Walking down Vail’s central pedestrian street, with its immaculately maintained, Swiss-style lodges and whimsical outdoor sculpture, I feel like I’m in a whitewashed bubble, where everything is beautiful and perfect. Flower boxes and pocket gardens overflow with brilliantly hued poppies, daisies, and geraniums. Restaurants and cafés are filled with people eating gourmet burgers, crisp, colorful salads, and handcrafted pasta beneath perfectly pleated umbrellas. The boutiques carry desirable, high-end merchandise (including a pair of adorable glass birds I’ve spied that cost $600 each one). There are never any sales. And everywhere you look, Vail Mountain rises high above, beckoning all into the depths of its wilderness.
I love it!
Except something seems amiss.
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A Most Amazing Light Show in Baltimore
The traditionally gritty port city of Baltimore is not the first place you think of when it comes to coolness. And probably not the second, third or even fourth. But one week a year, all that changes, during the international Light City Festival.
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Five Fun Things I Discovered While Walking in Washington, D.C.
When writing the National Geographic Walking Washington, D.C., guidebook this past year, I walked the entire city. It was the most fun I've ever had on a job! I've lived in Washington for more than 20 years, and felt like I knew the place inside-out. Little did I know how wrong I was. Here are five things I discovered on my recent perambulations around the capital city.
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