 Traditionally considered to be a classic "outing with the kids," apple picking is fun for really big kids, too (I happen to fall into the second category). The perfect place is only a half hour drive from Montreal, right next to Oka Park (for those of you who are familiar with its pristine beaches).
Saint Joseph-du-Lac is a town completely devoted to planting, growing, cultivating, juicing, and baking apples. In short, everything to do with apples except picking them - that you have to do yourself...
Read the rest of: "Saint Joseph-du-Lac: The Big Apple (of Quebec) "» 
I've always been attracted to all things completely gaudy... well, art- and architecture-wise. So, of course, I had to witness the decadence which is Versailles when I visited Paris. Aside from being into the royals of the past, I will confess... I have a big crush on paintings of young Napoleon, and I wanted to see "Bonaparte à Arcole" and the larger than life "Coronation of Napoleon" painting with my own eyes! Oh yeah, and the acres of lush gardens, Hall of Mirrors and all the crazy statues and paintings... and stuff...
Read the rest of: "Paris Daytrip to Versailles"»
To really enjoy Barcelona - without a doubt, one of the most beautiful cities in Europe - you will be better off steering clear of tourist traps and high-traffic areas. Some landmarks, however, are a "must see"...
Read the rest of: "Gaudí's Barcelona"» 
Until 1986, the site of the Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City, Queens, was an illegal riverside landfill, abandoned and ugly.
A group of local artists got together and decided to turn the area into a park and outdoor museum...
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Somewhat inaccessibly located on the Costa Brava, this small fishing town is the perfect escape from the heat of Spain's major cities, a place to dally for days on end. Some hippies have been dawdling here for decades, and their presence keeps the town from developing into a full-blown designer village, à la Martha's Vineyard or the Hamptons. I can imagine this place becoming a more obscure "south of France" for celebrities, and get the sneaking suspicion that some of the hippies fishing off the rocks might in fact be celebrities incognito.
Cadaqués is famous for being Dalí's home, but my husband and I came for the beaches and stayed for the food and the slightly off-kilter atmosphere...
Read the rest of: "Dallying with Dalí in Cadaqués "» It's 5 am. You've just wandered from the far east side of Alphabet City, in search of pizza, a hot sandwich, SOMETHING that isn't deli chips. But everything is closed!
Wander no more! Hot food awaits at the corner of St. Marks and 2nd Avenue in the East Village...
Read the rest of: "Hot Bamn!"»
What is left for mama's boys (and girls) when all the clubs in the city
are occupied by doped-up teens acting agressively towards perpetually
high-strung art students? Where should we go, when cinemas are too dark
for these prudish girls (that someone will use the cover of darkness
for their own dark ways is the most common fear of an overage square),
when creepy old ladies restrain our melancholic reflections in our
philarmonic armchairs and our empiric attempts to find new concepts in
old museum artifacts? The conclusion is obvious: head for a café...
Read the rest of: "Cafés Imitate Life in St. Petersburg"»  On my first visit to Grassroots Tavern, I accepted a $3 pint of Red Hook ESB from the bartender—which in New York City, is a pleasant surprise in and of itself. Being one of New York's many subterranean drinking dens, the place has a basement feel—with low, ornate tin ceilings and weathered wood surroundings. There was a cat walking the wooden planks, which had been blackened from over sixty years of drunken shuffling. The bartender, an efficient man in his sixties, worried out loud that the cat might get downstairs into the basement.
I started to feel a bit like I was in someone's home, and that's always a good sign...
Read the rest of: "Grassroots Tavern"» |
