Travel

Paris & London

It has been ten years since I was first in Europe. A third of my life away. It was Paris then and it is London now. It was ingenue then and it is teacher now. It was a world and a lifetime ago, and I feel all those rotations of the earth in my body, in all the stories I have lived and told since then. Life moves quickly. [more]

London: In Photos

Switzerland

We came here zinged on a big city's pulse, sleep deprived by bright lights and street noises and man's ingenuity. High. But the Alps--larger than London by so many metric tons--gives us the sense of coming down. [more]

Grindelwald, Switzerland: In Photos

Basel, Switzerland: In Photos

Germany

People travel abroad for all kinds of reasons. To relax. To challenge preconceptions. For work. For warmth. For snow. For food. To learn. Make memories. Mix it up. Get out of comfort zones. For the thrill. For bragging rights. Because a place is extraordinary. Because it's beautiful. Because it's scary. Sometimes, simply for something different. Usually, though, people don't travel to feel at home. [more]

Lahr, Germany: In Photos

France

You are at the train station, platform 1, looking north. You count the trains, the ones that stop for a minute--people on, people off--and the ones that blow past in a gush of hot, flapping wind. The smells are heavy with smoke and hot metal and longing. You are early. You look north. [more]

Strasbourg, France: In Photos

Europe in Glimpses

We come in and we go out. We enter and we leave. In the very old parts of the world, we can see the marks of these back and forth footprints in the cobblestone. But more often than not, the only thing that remains from our passages through life--these places we've journeyed through that have changed us--are glimpses, fragmented light and sound and memories, that we hold on to with our heart. [more]

Costa Rica

You said it was a twelve-house town. Did you call it town? No sé. You’ve been speaking in English and I’ve been attempting Spanish and there are details we’ve lost to effort, that we’ve grinned over, our hair flying around us in time to the bus’s bumps along the narrow road, the thick air coming in the open windows. [more]

Lake Chapala, Mexico: In Photos: