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Susan SpanoHer World• E-mail
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Recent Columns:
Putalibazar, Nepal — IT'S often said that travelers visit Nepal because of the mountains but return because of the people. The generosity of the Nepalese goes straight to the heart and inspires reciprocation.
BRIAN BIRKENSTEIN mops floors in Antarctica, but he is not a professional janitor.
EVERYONE told me the world is round. But last month I had to find out for myself.
Paris — WHEN Julia Child first came to France in 1948, she couldn't cook an omelet. She was a tall, gawky Pasadena girl married to a cultural liaison officer posted at the U.S. Embassy in Paris. She had heard the French were touchy. She couldn't speak their language and had no expectations for her stay.
I will probably never visit Prague in the Czech Republic. Though I once spent a month in India, I didn't tour the Taj Mahal. And it would take a live sighting of Shakespeare to make me return to Stratford-upon-Avon in England.
I discovered an incredible new travel tool while I was having a tooth crowned recently. My L.A. dentist and I were waiting for my gums to numb when he turned on his computer and asked, "Have you seen this?"
IN Dante's "Inferno," hell is divided into nine concentric circles where unrepentant sinners are punished in lurid ways, like immersion in boiling blood or eternal exposure to rain and hail.
ONE rainy afternoon a few weeks ago, I was having tea at the Auberge la Lucarne aux Chouettes in a riverside hamlet about 80 miles southeast of Paris when the innkeeper joined me. She was a petite woman with dark brown hair, over 60, I guessed, but how much older I couldn't say because she had beautiful skin, luminous green eyes and a very light step.
SOME people hunt for out-of-state license plates, listen to a long piece of classical music or simply zone out while driving Interstate 5 through California's seemingly endless Central Valley, which is as flat and featureless as a tabletop. But those who have driven that stretch of highway more than a few times know that rest for the weary awaits at the Harris Ranch Inn and Restaurant.
WHEN I was a little girl, I used to lie in bed at night, eyes closed, trying to imagine how the room would look if my feet were where my head was. My recent travels in Eastern Europe have been a little like that for me, an exercise in intentional self-disorientation that has allowed me to see things from fresh angles.