This is what it looks like to hike down through the Grand Canyon. Rocks on one side, a sheer drop on the other, clouds below you, and a path that looks like it’s going to fade off into the enormous blue sky.

The trails wind along the sides of the canyon in a snake pattern, because obviously you can’t just hop down to the bottom. It takes hours, but the views around each turn are more than worth it.

Shark Ray (Photo courtesy of Mandalay Bay Shark Reef Aquarium)

For a city surrounded by desert, Las Vegas has a lot of sea creature metaphors. There are sharks, whales, and minnows — all of which can be found at all hours in the Mandalay Bay casino.
Deep inside the tropical-themed resort, you’ll find sea creatures of the non-metaphoric kind. The Shark Reef at Mandalay Bay is a 1.6 million gallon aquarium separated into 14 exhibits of over 2,000 creatures. As you can imagine, it’s huge. It’s also dimly lit (so as not to disturb the fish and sharks) and very, very warm (not quite sure of the reason for that one, but it was a nice change from the winter weather outside).

(Photo by Darrin Bush, courtesy of Mandalay Bay Shark Reef Aquarium)

The reef has all kinds of sea life, from jellyfish to sawfish to turtles. The real draw, however, are the 12 types of sharks gliding around. You can watch these graceful creatures pass by wall-sized windows and glass ceilings.

This is an especially great afternoon activity for kids. Informative plaques and helpful staff members well-versed in ecology offer great nature lessons. I’m always wary of contained creatures in any setting (ideally, I think they should always be living in nature) but the Shark Reef is the only Nevada institution accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums. The institution also leads several research programs to aid shark health and endangered species.

The highlights of the reef are the glass tunnels, where visitors can get a unique underwater experience as sharks and fish swim around and overhead, undisturbed. It’s the next best thing to being in the water with them.

If you’re a certified diver and a guest of either the Mandalay Bay or THEhotel, you can get in the water with them. Guests can schedule a special shark dive in a 1.3 million gallon tank that holds sand tiger, sandbar, and white tip sharks. To keep this activity safe for the sharks (and of course, the people), there is only one dive available per day (Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays) with a two-person maximum. Divers must go through a shark health and behavior briefing during this four-hour afternoon event.

I was in Provence just a few weeks shy of lavender season. (In case you’re counting, this is the second time I’ve been in Provence in the spring and the second time I’ve missed the lavender season. First world problems, I know.)

While in Italy, I got to experience lilac season. Okay, it’s not an official season, per se – but there were gorgeous lilac cuttings everywhere. I could smell them long before I saw them. The seaside wind picked up the scent and blew it around town in the most gorgeous way.

Because of its unique climate and geography, San Remo is the flower capital of Italy. This rooftop building along the coastline was covered in hundreds of perfumed purple flowers. I couldn’t get the story as to why they were there, but knowing Italy it was probably just because they were beautiful.

A lot of people don’t know what being a full-time freelance writer actually involves, and even fewer people know what travel writers do when we’re not traveling (or even when we are traveling, which I’ll save for another post).

Well, no day is the same – which is simultaneously great and frustrating – so I figure I’d show you a day in my life from this week (with some photos of Seamus mixed in to keep it interesting).

9am: Wake up and take Seamus for a walk. I either walk him to the one coffee shop that lets me bring him in or make coffee at home and bring it along. On the way, I check messages and emails I’ve gotten overnight. Because of the different time zones, there’s a small window to respond to anyone I need to talk to in Europe, Asia, and Australia. The good news is that most places don’t expect immediate answers the way offices in New York do, so I can address most of them later.

9:30am: There are a lot of characters in my neighborhood shuffling around during the day. We chat a lot – mostly about Seamus. I’m working on a couple of local article ideas at the moment and they’ve given me some great background info. Plus they’re just really interesting – mostly old-school Italians with good stories.

9:45am: A man from the Caribbean is on the phone. He’s returning my call about livestock (not a typo). This is a key interview for something I’m writing and thankfully it goes well. Now I can outline a feature story that’s due soon.

10am: Read, read, read. I get dozens of press releases each day, so I start with those. Most of them are completely useless. One PR company keeps sending me fully written articles for reasons I still don’t understand. (The writing part is my job.) Every now and then, I come across something interesting or an invitation to an event. From there, it’s the news. Travel is a huge industry, and there are lots of mergers, acquisitions, start-ups, dissolutions, new apps, destination campaigns, etc., to monitor. From a media perspective, I need to know what stories and destinations are in the big magazines, papers, and websites. If I have a pitch for an editor about a destination they’ve just covered, it doesn’t matter how good mine is – it’s not going to get accepted. And nothing annoys editors more than not reading their publications.

11:30am: Head into Manhattan to meet with a public relations friend/colleague for lunch. She tells me all about her travel clients (hotels, destinations, products, festivals, etc.) and gives me the latest news on each. When I worked in my last editorial office, “lunch meeting” meant “we’re ordering sandwiches and you’re not going outside today.” Not fun. I enjoy lunch meetings now because I get to test out restaurants all over the city. Plus, PR people tend to know the coolest places within walking distance.

1pm: The trains are less frequent during the day, so I have some downtime. As a freelancer, I don’t have actual “hours” – I need to work whenever, wherever, for however long it takes. As a result, I hate wasting time now. Since there’s no phone reception underground, I start working on an article. By the time I get home, I’ve written 800 words in that little yellow notepad on my iPhone. Hopefully at least half of them are usable.

1:30pm: I just found out I’m going to France for work… next week. (Note: Obviously this was written a few weeks ago, since I’m back from France now.) I’m very excited but temporarily overwhelmed. I have about five days to book flights, rearrange appointments, pack, organize a dog walker, do my taxes, finish some assignments early in case there’s no WiFi, shop for anything I might need, and pitch story ideas. Coincidentally, I have a good friend in Nice whom I haven’t seen in about three years. I’ll extend my trip so I can spend some time with her and her husband. Now I’ll be gone for almost two weeks instead of one.

2pm: Write. On any given day I’m working on at least four different things. Right now I have two big feature articles for magazines, endless amounts of blog posts, a corporate assignment, two travel pieces for a newspaper, my own secret project (TBA), and story pitches for 8 different editors in the works.

3:30pm: Break time. Take Seamus for an afternoon walk and grab lunch. Alan tells me he might be going to London for business the weekend I leave France. I have to connect in London anyway, so if he’s there at the same time I’ll extend my flight home for a couple of days. Now I could potentially be gone for over two weeks. I rearrange some of the appointments I’ve already rearranged, and as a result several people think I’m either crazy or a fugitive (or both).

4pm: Back to writing. This afternoon I’m working on several things at a time… literally. I have four Word docs open and I’ll go back and forth, writing paragraphs for each. When I need a break from one article about a beach destination, I’ll continue an article about a New England town, and so on. I don’t necessarily enjoy working this way, but it’s become a writing system of mine and it works when I’m pressed for time.

5:30pm: My day is winding down, but it isn’t over because it’s still early afternoon on the West Coast. I have to know where everyone I’m talking to is. If I absolutely need a response to something by 5pm, I know I’m not going to get it until 8pm if that person is in California. I edit some of the work I’ve done that day while I wait for updates or answers. I am of the slash and burn school of editing, but when it’s your own writing you’re chopping up, it can be painful to see all of that work disappear. (That’s what a blog is for, right?)

6:30pm: Take Seamus out to meet Alan off of the train. We used to have opposite work schedules to what we both have now, and when I was the one walking home from the train I used to love when he and Seamus would come meet me.

8pm: After dinner, I do some photo editing and resizing while we watch TV or a movie. This isn’t hard work, but it’s time consuming. I take thousands of photos every time I go away and I like to try out different things with each image.

9pm: Done. By this time everyone has stopped emailing me and I’ve finished editing my first drafts. I do some research on various towns in France and read some guidebooks for a few hours.

So there you go. That’s a day in my life, picked at random. How was your day?

We’ve had so much heartbreak in the past year. I process negative things more privately than many people, mainly because I don’t think everyone’s voice always needs to be heard and I’m sure I fall into that category more often than not. But, this time it’s Boston: my former home and a city I’ll love forever. Putting thoughts down after a tragedy is always a fine line. You have so much to say, yet you’re left without the right words to say it – and most of all, you never want to offend anyone. What is the appropriate response to an event so shocking, senseless, and deadly?

The bombing at the Boston Marathon hit close to home. My dad’s family is from Massachusetts. Boston was always a part of my life, but the four years I spent at Boston University shaped me in a way only college can. I met some of my best friends there, had some of the best times there, decided on my career there, worked all kinds of jobs there, and learned so much about life there.

Boston is a tough nut to crack, and not everyone can appreciate that. If you’re not on the inside, you’re on the outside. The city (and its residents) don’t make sense to a lot of people who haven’t lived there, but it is what it is and it will never pretend to be anything else. To know it is to love it, because above all else, Boston is a city with heart.

This is the city that responded to England’s new taxes by dumping entire stockpiles of tea — which they had been looking forward to for weeks! – into the ocean way back in 1773. This is the city that spent decades rooting tirelessly for a baseball team that had zero chance of ever winning a World Series — until it did, in 2004. This is the city that has educated some of the country’s best, either in school or in life (but more likely than not, in both). As history has proven time and time again, you can’t keep Boston down.

In the aftermath of this unjust, cruel, disgusting, and nonsensical act of terrorism, there is really only one small comfort: knowing that Boston can’t be broken. Staying strong in the face of tragedy does nothing to nullify it, unfortunately, but it sends whoever did this an important message about the strength of the human spirit and the power of community.

This week, some of my friends posted photos on Facebook from years ago, of people drinking, cheering, and partying on Beacon Street from our college Marathon Mondays. The stark contrast between those images and the way people feel right now seemed strange and disrespectful at first.

But there’s another way to look at it: that love for life defines Patriot’s Day. This is a state holiday in Massachusetts. In Boston, if you’re not running the marathon, you’re watching it from the sidelines and cheering the runners on. It’s the biggest celebration of the year and many people (myself included) associate it with some of their favorite memories. The marathon route went down our street in college, so we could see the race as it unfolded. Many hours later, when the winners were announced and the sun started to set, we’d still be out on our brownstone stoops encouraging the last of the marathoners – mainly people who had walked the race or gotten injuries along the way, but who were still determined to cross the finish line. We’d stand next to the water and Gatorade tables and offer them cans of beer, because quite frankly, they deserved it.

This one holiday was the day we were all let out of our cages, so to speak. We went to a particularly rigorous college (where if you were in trouble with the administration, you were in trouble with the Boston Police Department, and might have to get bailed out of a Roxbury holding cell after five friends pooled together enough money for bond). This was one day they rolled their eyes and let us act like college kids. We were the generation whose start to college was marred by the events of September 11. Our hearts were always a little heavier than they should have been at that age, but we took every chance we could to enjoy life. Marathon Monday represented that perfectly for us.

When I went through my photo archives, I was looking for a more serious, classic Boston photo to accompany this post. What I found were a lot of the same happy pictures people had posted on Facebook earlier this week – us at keg parties watching the marathon from the window, getting sunburned on fire escapes, defying the city’s open container laws, cheering people on at the race barricades, meeting at a local pub later on. These were our experiences on Marathon Mondays, and while they come in contrast to the grisly scenes from earlier this week, to us they are classic Boston.

I still keep in touch with many of the people from those days. Most have left Boston and are spread all over the world now. They are executives, actors, editors, broadcasters, photographers, marketers, managers, representatives, business owners, and more. Not one Marathon Monday has gone by that someone hasn’t mentioned how great it was to be there, and how amazing it would be to go back to that time in our lives.

Obviously things change, and people change. Boston changed us all in different ways, but – for better or worse, and in a lovably stubborn kind of way – Boston doesn’t change. In fact, Boston gives the proverbial (and sometimes literal) middle finger to anyone who expects it to. No one will ever forget the shock and sadness of this past Patriot’s Day, but in a strange way, it underscored the spirit, pride, and unity of Boston and its people. From near and far, we love that dirty water… and if you get that reference, Boston was your home.

If you’d like to help, please consider donating to the city’s official relief fund, One Fund Boston

I went to Catholic school for a few years, and we always wondered what the nuns did in their spare time. There were rumors of dance parties and pizza nights in the convent. And okay, some of us may have started those baseless rumors. It was all so mysterious.

These nuns in Quito, Ecuador were touring around and having a blast. And why shouldn’t they? They’re people, too. (Although, there were some rumors about that, as well.)

The Plaza de San Francisco is one of Quito’s oldest and most historical sights. The plaza was built in the 1500s on a hill, so it’s a little bit slanted. The beautiful Monastery of San Francisco is the main draw, but there are also plenty of shops, cafes, and vendors to hold your attention. However, I think this photo proves that the best activity in the plaza is definitely people watching.

I wanted to use a picture from Saint Patrick’s Day in Ireland for this week’s Friday Photo, but I couldn’t. The weather was awful (surprise!) and I couldn’t afford a fancy DSLR back then. By the time March rolled around, I’d been in Galway five months, so I’d just about given up on taking nice photos. All I have from the parade that day are some rainy pictures of miserable school children marching down Shop Street dressed as pigs and birds. No wonder people drink.

Luckily, I found something even better. The upside to all of that rain is the occasional rainbow. This one, near the Hill of Tara, leads straight to Saint Patrick. I couldn’t have planned it better myself.

At our waitress’ recommendation, I went with the campfire s’mores milkshake. Initially I was a little afraid of the description: marshmallow vodka, chocolate, marshmallow, graham crackers. My few years as a restaurant reviewer taught me the hard way that if a flavor combination sounds like too much in the description, it’s either going to be terrible (usually) or phenomenal (rarely). So many people had been ordering the s’mores shake that I just had to try it, and I’m glad I did. It was amazing. Alan tried the frozen grasshopper, which was also out of this world. Picture every decadent ingredient blended into a thick, ice cream shake with just the slightest hint of alcohol (but trust me — there’s much more than a hint in these).

Of course, Holstein’s isn’t just about the (fantastic, incredible, wonderful) shakes. They do serve food, too. The restaurant has put a sophisticated spin on classic American fare by adding fresh, organic ingredients. The menu offers innovative variations of burgers and fries, proving that while you don’t need to reinvent the wheel, tinkering with it a little can be a good thing.

These are enormous, two-handed burgers (really three-handed, but if that’s your situation you should be talking to your doctor instead of reading this website). Prepare to get messy.

I chose the vegetarian option (the urth burger). I love a good veggie burger, and I really appreciate when restaurants treat it as more than just a substitute for beef. The cucumber, sprouts, avocado, and gruyere really punched it up.

Alan chose the nom nom burger, with Kobe beef and kettle chips. He’s been known to put potato chips on a variety of sandwiches (I know, right?), so once he saw it on the menu, he just had to try it. I flat-out refuse to combine potato chips into anything else on principle, but he insists it’s great and he loved the kettle-burger combo.

Holstein’s is on the second level in The Cosmopolitan, surrounded by the gorgeous chandelier bar. It’s almost impossible to compete with walls of draping crystals, but I liked the covert ops cartoons.

This was one of my favorite Las Vegas dining experiences. It’s a really fun take on traditional comfort food. My only regret was that I wasn’t able to finish everything. I’ll be back, though, and next time I’ll bring an even bigger appetite.