Travel

Editor's note: This is part 2 of a series of stories from the Mexican border posted by our Sheriff, Bill Masters. To read part 1, just type "Mastering Security" into Search on the Home page. I meet up with Sheriff Martin in Cortez late in the...

Editor's note: Jane Shivers, former honcho marketing exec, is a part-time Telluride local and full time traveler with hubbie Bill Sharp. Jane plans a blog site of her own, but for now, she's using our platform and we are grateful for her posts about the...

"Bubbles & Botox" party Monday, 2/27, 4 – 6 p.m. supports Telluride AIDS Benefit Menus at The Peaks Resort & Spa have always been very very inviting, but recent  additions have upped the temptations. I am not, however, talking about food. The subject on the table...

My aviation career began in Pensacola, Florida. A highlight of our Fall travels was a return to Pensacola, Florida, home of Naval Aviation, with Grandson Dylan Klein in mid-October. There were several connecting points that made our visit a sentimental journey. 2011 is the Centennial Year of...

by Jane Shivers

Shivers photoSometimes you have to get out of town to appreciate what you have at home.

Telluride and towns in Switzerland have a lot in common; gorgeous scenery, challenging skiing, clean air, great food, and a reputation for being a bit pricey. We are in Zurich often on business.  It is a beautiful city with eye candy galore on its cobblestone streets; boutiques, parks, churches, trams, sidewalk cafes. Women and men here dress well. Clothes come from Italy, Germany, and England and even women pushing babies about in fancy strollers look as though they just stepped out of a photo fashion shoot. I am almost certain I saw a Prada handbag on a tiny baby wrist yesterday.
by Jane Shivers ed. note: Jane Shivers and husband Bill Sharp are part-time locals in Telluride, and travel regularly for business and pleasure. This is Jane's first submission to Telluride Inside... and Out.

Crowded Tel Aviv beach Normal crowd at Tel Aviv beach

We’ve accidentally discovered a great time to go to Israel.  We arrived on a Thursday afternoon and checked in to the Intercontinental Hotel in Tel Aviv. It is right across from the beach and in a great location for sunsets, beach walks, exercise, and good meals. When we arrived we asked the Concierge to set up a driver/guide for the next day to take us to Jerusalem and Bethlehem. There was some hesitation on her part because she said we would need to be back in Tel Aviv by about 4 p.m. because the city would shut down.


With apologies to Charles Dickens, it was the best of days. It was the worst of days.

De Kooning, Pink Angels Let's get the bad news out of the way first. When Telluride Inside… and Out visited New York yesterday, we discovered a poster child for Obama's new New Deal. The BIg Apple remains a work in process, its infrastructure falling apart. At one point in our day, a water main broke down so the 7th Avenue subway lines were not running. On our way to the theatre, people were packed like sardines into the overcrowded "E" train. Shades of Tokyo at rush hour. On our way home, access to the upper ramp on the George Washington bridge was blocked. The detour to the lower ramp felt like that really creepy scene from "Bonfires of the Vanities." All day long, streets were blocked with traffic, the ripple effect of meetings at the U.N. Bottom line: moving around town was as always, at best, challenging, but also as always, worth the slog.

First stop: Willem de Kooning at the Museum of Modern Art.

Eating in Portland, Oregon can make even minor league foodies panicky. There is so much good food in that city and only so much time. If you took all of New York, simmered off the grade B Thai restaurants and bagel shops, and condensed it into a square footage the size of Brooklyn, you might come close to approaching the density of yummy spots in Portland. Good food, good coffee, and good beer are everywhere.

Yummies at Little T Here’s the problem. I’m sure you can relate. I still want to fit into my ski pants this winter. So I somehow have to counterbalance calories in with calories out. Great trails for biking and running climb out of the city in every direction, but getting to those can take some time. Especially when you’ve got young kids in tow. So my visits to Portland are always fun but never relaxed. I eat, I run, I catch up with old friends, I sometimes play with my kids, and I sometimes sleep. Then I do the same thing all over again the next day. Here’s the other problem. I lived in Portland for a few years about a decade ago. So I have my old favorite food spots that I want to visit. But those are “so yesterday” according to our Portland friends. They insist on also dragging us to better places. By the time we return the next year and mention those same places, our friends have already found newer, better spots than the ones they took us to last year. And so on. The city’s like a forest after it rains-- new restaurants are mushrooming up all the time.

 

Late Summer in the mountains. After weeks of rain any time of the day, we've got a forecast of brilliant sunny weather for a few days. What to do?

The answer for my friend Todd Hoffman and me: a motorcycle guy trip. First we thought we'd head for the Utah desert, but it looked like it might be a bit warm, so we elected to stay in the high country. Mostly familiar, but always changing and the roads were made for riding bikes.

The destinations were easy, and the ways to get there, endless. We spent three nights on the road in Aspen, Denver and Gunnison. But the rides- not the shortest way to get to any of them. I met Todd at his place 3 miles up a gravel road outside of Ridgway. A gravel road is just a warm-up for my BMW F650GS. Todd was riding his recently rebuilt 1972 Norton Commando, a beautiful bike (I offered to be the baggage car with my new Caribou hard cases), especially if you're riding light.

by Lisa Barlow

Chez P With the luster of Chez Panisse still casting its warm glow, San Franscisco has been a culinary beacon for the farm-to-table movement ever since Alice Waters opened the doors to her iconic restaurant exactly 40 years ago.

There is seriously delicious food to be eaten in this city. Much of it is influenced by Waters’ early recognition that good meals can only come from good ingredients. It is now more common to see the provenance of the string beans on your plate than it is to know the name of the chef cooking your food. But there is also another ingredient in ample supply here that is paramount to a good meal: technique.