On our last full day in the Amalfi Coast we ventured on a day trip to the towns of Amalfi and Atrani. While we could have taken another ferry from Positano we decided to travel by bus, another must do experience in the region. There is a network of intercity travel along the coast which makes it easy to get around without a car, provided you are prepared for the trip. Bus drivers in Southern Italy are built differently and are equipped with nerves of steel. If you are scare

Mid trip we arranged to be picked up by car and driven to the historic site of Pompeii, something I had missed on my first swing through the area decades earlier. We couldn't have asked for a better day - the sky was blue, and the air was still. It was neither hot nor cold - a perfect day that lends itself to the thrill of exploration. Pompeii, a UNESCO world heritage site, sits at the base of the almighty Vesuvius volcano, about 20 minutes outside of Naples. This Greco-Ro

I stumbled onto Capri in the 90s in a serendipitous moment during my low budget, university graduation backpacking trip. Those days on the island were an unexpected bolt of lightning, its profound beauty, striking fast and deep. Meanwhile, I blinked, and it was 25 years later. The day Pablo and I set out for Capri I felt nervous at breakfast. Had it really been as beautiful as I remembered, or was it all a figment of my imagination that grew with the decades? We fidgeted aro

Four years ago Pablo and I embarked on our inaugural European vacation together. To compound that even further, it was our first trip since the start of the pandemic. We, like much of the world, had been sitting in our house for a year and half. That alone made it epic. The world suddenly felt huge. Those were strange times. Pablo was jet-lagged on our arrival in Rome and I hadn't felt the wind in his sails on the train to Naples. Would he love Italy the way I do? We emer

Kingston, Ontario is both a central gathering point within Eastern Ontario, as well as a central character in my life. Throughout the decades I have come and gone from Kingston. We have loved, and lost, fought, broken up and always made-up. In the end, all roads have led me back to Kingston. At 175,000 inhabitants, it is the biggest city in Eastern Ontario outside of Ottawa. While I would no longer call it tiny Ontario (as a kid Kingston was closer to 60,000), it is the reg

As a traveller I love travel, both physical and mental. The other day we went to a movie after work to see The Way, My Way, a story about an Australian filmmaker, with a bum knee, who decides to embark on a pilgrimage to walk the Camino de Santiago across Spain. It hits all the notes of a grand adventure - beauty, humour, overcoming challenges and human connection. The Camino commonly begins in Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, France and transverses the north of Spain. It's 800 ki

When I moved to Mexico in the 90s, one of my favourite things to do was to go shopping. And I don't mean shopping for shoes or designer bags. I loved the everyday shopping for groceries and other necessities. My town had several supermarkets which I frequented but my favourite place was the market, which butted up against the Gulf of Mexico. The fisherman would dock their boats, throwing their catch of the day to the vendors above. I would wake in the morning, heading ou

As a young girl, around seven or eight years old, my grandparents took my brother and I to Niagara Falls from our small town in the Eastern side of Ontario, Canada. It’s not as though I’d never left home but it was the first time I ever travelled anywhere specifically as a tourist . The week leading up to the trip I floated on cloud nine, writing my packing lists and preparing my suitcase with precision. My grandparents turned the backseat of the car into a fort with pillows

I had the privilege to live in Argentina for eight years when my children were little. A country that adores small children; it was a wonderful place to be a young mother. I hadn't returned in over 10 years and would daydream about it. Being so intimately connected with a place, and then not returning for a long time is surreal. The mind can play funny tricks. What does the memory embellish? How much is reality and how much is rose coloured glasses? About six months ago,