The legendary hotel on the Bosphorous Strait that harks back to the sultans’ opulence blended with legendary Kempinski luxury […]
Archive for ‘EUROPE’
The subversive art & life of David Cerny
Meeting the Czech Republic’s enfant terrible, David Cerny, whose bizarre, sometimes offensive sculptures have put Prague on the map of modern art […]
Chasing Shakespeare—from Stratford to Verona
This was the Bard’s bedroom, this was his desk! Did he write Twelfth Night with a quill? Were his fingers darkened black by the ink? You have to understand…I’ve been a fan of Shakespeare my entire life […]
Raffles Istanbul: Asian hospitality & European timelessness
He brought the pink balloons out on the balcony in the cold November air. “Make a wish and then let them go,” he told me. And so I did. We watched them float, carried by the autumn wind into Istanbul’s skies, until we couldn’t see them anymore […]
Cappadocia & other Turkish delights
Gliding over Cappadocia is everything that is and more than the pictures you’ve seen on someone else’s vacation […]
Blissful in Bodrum
This is the Bodrum we find ourselves in — at the crossroads of its hedonism and conscience, and these two roads would quickly merge because Turkish people are kind and compassionate. And the sun is always lovely on this peninsula […]
A week in Provence
There is no one else around in this lavender field. In this most gorgeous of hours, in this wildly colorful swath of land in Provence, I want to tell Gautier: This is why we came here.
Searching for Stalin’s Boots in Budapest
Discovering Budapest through its classical art and contemporary museums, the latter a remembrance of its Cold War past. […]
Santorini without the crowds
For a few days, Santorini was mine. It was like being in on a secret that made me smile — and no one had an idea why. […]
Even in miniature, France is larger than life
Why would I want to see a miniature Paris when I am already here…in life-size Paris, in real France? Because miniatures are so damn cute, that’s why! […]
The Paris I love
Like Hemingway said of Paris, “And then there was the bad weather,” at the beginning of A Moveable Feast, the […]
Istanbul: A story told in two continents
I didn’t fall in love with Istanbul until I was about to leave it. And by then, I was so completely enamored of the place that I would come back two months later […]
A journalist’s Warsaw
I have been in a mall in Warsaw for two hours and I haven’t seen a single Asian, either as […]
Chasing Kafka in Prague
I am standing in front of two men literally having a pissing contest and I cannot look away. By “men,” […]
How I found my muse in Florence
Of all the nine muses, all I really needed was one — to recover, to rewrite, to reclaim the contents of my missing flash drive. But really, it was to recover myself […]
In. f*cking. Bruges.
I waited for years to get to Bruges after watching the dark comedy In Bruges. The film is beautifully written, […]
Two GPS and still lost in Poland
My friend Gautier is on the phone with Andrej, whose flat in Krakow we are renting for the night. He’s […]
A girl named Penny in Delphi
We have all fallen in love with our local tour guide in Delphi, Greece. Her name is Penny Kolomvotsou; she […]
