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Travel Advisor
Holy hassle
Getting to the Vatican for New Year's Mass, plus advice for first-time cruisers and Auckland sightseers.
By Donald D. Groff
[10/28/99]

I booked it online
From mega-travel agencies to boutique sites, the Internet has exploded consumers' hotel-booking options. But what do the different sites really offer? And where are the hidden treasures?
By Judy Jacobs
[10/27/99]

Letter from Ladakh
The rugged inhabitants of this starkly beautiful, isolated land are now preparing for the latest invader: Winter.
By Steve Van Beek
[10/26/99]

Eating Iberia
A junket whore survives (and transcribes) the pleasures and punishments of anti-travel in Spain and Portugal.
By Douglas Cruickshank
[10/23/99]

Wanderlust
My boyfriend in jackboots
I'm Jewish; Peter wasn't. Our summer reunion in Germany took me places I didn't want to know.
By Lauren Fox
[10/22/99]

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I was enchanted. What kind of life did she have? The possibilities seemed endless.

"She was pretty, wasn't she?" I asked.

"Yeah," my husband answered.

He said it appreciatively. Maybe too appreciatively, I thought, chewing on an overstuffed falafel sandwich. We were in the Marais now, in a bustling Israeli restaurant with American diner decor. The place was hopping, the falafel delicious. Crunchy. Not greasy. Spicy. Splashed over the walls were photos of actors and fashion models, each enjoying falafel. One of them -- I think it was Amber Valleta -- was caught mid-bite by the photographer. She still looked ravishing.

My husband reached over and wiped my chin, catching a dribble of tahini, as a gamin with wide brown eyes and a taut, pierced belly button dropped off our check. She could have looked boyish, with her lean, athletic figure, but the purple ribbon that tied back her shoulder-length brown curls was anything but. That was the thing all Parisiennes seemed to have in common: They embraced femininity. She moved assuredly from table to table, clearing glasses, taking orders, making change. She couldn't have been older than 19. I was never that comfortable in my body at 19. I'm not that comfortable in my body now.

We spent the rest of the day losing ourselves in a maze of streets, and eventually wound up in the Bastille district. By nightfall the Rue de Lappe -- earlier a hushed alleyway -- had sprung to life. The disco was pumping, dishes clattering, the chairs of the sidewalk cafes beginning to fill up. I felt grimy, and was relieved when we agreed to go back to our room. I didn't feel like being out, particularly among the hip young things of the Bastille.

We went in search of a decent bottle of red wine and a hunk of Camembert. We found them, along with last-minute grapes, for $7 at a small grocery store. Now all we needed was a baguette, but baguettes are hard to come by in France after 4 p.m. We finally found one, atop a pile of newspapers in the all-night corner store across from our hotel in St-Germain-des-Pres.

By 10 p.m., we were sitting cross-legged on our tiny balcony, our little feast spread between us. We were eye-level with the rooftops of Paris. Down below, the store owner's daughter skipped beneath the street lamp. Across the street, an elderly woman picked her way around her rooftop garden, carefully watering her roses and peonies. The night was quiet. My head was spinning a little from the wine when my husband got up and climbed back through the window to get something inside.

He returned with a diamond ring, an antique. It was heavy. Platinum. The setting was square, art deco in design -- very, very feminine. I hated to cry, but what else do you do when you realize that you are the luckiest girl in the world? Here we were, getting engaged, five years after we eloped. Ten years after we moved in together. And 11 years after we met. It was perfect.

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