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Travel Cultures Language

On a Wing and a Dare

by Joyce McGreevy on June 15, 2020

A flight attendant and a passenger keeping an air travel diary during the pandemic wear face masks to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. (Image © Joyce McGreevy)

Planes are flying again, but are passengers?
© Joyce McGreevy

An Air Traveler’s Diary in the Pandemic

 I love flying. As a pilot’s daughter, I’ve always felt at home in the sky. But airline travel in a pandemic? Opening my travel diary, I scrawl something I’ve never felt before: I dread the airport.

Ballyshane, Ireland

When the world went into lockdown, I was pet-sitting in Ireland. I had a guest cottage, the solitude writers crave, and nature’s beauty. Who’d leave that to fly on a wing and a dare?

But I missed my family, which had grown by three since I’d left the U.S.

Travel Inspiration: Beauty in the Details

by Meredith Mullins on June 8, 2020

The Île Saint-Louis: So many treasures lie within
© Meredith Mullins

Circumnavigating the Île Saint-Louis

How did a tiny island in the middle of the Seine river in Paris meet the challenges of pandemic wanderlust?

Defying Einstein, the less-than-one-square-kilometer area of the Île Saint-Louis seemed to expand during “confinement” to become an undiscovered universe.

My daily wanderings became a profound adventure during this time of sheltering, with a newfound appreciation of beauty in the details.

A Celebration of Spring

by Meredith Mullins on May 18, 2020

In search of paradise (A Bird of Paradise, that is)
© iStock/Waltkopp

Flowers Around the World—the Scary, the Exotic, and the Reassuring

Spring came . . . just as promised through the ages. Not even a global pandemic could stop the natural rhythms of the earth. (This story begins like an ancient myth, doesn’t it?)

The clenched tree buds exploded into gentle leaves of green almost overnight. Flowers bloomed everywhere around the world making the words “riot of color” less of a cliché because the description was so true.

A celebration of spring—poppies in the Paris Jardin des Plantes
© Mavis Negroni

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