Steph's Blog

It’s been nearly a year since Eric and I took more than a few days off for vacation. Yes, that’s sad, but this is our life right now and you take those days off when you can. So we did. We decided to drive up to Maine from NYC. A long drive, but well worth it. View photos in my TripRemedy blog.

In anticipation of my trip to Hawaii in less than a week, I’ve been researching ways to see, do and eat things on a budget! I found this great link from Frommer’s Budget Travel website that lists bargains in Oahu for under $10…(find out more at my TripRemedy blog)

Fall is in full swing in NYC. The leaves in Central Park haven’t started changing yet, but there’s definitely a chill in the air and lot of rain. I’ve got many reasons for this being my favorite season, and in a different post from years ago, I wrote about my love for Fall in the Bay Area. For starters, my birthday is in Fall and despite the fine lines appearing more and more around my eyes, I actually do look forward to birthdays. It’s the time of year when I can do whatever I want with whomever I want and celebrate another year of being fed, safe and warm.

This year, Eric and I went to the Catskills. In fact, almost every year for my birthday I do a weekend getaway to a small town somewhere in the wilderness where I can breathe fresh air, browse a “Main Street” with cute boutiques, and have my birthday dinner at a small local restaurant with little fanfare. The Catskills is perfect for this, and the town of Phoenicia, in particular, because it has all that and is only a two-hour drive from the Big City.

Fall also makes me feel like staying in more and cuddling up on the couch with a good mug of hot chocolate and a remote control. It also gives me an excuse to stay home and write, which during the summer is almost impossible with all the free outdoor concerts, and movies, cheap beer gardens, etc. As winter approaches, the Fall months are also a time to hunker down and prepare for the cold. It’s a time to start cooking soups again and to trade linen for wool in the storage boxes above my closet.

Jutting out from Argentina’s east coast some 800 miles south of Buenos Aires, the oddly shaped piece of land known as Peninsula Valdés has become known as one of the best places in the world to observe the southern right whale. From May to December, close to 1,000 of these whales gather in the waters just off the coast of Chubut to reproduce, making this the prime time for whale-watching tours in the region. (read more…)

Wrote my first article for Livestrong.com through Demand Studios. It’s about taking surf lessons at Narragansett, Rhode Island. I’m planning on going to the beaches there, so this was actually a cool article to research and write about.