Covering the Olympics as a sportswriter, I’ve collected a reservoir of memories. I’ve been in Cortina for two weeks and gathered a few new ones. Here they are, from the beauty of the Dolomites to watching athletes crack under the pressure.
I’m in Cortina d’Ampezzo covering alpine skiing for Colorado Public Radio, The Olympics are always long for reporters. Many 17-hour days. Long bus rides. Major time gaps between food. But Sunday night I hit one of the most chic towns in Italy. I managed to meet three brothers from Bologna who had a pass to a party hosted by Alberto Tomba, Italy’s Olympic medalist skiing hero and eternal playboy. It was the highlight of another memorable Olympic memory.
This week I’ll be in Cortina d’Ampezzo to cover my fourth Winter Olympics. This time it’s for Colorado Public Radio and National Public Radio. I hope I collect a memory I can add to my long list of memories. Here I list 10 of them, most of them uplifting, some heartbreaking. But all memorable, from the U.S.-Canada gold medal hockey game in Vancouver to the Russia House in Turin.
What’s on your bucket list for 2026 travel? I’ve got mine down. I have 10 destinations ranging from Grenoble to Northern Vietnam with various deserts and islands scattered in between. I crossed off nearly every item on last year’s bucket list. Check out mine for this year and see if it inspires you to write one of your own.
Every January the New York Times posts a timely feature entitled 52 Places to Go. It’s one destination per week for that upcoming year. The Times has its part-time writers scour the Internet and phones for interesting places that have big events, celebrations or anniversaries. I am one of them. I send in five a year and this year they chose my suggestion of Assisi, Italy, which is celebrating the 800-year anniversary of the death of St. Francis. I write about it and my other four suggestions as my own personal Places to Go 2026.
Tired of traveling to the “classics”? Get off the beaten path and take a chance on a place you’ve never heard of. Freelance writer Alex Martin gives plenty of suggestions and advice in today’s guest blog.
Twelve years ago Sunday I showed up in Rome with three bags which weren’t nearly as heavy as my dreams. My retirement in Rome has surpassed all of them. Every year around Jan. 11, the date of my arrival in Rome in 2014, I list all the reasons why I love this crazy city. This is my latest edition. Stay tuned for more in coming years.
Resuming my side gig as a film extra, I played an obnoxious tourist in Netflix’s hit series “Emily in Paris.” It filmed Season 5 in Rome and I got to spend a sunny day in May in Ostia Antica’s pretty Piazza della Rocca. The series is a chick flick on estrogen but star Lily Collins is nice, the work is easy and the piazza is beautiful. There are worse ways to make wine money.
For a real Christmas feel, I took Marina to Vienna. Austria is the birthplace of Christmas markets and we perused a few of them. We also viewed the capital’s spectacular lights, ate its yummy wienerschnitzel and visited its many museums. I forgot how beautiful this city was. It was my first visit since 1978.
As a lover of wine and Lebanese cuisine, a visit to Lebanon’s biggest and oldest winery was the perfect way to wrap up my five-day trip. Chateau Ksara dates back to 1857 and its storage area is a cave that stretches two kilometers. It produces 70 percent of Lebanon’s growing wine industry and has won more than 200 awards. My Travelers’ Century Club visited and had a wonderful wine tasting.
(This is the second of a three-part series on Lebanon.) BEIRUT – In the heart of a country at war, there is Hamra. Hamra is the neighborhood in Beirut where you drink fine wine in elegant enotecas, peruse paintings in modern art galleries, sip coffee in tony cafes, chug beer in rollicking dive bars, see […]
I paid a taxi driver in Beirut $35 to drive me through Dahiyeh, Beirut’s most bombed neighborhood. It was like a mini Gaza. Buildings cut off at the second floor. Blown-out windows. Entire blackened buildings shaved of their outer layer. My driver gave me warnings not to get out of the car or take pictures and at one point, told me not even to take notes. It was a riveting inside look at Israel’s war with Hezbollah where its stronghold is Dahiyeh.
