11-year-old boy wearing a black T-shirt and reversed baseball cap in the back seat of a car in which I'd hitched a ride. “ ‘Siegfried,' ” he answered immediately.  More ... Jun 01, 2007 Minnesota's "Freshwater Ocean" Attracts a New Generation - The New York Times THE Shore,” for most Minnesotans, is the North Shore of Lake Superior. Before Highway 61 — which is more than just a road in Bob Dylan’s mythology — was extended from Duluth to the Canadian border in the 1920s, local Scandinavian fisherman took in summer guests who traveled from the railhead in Duluth north on the postal boat.  More ... May 18, 2007 Not for Kids Only: Seeking Buccaneer Bliss - The New York Times BLUE BAYOU, Anaheim, Calif.: Caroline Treadwell, 34, stepped gingerly into a boat, then was launched into the bayou darkness to the soothing sounds of crickets, bullfrogs and the distant strumming of a banjo.  More ... Mar 16, 2007 Big Changes at Big Sur - The New York Times Like anyone who builds in Big Sur, Zachary and Langka Treadwell had to satisfy a lot of California and local environmental regulations. Their hillside home, a cube of glass and rock, has a sod roof. Big Changes at Big Sur   DRIVERS passing through Big Sur on Highway 1 between Los Angeles and San Francisco are inevitably awed by the duel of sea and sky played out against the rugged Santa Lucia Mountains.  More ... Feb 09, 2007 Sea Change for a Dad - The New York Times Richard Patterson for The New York Times An adults-only area, during a Caribbean cruise DISNEY theme parks, with their perpetually long lines and aggressive merchandising, have always seemed about as enticing to me as getting mugged by the Seven Dwarfs.  More ... Jan 12, 2007 In Obliging Waco, Dr Pepper Is the King - The New York Times American Journeys In Obliging Waco, Dr Pepper Is the King The Texas Ranger museum preserves the mystique of the famous law enforcers of the Old West days. YOU step off the plane, rent a car and notice a gun club off the side of the airport access road.  More ... Dec 01, 2006 Back to Nature in Estes Park, Colo., Off Season in the Shadow of the Rockies - The New York Times THE large bull elk was calmly walking down the main street of Estes Park, Colo., turning his head this way and that, his five-foot antlers waving in the night air. A lone car approached him and slowed to a crawl, but the elk just kept to his window-shopping pace until he reached his goal: a dozen elk cows huddled like truants in front of the closed Dairy Queen.  More ... Oct 27, 2006 A Tradition to Sip - The New York Times To the Editor: I read ''A Pour. A Staredown. A Civilized Bonding.'' (Oct. 20) by Finn-Olaf Jones with heartfelt interest. As a Norwegian-American I can fondly relate to all the warm and wonderful tales of sharing aquavit on cold nights, special and not-so-special occasions.  More ... Oct 20, 2006 A Pour. A Staredown. A Civilized Bonding. - The New York Times I WAS a colicky and fussy baby. During a visit to my grandparents’ farm in Denmark, my grandmother found the antidote to my fidgeting; two or three drops of aquavit — a vodka-like elixir beloved by Scandinavians — into the baby bottle, and I would calm down.  More ... Sep 22, 2006 36 Hours in College Station, Tex - The New York Times THE college in College Station is the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas, a k a Texas A&M, home of the Aggies. Beyond the sprawling, oak-lined lawns of the university, alumni Aggies have established vineyards, restaurants, hotels and enough bars and honky-tonks to claim plausibly that College Station and the neighboring town of Bryan have more drinking establishments per capita than anywhere else in the United States.  More ... Jul 14, 2006 An Impala's-Eye View of Highway History - The New York Times CROSS COUNTRY Fifteen Years and Ninety Thousand Miles on the Roads and Interstates of America with Lewis and Clark, a Lot of Bad Motels, a Moving Van, Emily Post, Jack Kerouac, My Wife, My Mother-in-Law, Two Kids, and Enough Coffee to Kill an Elephant.  More ... Jun 04, 2006 The Danish Soul of That Town in 'Sideways - The New York Times DRIVE along Highway 246 in California which rolls through the hilly ranch country 36 miles north of Santa Barbara, and you will suddenly find yourself in the middle of — Gud i Himlen! — 18th-century Denmark.  More ... May 18, 2006 A Hideout of His Own - The New York Times A Hideout of His Own Ben Garvin for The New York Times Fuller Cowles tracks weather from his cupola, 24 feet from his living room, straight up.  By FINN-OLAF JONES Published: May 18, 2006 ALL those flowers and designs," said Christina Hoff Sommers, a resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute in Washington.  More ... Mar 19, 2006 Death Valley, Calif.: These Ghost Towns Have Clean Sheets - The New York Times The ghost town of Cerro Gordo, Calif. Journeys Death Valley, Calif.: These Ghost Towns Have Clean Sheets IN the moonlight 8,200 feet up on the ridgeline of the Inyo Mountains, one can make out the remains of a dozen miners' shacks slung across a ravine almost eight miles up a steep dirt road twisting up from the desert plains of Owens Valley.  More ... Nov 04, 2005 Einstein on the Beach: The Ph.D.'s of Culebra - The New York Times SOMETIMES, a place is a paradise because nothing ever happens there. On the island of Culebra, 17 miles off the east coast of Puerto Rico, the thing not happening for Marcus P. Knowlton, a Princeton University lecturer in aerospace engineering, and his wife, Merry, a stockbroker, was nuclear fallout.  More ... Aug 28, 2005 In Moscow, the Old Party Is Gone and a New One Beckons - The New York Times ENTER into the cavernous nightclub where three middle-aged men are playing industrial music on homemade electric instruments while young men in black and young women with bared midriffs gyrate on the dance floor.  More ... Jul 17, 2005 On Water's Edge, a Land Where Art Flowered - The New York Times WHEN most people think of Denmark, they imagine the Baltic version: Lilliputian towns rising out of compact fields, flat landscapes and narrow beaches overlooking close horizons where boats never sail out of sight.  More ... Mar 04, 2005 In Death Valley, a Technicolor Season - The New York Times In Death Valley, a Technicolor Season J. Emilio Flores for The New York Times A NEW VISTA Desert gold sunflowers are among the wildflowers that are thriving already near Jubilee Pass in Desert Valley.  More ... Feb 27, 2005 Books in Los Angeles - The New York Times FORAGING Books in Los Angeles Jamie Rector for The Mew York Times Given that the career of many a great author (think Fitzgerald or Faulkner) died in Los Angeles, it seems appropriate that one of the city's finest literary institutions - the Heritage Book Shop on Melrose Avenue, with thousands of rare books and manuscripts - is housed in a former mortuary.  More ...