Seeking Beauty on Roads Less Traveled

I have often wished for a place where I could just drop off the grid for a moment in time. Often times, I feel as if I was born in the wrong century. Case in point, I am a person who still has a rotary dial phone in my house. By choice. I do not fight the invasion of modern technology but I do not exactly embrace it with open arms either. More often than not, I feel people and their seemingly unnatural relationships with their iPads, laptops and cellular telephones takes away from the opportunities to interact in the present moment with a fellow human being. How am I ever going to meet Prince Charming if he is too busy interacting with his iPad to even see that I walked into the room? :) I miss the days when one could stop for a coffee at a cafe and actually have the chance to strike up a spontaneous conversation with the person seated at the next table. Now more often than not, that very same person is already engaged in a conversation with someone on their cell phone.

“I am not leaving Ireland until we see puffins”, declares my mother before we even hit the shores of the Emerald Isle. The internet has given this mother of mine way too much power if it is to be believed that knowledge is power. She has learned (or more to the point, I think she just always knew this) that puffins can be found on islands off the coast of Ireland this time of year. This time of year being May. Never mind that the Atlantic Ocean is rather chilly...and the winds can be brisk. A boat must be found that can navigate us to Skellig Michael where the illusive puffins can be found in one of their natural habitats. A boat and its captain are hired but the details seem a bit vague. “Just head into Port Magee and look for a blue boat”. That's it. So we do just that at 10a.m. on a very clear weather for Ireland kind of day. Driving into town with our no-bigger-than-a-bread-box rental car with stick shift on opposite side of where I am used to finding it, we

"Look, here's an old map of the NYC subway system, " I say as I pick up a framed map that is leaning against a chained linked fence in a massive football field size parking lot in California. I did not expect to see this 3,000 miles from home. There's a sign that reads "Todo para $1.00...Everything for a dollar" but of course, that does not apply to the map. I still do not know how much that map would have been. I could not tell if it was an original or a print made last week in China. And I have a $2.00 rule. I am not paying more than $2.00 for anything today. "Next time, you have to dress grungier, Estelle. You look like you can pay more than a dollar." Come on, I did not don a ballgown and tiara for this outing; wearing blue jeans (that's as dressed-down as I get), a turtleneck sweater and a fleecy over- the- turtleneck sweater...did not even bring a designer purse. I tried to dress down. I really did. My friend Dario is a devotee of this sw

"What do you think about us going to pick up the quilt?", I ask my Mom. "You know there is FedEx and the postal service...we could just have it sent to us." my Mom says as she is probably already thinking about what she will need to pack. "But whatever you want to do. " Next stop: Dallas/Fort Worth Airport. Look, I know there are easier ways to have gone about this. I admit on paper it looks logical but did I factor in little things like rush hour traffic, taking time to eat 3 meals a day, time spent waiting at airport luggage carousels, getting lost because who would even understand GPS...besides we rather use maps... and picking up car rentals and waiting for shuttle vans and...? Lets just say why dwell on those petty details :) I just arrived home from a work trip from the West Coast mere hours ago. I am running on about 4 hours of sleep and lots of adrenaline. My car needs to be at JFK airport in NYC but we are flying out of LaGuardia so we drive to JF

There's Casablanca, Rabat, Marrakech (no, we did not visit this city but I know it's there for another time), Fes....wait, let me share a bit of our visit to Fes before we travel onward. Fes is a sprawling metropolis which consists of something along the lines of 14,000 winding streets and alleyways....some that seemingly date back to the 10th century. Unless one wants to get hopelessly and endlessly lost in the labyrinth that is Fes, acquire a reputable tour guide. This way, as we did, we could navigate our way to and around the synogogue, the mosques, the vendors, the tanning vats and the donkeys which are THE mode of transport within the confines of old Fes. Our time in Fes was enhanced by rain which makes those alleyways and streets a tad more challenging to navigate since some of those streets are not as wide as one's umbrella. So teetering and tilting our umbrellas, walking through the muddy lanes of Fes and hoping not to get mowed down by a run-away donkey transporti

There are two things I truly wanted to experience whilst in Morocco...participating in a belly dancing class and going to a hammam (think spa- Moroccan-style). Well, one out of two isn't bad, right? Maybe there is just too much belly in my dancing and Morocco wasn't ready for all of that :) but the hammam in Rabat was ready. It is fair to say that with any new experience in a foreign country where I do not speak their language and they do not speak any of the 3 1/2 I know, I enter an experience with a little bit of trepidation. I admit it. I do not like surprises. Thank goodness for Sara. Sara is my friend who moved to Rabat with her husband Christopher and children. They are the reason Mom and I are in Morocco...to visit with them. Sara has been to the hammam before and this is where we find ourselves on a sunny Wednesday in Rabat. The hammam looks harmless enough. A sports fitness center on one side of the building and what looks like an entrance to a spa on the other side. S

The first word in the title of this writing... In'shallah...I believe it tells one everything one needs to know about Morocco. It translates loosely as God willing and covers a multitude of situations. In'shallah, I will find a place to buy a phone card so I can place a phone call...or maybe not. I will be successful in flagging down a taxi driver that will actually take me to my destination...or maybe not. I will find a bathroom stall in a restaurant that has toilet paper to use...or maybe not in which case, I will use a paper envelope I happen to have in my purse. In'shallah... we will find an internet cafe so we send a few e-mails home...and we do find an internet cafe but I won't lie ...the Arabic keyboard does make for a few challenges in composing an e-mail in English. In'shallah...the gentleman who works at the internet cafe speaks a bit of English. He helps us navigate through the cyberspace world working our way around the Arabic keyboard. In'shallah...