Travels with Valerie

Doesn’t it seem like it’s taking me forever to get you some actual whale footage? I promise you that it’s an easier wait for you at home on your couches than it is for me on the Road Scholar bus. Bus trips in Europe are broken up by fantastic road side stops – cafes with […]

We drove south from Ensenada yesterday – 230 miles to the middle of nowhere – and stopped for the night in a town called Catavina. The Hotel Mision Catavina is a beautiful step back in time to the 1950s, with large, very basic, rooms that surround a courtyard with a pool: Almost the entire 230 […]

We stopped for a day in Ensenada to tour the Guadalupe Valley – it actually sits 70 miles south of the Tijuana border crossing – and it’s the premier and dominant site for most of Mexico’s wine production. There are more than 180 wineries and they account for about 80% of the entire wine production […]

We made a brief stop in Tijuana and I stepped out onto Avenida Revolucion and was transported right back to my teen years, when, without a passport and without my parents’ knowledge, I would cross the border on foot, jump into a cab, and spend the evening at the various bars. It defies the logic […]