I’m not sure what this says about me, but I love cemeteries. I don’t like new, tidy ones. Cemeteries with too many rules and uniformity don’t interest me. I prefer old, dilapidated cemeteries with overgrown landscaping and half-buried headstones. I like it when families or the passage of time has put their stamp on the…
Read more
Happy 4th of July! Actually, it’s July 8, so Happy 8th of July. I hope everyone had a great holiday weekend. I am just back from Tahoe, where I was not only celebrating America’s birthday but also celebrating my daughter’s 21st birthday. Lake Tahoe is a 4-hour drive from the Bay Area and a favorite…
Read more
I recently wrote a blog to the class of 2021 advising grads to start an Emergency Travel Fund -just in case someone invites them somewhere cool. Well, that is excellent advice. Because guess what? My girlfriend recently texted: “Hey Paula, do you want to go to PVR with me on my 48-hour layover?” (She’s a…
Read more
My husband would not want me to tell you this. But he doesn’t read my blog, so I’m going to say it. He’s a two-time Grammy winner. He won once with BB King. More recently, he won with Pacific Mambo Orchestra (PMO) in the Latin Jazz category. This past weekend, I had the privilege of…
Read more
Recently, at a party, a young lady asked for my summer travel recommendations. I gave my new friend lots of great ideas for her vacation, which gave me lots of inspiration for my blog. For the most part, travel this summer is restricted to within the United States. So, of course, I told her she…
Read more
This past Memorial Day weekend, Las Vegas was PACKED! Nevada’s law (plastered all over the casino) states that people who are not vaccinated must wear masks. Nationally, about 40% of Americans are currently fully vaccinated. But In Las Vegas, the percentage must be much higher. Judging from the unmasked crowd, I’d estimate about 90% are…
Read more
Before I had kids, my brother, Michael, and I started a baseball stadium tour. Once a year, we would meet in a different city to watch our favorite sport: baseball. Our first trip was to Boston’s beloved Fenway Park. We took a stadium tour where we walked the field, sat in the dugout, and peeked…
Read more
**Looking through my travel journal for inspiration, I came across this 2019 entry I’d written about China. Before the world shut down, Beijing was one of my favorite and most frequent layover destinations. However, following Trump’s xenophobic rhetoric along with recent reports of hate crimes against Asians, this 2019 entry is inserted into a new…
Read more
It’s graduation season, and this year, I happen to have many graduates in my life. So, I thought I’d write an (unsolicited) advice blog for the class of 2021. Normally, I don’t like to give advice because I don’t pretend to have anything figured out, but what the hell? Here goes… My advice: # 1….
Read more
For Mother’s Day, I invited my mom to dim sum in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Since I have a broken ankle and my mother has a walker, we didn’t cover much ground -only about a 4-block radius. San Francisco is a great walking town unless you have a broken ankle or a walker. Then, it’s a…
Read more