Standing in front of the Hotel Artemis on the Greek island of Mykonos, we breathed a large sigh of relief. My friend and I had just stepped out of a van that had shuttled us from the harbor to the hotel. “Shuttled” being a word, in this case, used to define driving as quickly as possible in hopes of dislodging the tourist’s bags that had previously been thrown on top of the van without so much as a hairnet to
…Author: Roger Starkey
“In what college sport did Oscar Wilde participate?” the tour guide asked. The question was directed to a man from Nottingham, England and me. We were the finalists in the Dublin Literary Pub Crawl trivia contest. Whoever answered this question correctly took home a free t-shirt.
It wasn’t the first time this question had been posed to me. I was living in Dublin, Ireland at the time and had taken the tour a few weeks prior. I almost felt guilty
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If you go to Pamplona, Spain, during the Festival of San Fermín – most noted for the daily running of the bulls – be sure to wear all white and tie a red handkerchief about your neck.
Get dressed, look at yourself in the mirror and laugh if you must. But if you don’t dress appropriately, you will most likely feel as self-conscious as a twelve-year-old child on his first day in a new school. An easy way to spot
…I lived in Santiago, Chile for a time. Every day that I was home, a man would walk down Avenida Suecia blowing an annoying, harmonica-like whistle and pulling a box on wheels. The tune was incessant and the man’s gait methodical.
He nearly drove me insane. Worse, I had no idea why he kept making that racket.
It was rather apparent that the man was trying to attract business, but, because I never saw anyone even speak to him, let
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Argentina is the fifth largest wine producing country in the world, and the Mendoza province is responsible for 70 percent of that production. Not surprisingly, the roughly 1,200 vineyards in the province are a major reason 700,000 tourists flock to Mendoza annually.
The city’s location near the Andes Mountains makes Mendoza one of the top adventure tourist draws in the country. The city center is laden with adventure tourism outfits catering to the more adventurous.
My friend and I went
…If you’ve eaten in a Santiagueño restaurant and been impressed with the food, you’re most probably a Santiagueño yourself; or fond of bland food. Restaurant menus in Santiago, despite the city’s proximity to the Pacific Ocean, are heavy on meat that is light on flavor.
Applying the fat equals happy theory, restaurants serve abundant portions to compensate for sparse taste. A sandwich and an order of fries are often sized for two.
The Parrillada is a towering example of carnivorous
…The lady who opened the door to greet us hadn’t washed her hair this calendar year. I thought immediately that she had given up bathing for her New Year’s resolution. Pausing for a moment, I decided to attempt to honor my resolution (made each year for the past twenty-three) and try to see the world positively. Perhaps her hair looked so vulgar because she had been advised that olive oil was a great way to treat dandruff. She appeared determined to solve that problem
…Sunday was a big day for my wife and me; after three months of jealously protecting our son, we finally took him into the world of strangers. Born six and one-half weeks premature, and in the heart of cold and flu season, we were continuously reminded by doctors not to take him around strangers for fear that his tiny immune system wouldn’t be able to handle the onslaught of germs with which he was sure to be inundated. We had
…American men are increasingly, and happily, taking on a more equal share of child raising responsibilities (the massive female martyr complex, along with elephant-like memories that allow them to recall–in detail–every moment of the breast-feeding process, will never allow us to claim equality in child rearing). However, we seem to get as much credit for our efforts as if we, instead, spend all of our time on the golf course yelling “fore!” and taking whiskey shots off the baby powdered bosoms
…I’m sure the question of what the parenting world would look like if it was controlled by straight men has been addressed many times in many forums–most of the seating at those forums being on bar stools. That won’t, however, stop me from offering my views on the subject.
Before I start, I’d like to lay out one simple ground rule: mothers are still involved with child-rearing in my hypothetical world, they are just reduced to a subservient role, just
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