Canada’s largest city, Toronto, is home to a diverse population of nearly three million people which includes virtually all of the world’s culture groups, reflected in the more than 100 languages and dialects spoken. As a result of this diversity, Toronto is known for its tolerance, open-mindedness, and acceptance. Multiculturalism … Read more
If there’s anything that Canadians – at least the ones we’re hanging out with – know for sure, it’s that we own winter. The coldest season of the year is in our blood and in our bones. It’s a lifelong love affair born during childhood when, after the first major … Read more
The first time I visited Nova Scotia, I stayed three weeks, the longest I’ve ever stayed in one place in all my travels. It wasn’t just the natural splendor of this Canadian maritime province—an idyllic landscape of wide sandy beaches, towering bluffs, lush forests, and rolling green meadows lapped by … Read more
It isn’t easy to match a single word with every hotel you’ve experienced in your travels but word association comes easy when it comes to the Windsor Arms in Toronto – discreet. You realize this at check-in when you’re introduced to your butler. Don’t think starched collar and white gloves, … Read more
A black bear flips over giant beach boulders as though they were mere rubber balls then paws at rock crabs hiding underneath – a bountiful seafood feast at the water’s edge. We watch transfixed for a good ten minutes, before motoring slowly out of Ucluelet. Ucluelet and its more gentrified … Read more
What’s the first thing you notice when summer turns to fall in Canada? It’s the color … especially in Southern Alberta, our neck of the woods, where autumn hits early and the low hanging, late afternoon sun lights up the landscape like a movie screen. This is peak hiking season, … Read more
Cities, restaurants, temples, shops, markets? Cultural experiences? Museums? Bars, late night jazz clubs? Dancing? Drinking? Who needs any of it? Japan offers, instead, a unique and magical one of a kind opportunity to explore the depths of your soul, and live to tell the tale. Ryokans, a type of … Read more
For decades, Antwerp has scored high for its coolness quotient. Situated in Belgium’s northwest province of Flanders, its second-largest city put itself on the map in the late 80’s when a group of fashion school graduates threw their designs into the back of a rented truck and headed to … Read more
There’s never enough time in Berlin to see and do everything but I thought I’d give it my best shot recently on a whirlwind weekend in the German capital. A friend told me about an interesting neighborhood that she likened to the “SoHo of Berlin” called the Hackesche Hofe in … Read more
“What’s your major? What year are you? What dorm do you live in? Standard questions when making friends in college. But as I cross an old stone bridge and meet a dozen travelers from Barcelona, I’m met with a different set of questions that I will hear over and over … Read more
At the top of my travel bucket list, to use a way over-used term, Antarctica occupied the number one, two and three positions. So when I was approached about visiting the Great White Continent, I grabbed my passport, parka and camera and jumped on it. Travel to the bottom of … Read more
Hailed as the last Shangri-La, the country of Bhutan is now becoming more accessible to the outside world. Having previously been closed to visitors, tourism to Bhutan started in the 1970’s and has been growing ever since. The country’s isolation had preserved Bhutan’s unsullied landscape giving it a direct and … Read more
It’s a summer evening in Fira, Santorini, after sunset. Music is booming out of every open doorway signaling that the evening has officially begun. Crowds of people are lining the narrow walkways of the largest village on the island. Climbing up the steps past the whitewashed buildings towards one … Read more
On my last visit to Florence, I made sure to see all of the city’s most famous attractions, from Michelangelo’s David in the Accademia Gallery, the Uffizi with its gallery upon gallery of Renaissance treasures from the masters like Botticelli and Titian, along with the city’s most famous landmark, … Read more
It’s been said that the island of Santorini was created by a famous earthquake about 1500 BC and that it may be a remnant of the legendary lost continent of Atlantis. While this is true, there is another side to the mysterious island. Writers throughout history have already dedicated countless … Read more