Rotterdam’s Buildings Are a Delight for the Eyes
Rotterdam is a feast for the eyes, if you love interesting buildings and daring architecture. I took a bike ride making a giant loop around the city yesterday with Narjara Grondman, a trained architect who showed me some of her favorite buildings and gave some background into the history of […]
Rotterdam: A Second City that Deserves to be Discovered
I’m up in my corner office for a few days, on the sixth floor of the Inntel Hotel in Rotterdam. Once again an unsung and less heralded city has impressed me. Maybe it’s this grand hotel room, with the view of the Erasmus Bridge soaring above the harbor, and the […]
Michelin Awards its Netherland Stars for 2016 in Amsterdam
To any chef working in Europe, the word Michelin means a lot. The tire company’s stars have defined the greatest restaurants across Europe since the end of World War II. Yesterday at the DeLaMar Theater, we found out which chefs will get new stars and which ones will keep their […]
Amsterdam in Winter Sounds Like a Great Party!
I’m off on an adventure on Saturday when I drive down to JFK to board a KLM jet to Amsterdam. The last time I saw this exciting city was in January 2000, I remember how alive the city was even on a Tuesday night. Every bar was packed, the streets […]
Brooklyn: A Beautiful Irish Story from the 1950s
It’s funny to praise a movie for its slow pace, but I’d have to say that’s what gives the new movie Brooklyn its tremendous appeal. It’s the deliberate and held back way that the immigrant Eilis takes to begin speaking when she answers the phone. It’s the pace of the […]
Music Promoters Get Smarter as Album Sales Wither
While many bemoan what’ s happened to the music business, other promoters and artists just figure out clever new ways to make more money despite sagging CD sales. Justin Beiber, the guy so many people love to hate, set up a partnership with the ride-sharing app, Lyft, to lift his […]
Turkeys Are Getting Much, Much Bigger
I learned a bit about turkeys this week, in a story by Joann Craven in the WSJ that explains why Americans continue to be bigger in stature than every other nationality. We eat a lot of turkey. There are four kinds of turkeys, all based on size. And size has […]
Seeing the Grateful Dead–Three of them– In Worcester Tonight
The last time I went to a Grateful Dead concert I was working for the Valley Advocate in downtown Amherst, and I walked down Amity Street to the UMass McGuirk stadium to see the concert. I am pretty certain that at that tender age of about 21, I had ingested […]