By Joshua Baker I pull my luggage around the side of an international market where the gurgling of a diesel engine stirs. Parked there is an obviously over-used white bus. The fenders over the tires are blackened with miles and it looks like it hasn’t been washed since the Van Hool C20’s were introduced circa 2000. The side doors are open for passengers’ bags to be loaded in. Just above the bus’s number is something scripted in Mandarin. I turn ...

By Sallie Lewis Longoria It’s coming on Christmas, and up and down my street, twinkle lights glow softly, like summer fireflies. While my own home will soon be decked for the holidays, the house next door remains dark and shuttered, a lingering reminder of what I lost. My grandparents – who I called Honey and Popo – were many things to me. Friends, first and foremost, role models, teachers, travel advisors, and much later in life, next-door neighbors. Together since ...

By Ingrid Anders A canal dredged from Cape May’s harbor to the Delaware Bay separates the old seaside resort from the rest of New Jersey. This is the kind of island Brooke wants to be—man made and cut off, so separated from the mainland she can forget she was ever part of it. The open laptop on the kitchen table glows at Brooke, silhouetting the mug about to deliver its third cup of black coffee to her empty stomach. The ...

By Stephanie Schroeder   I arranged my first home exchange in 2006. The deal was that my partner at the time and I would give up our Jersey City, NJ, apartment for a couple who had a house in Alkmaar, North Holland in The Netherlands. It was all very new to me, this home exchange adventure, but it was the only way I could afford to travel. I had only five days vacation from my job at a corporate PR firm, ...

By Kelly Murray The only way to read Flannery O’Connor is while taking a hot bath in a clawfoot tub in an old Victorian home on a warm night in Savannah, Georgia. That’s exactly where I was when I read her for the first time. I was staying at an Airbnb in Savannah’s Eastside district; a gorgeous renovated Victorian home with four bedrooms, a grand staircase, wraparound porch, a sunny shared kitchen, and, yes, a clawfoot tub. Three of them, ...

By Irene Jagla Not many Tucsonans willingly go to Phoenix, especially during the summer. The running joke is that Phoenix is nothing more than a giant parking lot in the desert. So when I found myself standing in a Phoenix parking lot on a sweltering July afternoon, enveloped in waves of heat emanating from the asphalt surface, I had to smile. I was watching the Copper Queens of Tucson Roller Derby do off-skate warm-ups before a bout with the Skate ...

By Madeline Gressman Nahant’s algae was rotting. The entire town reeked of sea decay, with countless fish and one seal washing ashore, dead. There wasn’t an escape from the odor; it seeped through our walls and weaved in with our clothes. Fans blasted at all hours, swirling the air in circles in a hope to dissipate the unholy smell. Today we were leaving the house for the first time since the algae bloomed. My mother, determined in her love of ...

By Stewart Lawrence Strolling recently in Washington, DC’s, Rock Creek Park, I had a rare close encounter with one of the Park’s dwindling number of Great Blue Herons. While joggers streaked by, oblivious to its presence, and rush-hour traffic passed noisily overhead, I sat in wordless wonder as the Great Blue, clinging to a half-submerged log, slowly surveyed its domain, then gently peered into the water with its fierce yellow eyes and double-billed javelin beak. The Great Blue is less well ...

Editor’s note: Marsha B. Wassel visited the Greenbrier in West Virginia in May. She gives a review and some background on the curative waters of the area. by Marsha B. Wassel History of the Springs There is a history of seeking wellness high in West Virginia’s Allegheny Mountains, where mineral springs flow deep in the Earth, before breaking through the surface. The surrounding forests were home to Shawnee Indians who were the first to value the curative properties of the ...

By Adria Carey Perez Why visit a fishing village? A combination of history, character, and amazing seafood. Here are my Top Five Fishing Villages to Visit:   Rock, Cornwall, UK I don’t know how many of you are watching Poldark (and if you’re not, you should be), but the show has put Cornwall on the European tourist map. I was lucky to find it before its newest fame, but I venture to say that if the English couldn’t change Cornwall ...