Travel

MOST RECENT TRAVELS:

January 2009: Spent a few days in Utah for a booksellers conference. Wandered around downtown Salt Lake City and went to Park City for a brief visit.

August 2008: I took a road trip through New Hampshire and Maine to Atlantic Canada. I visited New Hampshire (Portsmouth), Maine (Bar Harbor and Portland) and New Brunswick (Moncton, St. Andrews and St. John) en route to Prince Edward Island (Charlottetown, Cavendish and New Glasgow) where I spent five nights in a cottage at Dalvay-by-the-Sea.

August/September 2007: I lived in Melbourne, Australia for two months, during which time I traveled a bit around Victoria, and spent ten days in Tasmania.

July 2007: I spent three weeks in China, exploring Beijing, Shanghai, Suzhou and Xi’an.

US TRAVEL EXPERIENCE:

I’ve lived in the Mid-Atlantic all my life and am well-traveled from New York to Washington DC. I’m most familiar with Baltimore (where I lived for 11 years), Bergen County, NJ (where I was born and attended high school), the Jersey Shore (where I vacation almost every year), Rockland County, NY (where I grew up) and Manhattan (where I currently live.)

I’m also familiar with other areas of the Hudson Valley and Northern New Jersey, and have enjoyed visits to these US cities in the past ten years: Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Chicago, Las Vegas, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Portland (OR), San Antonio, San Diego, Scottsdale, Sedona and Tampa.

In the early 1990’s, I drove cross-country with my father and made brief visits to Los Angeles, San Francisco, St. Louis, Santa Fe and the Grand Canyon.

During college I participated in two service immersion programs in Appalachia. I taught literacy classes in Ivanhoe, Virgina and worked on construction projects in Kentucky for the now completed David School (which was featured in the 2006 PBS documentary Country Boys.)

As of March 2009: I’ve been to 33 states. (Includes a few I only passed through.)

INTERNATIONAL TRAVEL EXPERIENCE:

Elsewhere in North America, I’ve visited Toronto, Montreal and Quebec, Canada and did spring break in Cancun, Mexico with my college pals. I also spent ten days on a community service immersion trip in Tijuana and Tecate, Mexico in 1996.

In 2003, I spent three weeks in Melbourne and Sydney, Australia. Highlights of the trip included a visit to Echuca and a drive along the Great Ocean Road. In 2007, I returned to OZ and spent two months living in Melbourne, exploring some other parts of Victoria and hiking around Tasmania for ten days.

My most extensive travels outside the US have been in Europe. In the summer of 1996 I spent five weeks traveling by train through eight countries with two college friends. We visited Paris, Barcelona, Venice, Florence, Rome, Salzburg, Munich and Geneva, then ended the trip with ten days in London, Dublin and other parts of Ireland.

Ten years later, beginning in February 2006, I returned to Europe for five months of budget backpacking. I began with a month on my own Couchsurfing and Wwoofing in Portugal and Spain, then two months traveling with a friend to places like Madrid, Lyon, Bruges, Amsterdam, Berlin, Warsaw, Krakow, Prague, Cesky Krumlov, Budapest and Ljubljana. I then spent more time solo and with family in Slovenia, Italy and Croatia. Near the end of my journey I was fortunate to attend two World Cup games in Germany and spend a week at a secluded Tuscan villa.

While traveling in Europe I wrote for two BootsnAll Travel Network websites, Eurail Blog and an earlier version of this website, Lost in Place, where I chronicled my European travels.

As of March 2009: I’ve been to 25 countries. (Includes three in Europe that I only passed through – Bosnia, Monaco, Slovakia – but I’m counting them anyway)