At 10:30 the next morning, I was still full. In 38 years of enthusiastic binge-eating, that has never happened. Beware Fogo de Chão. Despite the absence of the usual morning void in my stomach, I was looking forward to my 11 o’clock brunch date at Cosmos inside the Graves 601…

You wouldn’t know it to look at them, but unicyclists are total badasses. These unassuming people, with careers ranging from engineers, to musicians to kindergarteners, have the athleticism of gymnasts, the fearlessness of suicidal ninjas and the indestructibility of a goat’s colon. I’ve always wanted to go into a room…

I woke up Friday morning, the first full day of my staycation, 10 minutes before the nice lady arrived to measure my windows for new blinds. Misinterpreting my raging cider hangover as naivety and my unconscious humming of Sha Na Na tunes as mild brain damage, the lady cunningly tried…

I view international travel as one of life’s greatest pleasures. I’ve visited over 40 countries, I’ve lived abroad, I speak Spanish, Romanian and Italian, and my epic passport was just commissioned to be re-printed as a coffee table book, with forwards written by Nelson Mandela and Bono. Just a few…

A few months ago I promised to put together a slide show tease of Romania and Moldova from my trips this summer and my vast collection of photos. Done and done. Background music by Zdob şi Zdub.

As with my Tuscany lists, I’m doing a random (yet totally definitive and quote-worthy) best/worst overview of this summer’s research trips to Romania and Moldova. One all-encompassing word of warning to start, do not travel here in July or August. Romania has already begun to mirror Western Europe in that…