Susan Spano

Biography

Susan Spano writes the "Her World" column and travel section cover stories for The Los Angeles Times. Her travel writing has appeared in books and magazines, and she originated "The Frugal Traveler" column for the New York Times' travel section.

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Her World

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Disenchantment tags along, even in enchanting lands

March 19, 2006

I recently saw two women in a Paris cafe leafing through guidebooks that gave them away as English-speaking tourists sampling the raptures of the City of Light. But you wouldn't know it from their tired, disenchanted demeanors.

Cultural gems in war's cross hairs

March 5, 2006

IT occurred to me recently that many of the tourist sights I hold most dear — France's Normandy battlefield, Pennsylvania's Gettysburg and England's Coventry Cathedral — have to do with war. The realization came as no coincidence, because I had been reading "The Destruction of Memory: Architecture at War," a new book by Australian Robert Bevan, about what is lost, beyond human lives, when people go to war.
A bridge to a forgotten stretch of French countryside

February 26, 2006

THE town of Millau in south-central France once was known for traffic jams because it was here that the A75 — a largely toll-free route from Paris to the Côte d'Azur — crossed the deep valley of the Tarn River. As a result, most travelers wanted nothing more than to get out of town fast.
The great mysteries of world travel

February 19, 2006

SINCE the invention of the wheel, several great mysteries have puzzled travelers. Where was Atlantis? What do the formations at Stonehenge mean? Why does the Leaning Tower of Pisa lean?
The bumpier the drive, the lovelier the scenery

February 12, 2006

A recent "Her World" column about the perils of driving abroad drew quite a bit of reader comment. In it, I revealed that I had hit a cow in Mexico, which elicited such remarks as, "At least you write better than you drive."
U.S. expat with a Sicilian soul

January 15, 2006

THE biographical reference book "Contemporary Authors" describes Mary Taylor Simeti as "co-owner and co-manager of a farm in western Sicily that produces grapes, olives and wheat," and then "writer," almost as an afterthought.
A comfy home away from home

January 8, 2006

TWO hotels are to open this year at Heathrow and Gatwick airports outside London, offering accommodations in compact, luxuriously fitted capsules, like first-class airline cabins. The idea intrigues me, but not enough to change my mind about St. Margaret's, an old-fashioned budget hotel in Bloomsbury and my favorite place to stay in London.
From here to the future, in maps

January 1, 2006

"EVERYTHING happens somewhere" would be a good motto for the Ordnance Survey, Britain's premier mapmaker since 1791 and now a leader in computerized map resources and their astounding 21st century applications.
Pssst: passing on a few Paris secrets

December 18, 2005

A few months after I moved to Paris two years ago, I wrote a Her World column about some of my favorite places to see and things to do in the City of Light — not the Louvre or Luxembourg Gardens, but little secrets you get to know only by walking the same block every day or by going out for milk and happening upon something wonderful.
Club Med rolls on through love, war and trends galore

December 11, 2005

THE year my family vacationed on the French-Caribbean island of Martinique, Jimmy Carter was president, the state of Utah executed Gary Gilmore and John Travolta starred in the movie "Saturday Night Fever." Our hotel was in St. Anne, near the Club Med Buccaneer's Creek, so my brother and I were on the lookout for swinging singles frolicking, nearly naked, on the beach. We were barely old enough to vote and hopelessly unsophisticated.
Where's the 'dumb tourist' clause?

December 4, 2005

I had been driving all day, and now it was dark. I had rented a car in Phoenix and was heading across the border to Kino Bay on the Gulf of California in the Mexican state of Sonora.
Musical casts a light on travel

November 27, 2005

PASSING through New York a few weeks ago, I saw a play that took my mind off tickets, luggage tags and transfers and made me think about some of the subtler, more profound aspects of travel: the way we encounter foreign cultures and the prejudices we bring to them, and how emotion colors our responses to faraway places.
When blini are involved, dieting takes a holiday

November 20, 2005

IN my bathroom, I have a poster from the 2003-04 Fernando Botero show at the Musée Maillol in Paris. The Colombian artist has made an unusual specialty of painting obese people, in the case of my print, a bountifully proportioned ballerina, en pointe, her meaty shank poised as her leg unfolds. She seems completely unashamed of the figure she cuts in white leotard and tights, which is what makes her interesting and beautiful.
Ancient tale transports a 21st century traveler

October 30, 2005

SOMEDAY I would like to see the Empty Quarter in the Arabian Desert; the Syrian trading entrepôt Aleppo; the ancient Persian capital of Esfahan; Central Asia's Tien Shan mountains; Borobudur Temple on the island of Java; the Vale of Kashmir in the Himalayas; Mecca; all the great sights of Dar al-Islam, historically a broad swath of Eurasia and Africa that was converted and colonized by followers of Muhammad.
Changing lives, one glass at a time

October 23, 2005

RESEARCHING a recent Her World column on traveling in places struggling with poverty, I discovered Global Exchange Reality Tours, a San Francisco company that tries to expose travelers to the daily lives of people in the developing world.