I step inside the walls of what could be a motel compound. Wooden doors line up a uniform fashion, equidistant from one another just like at a single-story motel. Checking in to these rooms wasn’t of the travel variety. The spaces weren’t used just for a night’s sleep. Checking in to these spaces meant giving up one’s own beliefs to follow one god and one king oceans away. I am within the confines of the Mission San José, part of the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park. While the park encompasses four missions south of San Antonio, I am focusing my attention on good old Saint Continue Reading
Suzy Stumbles Over Travel: Week of July 23, 2012
From St. Louis, Missouri, I bring you this week’s Suzy Stumbles Over Travel. In case you are new to this site, each week I ask bloggers/writers and readers to submit their favorite travel posts of the week. This can be from your own site or another writer’s piece. I read each submission, comment, tweet the article on Twitter, stumble the piece using Stumbleupon and post a link to the article on my Facebook page. The following week I select my five favorites to be featured here and the stumbling begins again into the next week. Just a few things to keep in mind, please only submit one post per Continue Reading
Jefferson, Texas Wishes You Were Here
The air has a quiet only found on Sundays. Shops are closed. Streets are deserted. And in all of the quiet of Jefferson, Texas, there is a whiff of intangible activity. I begin to stroll the small settlement that was once a boomtown when the first steamboat arrived on the Big Cypress Bayou. By 1845, steamboats could reach New Orleans from Jefferson, making the city the port of entry for many into Texas and a thriving cosmopolitan destination. Appropriately, Jefferson is my port of entry for seeing what Texas looked like circa the 19th century. I roam the streets of the “Riverport to the Continue Reading
The Beauty of Vacation
“What brings you here,” each and every hotel concierge would ask. For the first time in a long time I could proudly say, “I’m just on vacation.” With each stop through east Texas, I obtained subtle glimpses into what vacation must be like. Rather than checking in and immediately getting to work, I had nothing but time. And that time was sweetly suspended as it only is on vacation. In essence having all that time proved I had everything. I found myself again in travel, as it should be. I was experiencing a bit of work burn out. Traveling and working is exhausting, no matter what some Continue Reading
Suzy Stumbles Over Travel: Week of July 16, 2012
Back from a very restful vacation, I bring you this week’s Suzy Stumbles Over Travel. In case you are new to this site, each week I ask bloggers/writers and readers to submit their favorite travel posts of the week. This can be from your own site or another writer’s piece. I read each submission, comment, tweet the article on Twitter, stumble the piece using Stumbleupon and post a link to the article on my Facebook page. The following week I select my five favorites to be featured here and the stumbling begins again into the next week. Just a few things to keep in mind, please only submit one Continue Reading
Wine Tasting Back in Time in Mallorca
I have been on wine tastings before, but never one that takes place in a time machine. The bus screeches to a halt where the landscape has changed from sparkling beaches to rows and rows of vines. I’m in between the towns of Inca and Muro on the Balearic Island of Mallorca. Wine tastings often take you through the winery, vineyards and onto a tasting room, where you learn just what you should taste and why. The Son Ramon vineyard however doesn’t produce wine in the ordinary manner. Set up on an estate with vineyards from 1760, a glass comes with the uncanny ability to transport the sipper Continue Reading
The Packed Suitcase For Life and The Overdue Vacation
I’m sitting on my suitcase in the hotel lobby in Berlin, hoping the latest addition of a hardback coffee table book will fit in with my life of 10 days. The bellhop stares at me and says, “Can I help you?” I guess I might look crazy to the naked eye but in reality I’m doing what I love to do, packing. Designer Diane Von Furstenberg says of packing, “When you figure out your suitcase, you figure out your life.” Most bemoan the packing process. It is one we try to make easier, quicker and lighter. However I have to agree with Diane. When you can figure out just what items are so important to Continue Reading