On a recent trip to New York City, my husband and I took the train from New Haven’s Union Station. On our way out of Grand Central Station, we passed a bakery, and the aroma of fresh-baked bread stopped me in my tracks. “On the way back,” my husband promised. “We’ll get bread to bring home.” He was right. We were headed to the Andaz Wall Street for the GT Tested Awards and a two-night stay. What was I going to do with a bag full of bread?

The hotel was fabulous, the event even more so. And, true to his word, on our return trip, my husband steered us straight to Grand Central Market, a long arcade of food stalls on the ground floor of the terminal, with access to the street at one end. Featuring everything from Greenwich Produce to Penzeys Spices, from Murray’s Cheese to Pescatore Seafood, it is a foodie’s paradise. But it was bread I was after, and bread I found at Zaro’s Bread Basket. There was such a large selection, I couldn’t make up my mind; and with our luggage getting in everyone’s way, I had to decide fast. We ended up with a bag full of ciabatta and other crusty creations to take home and a couple of focaccio loaves, loaded with delicious toppings, for the train.

It’s hard to get a good loaf of bread in our part of Connecticut. There are few bakeries to begin with, even fewer that bake their own bread, and fewer still that bake really good, crusty bread.

My passion for bread goes way back. In the 1980s, after a week in Paris with a friend, dining on fresh baguette morning, noon and night, I bemoaned the dismal lack of good bread at home. Enduring one too many complaints about “this doughy American stuff,” my husband had had enough: “Then learn to make your own!” And so I did, and I’ve been baking baguettes ever since.

Some of the finest souvenirs I have brought home from my travels are not the usual tchotchkes. Sure, I’ve carted my share of china cups and coffee mugs, original watercolors by local artists and Gustav Klimt prints from Vienna. I’ve stuffed my suitcase with fine woolens from Ireland and Iceland, and lugged back a huge pottery half-moon from the Caribbean. Each year my Christmas tree is adorned with ornaments from around the world — Delftware from Dutch St. Maarten, bright red wooden lobsters from Maine, Bermudian bobbies, Tyrolean jumping jacks. I even schlepped a cuckoo clock halfway through Europe on a backpacking trip when I was 20. And some items have inspired whole collections, as with our Wayang Golek (Java puppets), which we accumulated over many years of traveling through the Caribbean.

But fabric fades. China chips and cracks. It is the more intangible things that stay with me. Like learning to bake baguette, I seem to collect new abilities wherever I go, new traditions to incorporate into my life that remind me of where I’ve been.

In Germany, one taste of Schwarzwalder-Kirsch-Torte (Black Forest cake) and I had to possess its lush chocolate-and-cream secrets. I found a recipe and practiced making it — even impressing my father-in-law with a torte for his birthday one year.

Other locations have led to other additions to my culinary repertoire: Johnny cakes and plantains as they are served in the lolos of Grand Case, St. Martin; Irish scones, brown bread and potato soup; dim sum inspired by a trip to San Francisco’s Chinatown.

But musical fare can have the same effect as food. On a visit to Doolin, the traditional music capital of Ireland, I was so taken by the local music that I needed to possess it myself and bought two tin whistles — I have learned three songs in three years — and if I had room in my suitcase would have lugged home enough instruments for a whole band: bodhran drums, bones, spoons and maybe even uilleann pipes. On one trip to the Caribbean, I was convinced I could be a steel drum player; luckily, there were no drums for purchase on the island.

I suppose it’s my passion for a place, for its people, that inspires this sort of madness in me, this need to replicate what I have found and instill it into my daily life. Perhaps it is a way of keeping the memories alive. I am loath to leave some places and head home to my ordinary life.

What I have yet to figure out, though, is how to carry home more esoteric things, like an entire way of life. How, for instance, to institute the Spanish siesta into my afternoon? How to take a two-hour lunch and still get work done? How to stay as relaxed as I am on the beach in the Caribbean, as enthused as I am in a Parisian art museum, as connected to people as I am when encountering another culture?

Ah, but that’s exactly what vacations are for.

– Jan Hecht, associate editor

If you’ve been reading my blog over the last few months, you are aware that my younger daughter, Jenny, has been traveling in Europe the last three weeks with a group of fellow nursing students. They have now settled in the picturesque town of Guildford in Surrey, England, to begin their one-month study of community health issues and some practicum experience. Jenny really enjoyed her whirlwind tour of several cities on the Continent but now seems equally pleased to be somewhat settled for a while in one place with a room to herself. I thought I’d just share a few of her impressions of the places she visited along the way and a few lessons she and her friends learned on this, their first big travel adventure on their own.

It doesn’t take much snow to foul up transportation in London. One inch brought havoc to the rail lines, closed the runways at Gatwick for several hours and caused them to rebook on a later flight to Madrid. The girls from Chicago just couldn’t see what all the fuss was about.

Loved Madrid, the Prado Museum, Plaza del Sol and . . . sangria! Also fell in love with Barcelona (I have yet to talk to anyone who’s gone there and doesn’t) and wants to return. After cold and snowy England, the girls loved the sun in Spain.

Jenny celebrated her 22nd birthday in Paris, preferred the Musee d’Orsay over the Louvre and learned a valuable lesson: Check to be sure the site you want to visit is open before you take the time and expense to go there. The group trekked out to Versailles on a Monday only to learn the palace is closed on Mondays (and the grounds, in January, are rather subdued).

Roman men can be charming at any age. On their first evening in the Eternal City, the ladies enjoyed the chivalrous attentions of their “older” waiter (For all I know, he was only 35. Ah, perspective!), and the bartender bought each one a rose from a roving vendor. St. Peter’s was impressive; but Jenny found the colors in the Sistine Chapel to be much brighter than she expected, and the Creation of Adam to be smaller than she thought it would be (again, perspective!).

Squeezing too many cities into too few days along with certain train schedules can lead to frustration. Upon arriving in Florence, the group found that there were no remaining seats available on the train they planned to take from their next stop, Venice, to Munich. Instead, they would have to take an overnight train north, leaving them less than 10 hours in Venice. They never even took a vaporetto to see St. Mark’s Square — sacrilege!!

Food and transportation expenses gobble up the euros; so do entrance fees (and drinks at the hostel bar??).

The Wombat’s hostels in Munich and Berlin offered great, free (except for the tip for the guide), half-day walking tours of those cities, full of great information. Dachau touched Jenny deeply: “I don’t think it is possible to explain how I felt when we were standing in the gas chamber. The evil that existed is unbelievably horrific.”

Be sure you get on the right train. The trek from Munich to Berlin took all day and five trains to accomplish; it should have been one train and a few hours. At least the snowy countryside was pretty!

Based on all the other things Jen has said or written to us thus far, I would venture to say that her greatest lesson is how much there is yet for her to see and learn, and what a great teacher travel can be.

– Patty Vanikiotis, proofreader

My younger daughter, Jenny, is just finishing her first week in Europe. While her primary purpose while there is to complete her community health nursing clinical in England, that program doesn’t actually begin for another two weeks. She and several of her classmates are currently traveling about the Continent, and her brief phone calls and Facebook postings indicate they are having a wonderful time. I think it would be difficult for anyone with such an experience before them to not enjoy it thoroughly, but Jenny and her friends did a lot to ensure their good time through solid groundwork in planning and organizing their modest version of the Grand Tour.

It’s possible that just getting 10 individuals to agree on their two-and-a-half-week itinerary consumed the majority of their planning sessions, but I know that all of them also spent plenty of Internet time researching where they were going and how (most economically) to get there. Most of the girls had friends or family members who had traveled abroad (and some, like Jenny, had already been overseas, but none on their own), and all of us were dishing out advice, as well. (I was able to pull out articles from the past few years of Global Traveler on every city on their itinerary, plus others covering everything from health insurance to travel safety.) Going forth with maps and directions steering them from every airport or train terminal to their hostels in each city boosted their confidence that they could navigate their way just about anywhere. With Madrid and Barcelona under their belts already and only a snow-cancelled flight from London to delay the start of their adventure, this merry band seems to be off to a great start.

Here are a few things we are glad are a part of this trip, and which we would recommend to any traveling student:

– An international cell phone: Jenny was able to rent one for an extremely reasonable fee and calling rates. At least two other girls in the group have one as well, so if the entire party splits up, they can maintain contact. Although the plan is to keep in touch with friends and family back home primarily through the Internet, we’ve already found cause to be thankful for the immediacy and ease of having phone contact available. Which leads me to essential item number two:

 – Automobile Association of America’s VISA Debit card: We hit upon this item several years ago when Jenny’s big sister, Sarah, studied abroad, and I used one myself last spring while cruising the Mediterranean. It allows one to withdraw funds in the local currency from any ATM, and although there is a small transaction fee, the convenience and other benefits the card offers are worth it. Because I also have access to the account with my own card, I can load additional funds if needed, and there is an emergency contact number in virtually every country in case of loss or theft of the card (which Sarah had cause to use). When Jenny accidently punched in the wrong PIN number in Barcelona (jet lag and sleep deprivation), she used that cell phone to call me to confirm the right code and unfreeze the card (a nice safety feature). But for those once-in-a-lifetime, special purchases or truly emergency situations, Jenny also has

– A credit card which doesn’t charge for non-U.S. currency transactions. We REALLY stressed the unique and/or emergency aspects of the use of the card (and the fact that those are HER purchases), but we wouldn’t have sent her off without one.

 – A student discount card. Jenny and her friends used the Student Travel Agency to book their hostel stays and a few flights and get their rail passes. They found this simplified paying for those items, although the fares weren’t always the cheapest to be found. They expect to make great use of the STA’s discount card, which will provide them free or reduced entrance to an enormous number of museums and attractions all over Europe, in addition to all kinds of percent-off deals at a wide range of businesses in the cities they’ll be visiting. A side note: so far they’ve been very happy with the locations and cleanliness of the hostels they booked through STA, and all have had WiFi access.

We’re thrilled that Jenny’s trip is off to such a good start, but as any experienced traveler knows, all that preparation and the recommendations of those who’ve been there before certainly had a lot to do with it. Happy travels, ladies!

– Patty Vanikiotis, proofreader

The five tiny towns and their surrounding vineyards of Cinque Terre became an Italian national park and a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997. The region was recognized, in large part, for “representing the harmonious interaction between people and nature to produce a landscape of exceptional scenic quality that illustrates a traditional way of life that has existed for a thousand years and continues to play an important socio-economic role in the life of the community.” Those words don’t begin to do justice to the beauty of the place, but they do hint at what makes this bit of coastland unique in all the world. The two major industries which provided sustenance to the people who eked out their livings here all those centuries — fishing and winemaking — have, in the last twenty years or so, been joined by a third: tourism.

Certainly now there are more rooms to let, B & Bs, restaurants and cafes in the towns here. However, the physical landscape has prevented widescale changes and overwhelming growth. Whatever semi-flat land suitable for construction that exists here has long since been built upon, so the ranks of tower-like homes and stone churches and towers have not been defiled by modern hotels and storefronts. It is ironic, however, that where some of the terraced vineyards have been abandoned as their owners find less labor-intensive ways to make a living in catering to the tourist trade, the dry-stone walls which contribute to the unique character of the place are beginning to crumble and erosion occur, threatening that very landscape.

Fear not, there are still plenty of vineyards in production, and we were fortunate enough to taste a sample of the local wines over lunch at Ristorante Gambero Russo in the town of Vernazza. The first was a crisp, fresh white, perfectly chilled and fruity without too much sweetness or acidity. One sip and I could feel myself relaxing as we sat at the side of the town’s tiny cove at the edge of the square, listening to the water softly lapping at the curve of sand just below us. Later our charming server, Andrea, brought us a liter of the house white, a smooth, almost buttery wine reminiscent of a luscious Chardonnay. Later I sought out a wine shop and selected one small bottle of one of the region’s renowned late-harvest wines to bring home to share on some special occasion with my oenophile husband. But that was at the end of my day in Cinque Terre, and I have gotten far ahead of myself.

We began our day in Manarola and made our way down to the waterfront. As in all of the towns here, the buildings housing businesses and homes are at least four or five stories tall, packed closely together and stepping down the hillsides along narrow creeks and ravines to the harbor. We were told this was to aid in defending the communities against sea-going marauders of the past, but the balconies, windowsills and doorways decked out with grapevines and flower-filled pots softened what might have remained of more imposing facades.

From Manarola we made our way along the famous Via dell’Amore (Lovers’ Way) to Riomaggiore, the most southerly of the five towns. Today the paved and graveled path is made safe with railings and a widened route, but it is still an impressive passageway literally carved out of the rocky cliffs just above the sea. Here we got an up-close look at those dry-stone walls as well as some of the native vegetation: enormous agave plants and cacti and flowering shrubs and vines. From Riomaggiore we would take a small public ferry boat up the coast to Vernazza, but only if the sea was just right. Even though it was a lovely, sunny day, our guide explained that if the waves were too rough, the ferry would not be able to pull in to the landing to board us. When we got down to the site, we understood what she meant. The “landing” was a slab of concrete that had been poured over the rocks at the water’s edge to create a semi-level surface. The boat pulls up and drops a gangway off the prow onto the pier, and the passengers scuttle across, just above the waves washing over the rocks. It wouldn’t take much of a wind or a rough current to make that maneuver impossible both for the boat and the passengers. Luckily for us the sea cooperated, and we chugged a few miles up the coast, enjoying a fantastic vantage point from which to take in the sweep of the Cinque Terre coast, its villages and terraced mountainsides.

We bypassed Corniglia, another of the villages and the only one lacking an actual harbor at sea level; it is accessible only by foot or via the small railway line that links the villages with the outside world. Our visit this day would also omit a stop in the northernmost town of the five — Monterossa — and the one with the most accessible beaches. In Vernazza we were given at least two-and-a-half hours on our own to eat, shop and explore, and my sisters and I used most of that time for our leisurely lunch harborside. Soon enough we had to meet the rest of our group to board the train for a return trip to La Spezia to meet our motor coach for the rest of the trek back to Livorno.

My brief sojourn in this lovely, remote region left me with the desire to return to spend more time there, for I never got the chance to really climb above the coastline and explore each town more thoroughly. It is a place I would enthusiastically recommend to anyone traveling to this corner of the Mediterranean; just be sure to give yourself plenty of time to enjoy all of it!

– Patty Vanikiotis, proofreader

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Livorno was the second-to-last port of call on my 12-day Holland America Lines Mediterranean cruise in May. Located on the northwest coast of Italy, Livorno grew from a small village to a booming port when the Medicis developed it into their primary shipping point in the 16th century. Today it is Italy’s second-largest port, an important industrial city hosting healthy shipping and fishing businesses as well as a NATO installation and the Italian Naval Academy. It also welcomes a number of cruise ships every summer, as it provides easy access to the major tourist attractions of northern Italy. The majority of those visitors don’t spend a lot of time in the city itself; much of the medieval and Renaissance structures were destroyed in WWII bombing runs, and the lure of Pisa, Siena and Florence is a  mighty force. I will admit that my sisters and I, too, chose to spend our long day away from our port city.

As we planned our itinerary prior to embarking on our cruise, we looked long and hard at our options for Livorno. Florence was very tempting, but it would involve at least four hours of bus travel to and fro, leaving an unsatisfactory amount of time for even a cursory sampling of all it can offer. Excursions to Pisa didn’t seem to offer much beyond a visit to the structures surrounding the Piazza dei Miracoli. Sister Ann, who works for Holland America and spoke with a number of coworkers who were familiar with Tuscany, provided us with the answer: go to Cinque Terre. “Discovered” about 20 years ago by travel writer Rick Steves, the “Five Lands” region has become a popular destination while retaining most of its ancient aspect and charm.

We departed from the port around 7 a.m. and headed north, following the route of the Aurelian Way. The countryside was lovely, with fields of still-ripening grain extending to the green hills and Appenine peaks in the distance. The highway skirted Pisa, and through the early-morning haze we could faintly make out the silhouettes of the Duomo and the Tower. Approaching Carrara, what appeared at first glance to be glaciers and snowfields high on the mountains’ flanks were revealed to be the marble quarries from which that famous stone comes. Passing through Carrara, on either side the road is hemmed in by miles of stone yards, stacked with enormous 12-ton blocks of marble, primarily in gleaming white, but in shades of gray to black and red, too. Carrara also marked our passage from Tuscany into the region of Liguria.

After about an hour our coach arrived in the port of La Spezia at the head of the so-called Bay of Poets. A large and modern city, La Spezia has its share of lovely churches, piazzas and public buildings, and its perfectly shaped harbor makes it a natural for the navy’s navigation school and a crowded marina popular with yachtsmen. Leaving the city behind, we began winding up into the hills north and west, finally getting closer views of the old hill towns with their towers and church spires. I hadn’t expected the heavily wooded slopes here, picturing skinny cypress and sparse pines where instead grew large and lush trees of many types.

We had gained at least a couple thousand feet in elevation as our route angled west toward the sea when at last we broke out from the vegetation and got our first sight of the steep mountainsides plunging down to the water far below. Even from my vantage on the hill side of the bus, I felt a little squeeze in my stomach from the precipitous drop, but I soon ignored that sensation as I took in the literally jaw-dropping views. Once past the initial impact of that stunning vista, I began to notice details: sprinkled here and there were small clusters of stone buildings clinging to the rock, and stretching from hilltop to shore and as far as the eye could see were stone-walled terraces. Some seemed to be barely a yard wide and had to have been built by mountain goats, for the slopes here are at least 70 degrees. In some places there were signs of damage and erosion, but most curved around the mountainsides, seeming to hold the entire landscape back from sliding into the sea. Our guide told us that in this region encompassing some five miles of coastline were thousands of kilometers of these drystone walls which, taken end-to-end, would stretch farther than does the Great Wall of China. Incredible!

We followed the road as it gradually wound down towards the water below, all the while shaking our heads at the incredible engineering feat of these terraces built centuries ago and sustaining the humans who built and tended them with the grapevines which grow from them, irrigated only by what falls naturally from the heavens. Leaving the bus, we made our way the rest of the way on foot to the first of the towns we would visit in Cinque Terre. It is the only practical way to get around here, for everything is squeezed in between the mountains and the sea, with little room for motor vehicles or roads to accomodate them.

More on my adventures in this lovely region, tomorrow.

–Patty Vanikiotis, proofreader

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