Travel • Living • Design
On our first evening on the houseboat, we settled onto the small deck nestled into the side of the Dutch barge with a drink as…
Continue reading → The Netherlands: Water, Tolerance, and the City That Shouldn’t Exist
Belgium is the size of Maryland and contains within it two countries that do not particularly like each other. To the north, Flanders: Dutch-speaking, economically…
Continue reading → Belgium: The Country That Contains Two Countries
The Space Needle was never meant to last. Built in 110 days for the 1962 World's Fair — a fair whose theme was Century 21, meaning…
Continue reading → The Space Needle: What Was Gained, What Was Lost
Somewhere between Valencia and Barcelona, my phone rang a few times. I let it go. But it wasn't the routine coordination I had assumed. We…
Continue reading → Barcelona: Arriving Into Catalonia’s Crisis
We had been here before, Aaron and I, in a different Paris — before the fence, before the glass walls, before the security lines. That…
Continue reading → The Eiffel Tower: What the City Rejected, Then Claimed
There are places designed for ordinary use — and then there are places designed for a particular kind of moment. The National Mall is the…
Continue reading → Washington, January 2009: On Being Present for History
What felt like a week was only three days. Istanbul does that — compresses time and expands it simultaneously, leaving you certain you have barely…
Continue reading → Istanbul: Two Continents, Three Days, One Rug