All in travel essay
Erin Mooz flew halfway across the world to visit her college roommate’s hometown, Shanghai, during Hairy Crab season, one of the city’s most anticipated culinary events of the year, and discovered there was more to the tradition than the delicious crustaceans.
Many of us travel in search of the different, the unusual, the exotic. But, for B.J. Stolbov, wherever he travels, he often finds himself searching for the familiar. Not the things that remind him of “back home,” but, rather, the moments of connection—to others, to nature, to himself—that each journey inspires.
When a dating website leads to a last-minute invitation to China, Tammy A. Kosco set aside her fears and said “yes'“ to a romantic adventure with a stranger. (Spoiler alert! — he was not a serial killer.)
Staying with strangers and getting lost on a rainy November night in Venice was just part of the adventure for Natalia Marchuk.
During a visit to Madrid, Spain, Melissa Paquette attended a flamenco show. Just as the first performance ended, a baby in the audience began to cry. Little did she know it, but the baby wouldn't be the only one in tears before the night was through.
During a walking holiday in Peru, writer and hiker Nancy King found that her most powerful and memorable moments occurred in quiet solitary interactions far away from the tourist throngs at Machu Picchu.
Was it destiny when Pamela Blair, a psychologist on holiday in Tunisia, met a heartbroken camel herder seeking advice from a stranger?
Pamela Blair, in the Sudan on the final leg of a long train voyage over a hot and empty desert, had prepared herself to be bored. It was what she hadn't planned on, however, that would forever change the way she saw the world and herself in it.
On impulse, Cynthia Hicks shelled out big bucks at a Chinese pearl factory. When buyer's remorse kicked in, the emotional journey behind it was unexpected.
Bobbi Lerman's solitary morning in a St Andrews tea shop is unexpectedly transformed by the spontaneous invite of four open-hearted Scottish women.
The morning of a late-night flight from Mexico City to Rome, Ashya Griffin was ready with passport, wallet, and flight information organized in her favorite red leather cross-body purse. So, no one was more surprised than she was to suddenly find herself at the check-in counter unable to put her hands on an essential document and unable to board.
During a tour of India, Carolyn Handler Miller discovers that she'd accidentally left behind an important purchase. Disappointment is soon transformed to surprise and delight when a feisty stranger steps up to save the day.
In the weeks leading up to a trip to India, Carolyn Handler Miller imagined all she'd see and experience: elephants, camels, monumental architecture, gorgeous saris and mysterious rituals at the Ganges. What she didn’t envision, however, was an unexpected aspect of the culture that left her questioning her ideas of privacy.
When long lines and growling stomachs force Laurie Gilberg Vander Velde and her husband to abandon their plans to eat at a famous Naples pizzeria, serendipity delivers something even better.
When Jordan Rousell and his sister booked a trip to Prague, they were excited to embark on a new adventure. They were entirely unprepared, however, for what awaited them there.
A winter adventure to view the Aurora Borealis in Finland revealed uncomfortable emotions for author Elyn Aviva when nature’s most spectacular light show wasn’t quite what she’d expected.
A decade ago, on the tiny isle of Cape Clear off the southern coast of Ireland (pop. 100) Rachel Dickinson found herself sitting next to a man in a pub who graduated from the same small college she attended in Upstate New York. It was such an improbable meeting that it threw her into a magical daze. Today, she recalls a trip filled with birds and quirky characters and a wee bar in a house where everyone drank and twirled to the music of a fiddle, pennywhistle, and bodhran.
Irene Sardanis and her husband love to travel. They disagree, however, when it comes to where to stay. He prefers the basics: a bed and a bath. She wants spacious rooms, fresh flowers, and a balcony with a view. On a trip to Italy, after enduring one too many drab, dark, and dismal hotel rooms, Irene rebelled, took charge, and found the ideal room for romance with passion as her reward.
All Elyn Aviva wanted was a quiet, peaceful vacation in a rented cottage in Penzance, Cornwall. Noise, traffic, and a lack of privacy was what she got instead. Ready to call it quits and return home, she creates a mental trick that helps her to endure. Until it doesn't.
by Paul Ross
Warned not to go, I followed my appetite to Iran and have returned home filled with beautiful memories, blessed with new friends, and brimming with the desire to show and tell, taste and smell, and surprise all those who never expected to see me again.
