Practical travel information for practical travelers
Tonalá is a city of around 350,000 located near Guadalajara, in central Mexico. The city is well known for its ceramics, glass, and other native arts and crafts, and you can see them all and the city’s open air markets held on Thursday and Sunday. Market days will find the neighborhoods full of goods displayed [...]
Adventure travel doesn’t have to mean roughing it, and there’s probably no better example than Galapagos cruises, which mash up education, adventure, and luxury into vacations of a lifetime. The Galapagos Islands are located about 525 miles west of Ecuador, and are a volcanic archipelago hovering around the equator. The islands are home to a [...]
As much as I might try to ignore it, here in Seattle the weather is starting to feel more like fall than summer. Seattle usually has great Indian summer weather, but once we hit winter it’s definitely the time to start thinking about getting out of town. If your get-out-of-town preference leans toward the island [...]
If you’re looking for a vacation destination where you can get real value for your travel dollars, put Costa Rica on your list of countries to visit. A Central American country, Costa Rica is perfectly poised between the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, and is accessible from the United States via air (usually through [...]
Fast food can be good food, and Karne Garibaldi (website is in Spanish) in Guadalajara, Mexico proves the point over and over again. Whenever I’m in Guadalajara, you can bank on my having at least one meal at this casual restaurant whose claim to fame is the Guinness Book of Records (1996) entry for the [...]
Guadalajara is my favorite city in Mexico. It is the capital city of Jalisco, and is the second largest city in the country behind Mexico City. Guadalajara is a wonderful combination of cosmopolitan city and a historic center, blending the old with the new, the modern with the traditional, and the hip with the historic. [...]
If travel, just for the sake of travel, seems too decadent for you, how about this excuse: I have to pop down to Argentina to visit my vineyard and check on my wine. OK, I might be overstating things just a bit, but with the Algodon Wine Estates Barrel Ownership program you can combine your [...]
I’m not a big fan of Halloween. It’s not for any particular religious or cultural reason, I just don’t like dressing up in costumes and begging for candy. OK, as adults that’s not exactly how we celebrate Halloween, but I don’t particularly care for the adult version of the holiday either. But, this is a [...]
In addition to traveling, Mary Jo likes lingering over a cup of coffee, wandering in a museum, sipping wine at a cafe, enjoying a relaxing massage, and sharing it all with friends and readers.
Her most recent travels were to Portugal and Italy.
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