I never tire of tapas. Sure, you can find them in some American cities, but for the true tapas experience, you must go to Spain. When I’m there, I can’t resist stopping in local bars to munch on these small portions of seafood, salads, meat-filled pastries, deep-fried tasties and on and on.
MUNICH–Traveling alone while on business during the summer can make you feel cut off from both the familiarity of home and the pleasures of the place you are visiting.
• Take a last-minute trip to Santa Fe, N.M., and get 65 percent savings at the Bishop’s Lodge Ranch Resort&Spa. For May, a two-bedroom villa is $339 (plus $67 taxes and resort fee); usual rate is $969. The promo also includes a$100 daily resort credit and a bottle of wine and chocolate-covered strawberries at check-in. Info: (800) 732-2240, www.bishops-lodge.com.
Ever wonder why the same hotel gets four stars from one website and three stars from another? What’s the difference between a bed-and-breakfast and an inn? What exactly is a boutique hotel, and what do you get when you stay at a resort?
We’re walking past groves of soaring redwood “families,” some with their innards carved out by forest fires. But we’re not in a crowded national park. In fact, we pretty much have the hiking trail to ourselves in Butano State Park in the Santa Cruz Mountains, midway between Santa Cruz and Half Moon Bay and only a little more than an hour from San Francisco. Butano State Park – one of the least known of the California parks – is home to a spectacular redwood/ Douglas fir forest.
The only sound in the crystalline mountain air was the crunch of our bicycle tires on the crushed limestone path. We had pedaled around a bend, leaving behind the frothing Youghiogheny River and its whitewater rafters. Now, as we paused to split an orange, my husband and I looked down the path ahead of us, through the springtime trees just beginning to leaf out. The morning sun slanting between their narrow trunks striped the trail with parallel bars of light and shadow.
Which came first: Giverny or Monet? Certain artists are so identified with particular places that it’s hard to pry them apart. France, with its shimmering light and gorgeous scenery, has more than its share of these pairings: Monet at Giverny, Matisse in Nice, Picasso at Antibes and Van Gogh in both Arles and Auvers-sur-Oise. It’s enjoyable to see the artists’ masterpieces in museums, but you can get a better sense of what inspired them by visiting the places where they worked. Late in life Claude Monet built a garden paradise in Giverny (50 miles from Paris), complete with a Japanese garden and a pond full of floating lilies. To capture the pond, wisteria, willows and lilies on canvas, he set up his easel outdoors. Today, we say, “Well, duh!” But open-air painting was unorthodox in the 19th century. The Giverny gardens are just like Monet’s paintings—brightly colored, untamed and slapdash, and dappled by the reflections of sky, clouds and trees. Flowers were his brush strokes. Strolling along the edge of the lily pond, you can see that Monet’s true subject was not the garden itself—it was the play of light. To see some of the famous water lily paintings Monet created here, visit the Orangerie Museum in Paris. In Giverny, the Museum of the Impressionists is worth a look.
• Wish for a cool Texas summer: Starting June 2, guests at the three Four Seasons properties in Texas pay the high temperature of the day on their second night. The Big Chill package is available at the Austin, Houston and Dallas properties. Terms vary.
TORONTO—Ahhh! The sights, smells and tastes of a bustling market— there is nothing quite like it, and the St. Lawrence Market, with its rich history and 120-plus merchants, is one of the best. Locals, tourists and even top chefs nibble, sample and bargain their way through aisles of butchers, fishmongers, bakeries, cheese makers and specialty food stalls.
We were at the midpoint of our Adventure Canada cruise; the day before, we had visited Grise Fiord, the northernmost village in Canada. Then, as we headed farther north in 50-mph winds, through the notorious Middle Ice of Baffin Bay, we were forced to alter course and take shelter behind islands off the coast of Greenland. But with that we had, at last, completed our traverse of the fabled Northwest Passage, through 1,500 miles of Canadian Arctic.
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