By Cheryl Tucker

Everyone who lives in Florence, or is here for an extended stay, has a piazza.

It’s the piazza that you have to visit after being away, the piazza that you show off to your visiting friends, the piazza that feels like home. It’s hard to explain what it is that pulls us to a particular one,* but I’ll try.

By Cheryl Tucker

I am always at attention when someone is telling me a story that I half-believe–or rather, that I want to believe but if I did I’d have to revolutionize my worldview, and so I’m afraid to believe because that would require so much work. I stay in a kind of limbo of belief. I fully admit that I am lazy. For instance, I was raised Catholic, and rather than fully believing, I keep my suspicions up, and yet, I’m not above feeling awe.

By Dolina Logan Faulk

We have all heard the political statements about Syria: Axis of Evil, State sponsor of terrorism, etc, but, beyond the rhetoric and what the guidebook and a couple of second-hand accounts had told us, we really didn’t know what to expect. All indications were that it would be a safe place to visit as a tourist -- authoritarian states tend to be because people are too afraid of the government to commit crime against visitors. The question was how would we, as Americans, be received.

By Anne Valente

As soon as she felt the wheels retract, their loud thump reverberating throughout the pressurized cabin, her fingers loosened their grip on the metal armrests and she relaxed back into her seat. She had always hated flying, but she perpetually made a deal with herself that once the wheels went up, the pilot had maintained control and the plane would not crash. She had kept this silent deal for years now, no longer waiting – as she once did when she was little – for the seatbelt sign to flash off to know that she was safe.

By Tricia Conway

Somewhere along a ten-hour post-holiday trip home, I had a great idea. I was an independent thirty year-old woman and I was going to Ireland for my birthday. Within months, my secret dream sprouted into full-fledged plans and I was soon hoping my secret crush guy friend would go with me. To my dismay, four weeks before the trip, he backed out. I scrambled. My mom called and said, “If you don’t mind, I would love to go with you.”

By Ernesto Machado

Armando had married a few days ago, but that didn't stop him from accompanying me to celebrate Carnaval in Salvador. He'd judge the candidates as we walked down the streets of the Pelourinho: "Look at that one. She's hot." But I expected an abundance of beautiful people. After all, this is Brazil we're talking about.

By Kathryn Oler

No camera. This is how I start a lifetime adventure to float the Mississippi River for a few days on my friend J’s pontoon houseboat. It is like tubing down the San Marcos River X 1,000—worth more than 1,000 words.

By Laurie Gough

By Laurie Gough

No single incident in my life has been so strange, so hard to grasp, so totally lacking in feasible explanation. I came to Naxos by mistake, but maybe there are no mistakes. Maybe sometimes we’re meant to be led here and there, to certain places at certain times for reasons beyond our understanding, beyond our will or the spell of the moon or the arrangement of the stars in the sky. Maybe all the dark and eternal nameless things lurking around us have their own purpose and vision for us. Who knows?

By Karen Harris-Wakenshaw

I was 38 when I moved to Northern Cyprus with my 40 year old husband, not particularly old in the great scheme of things, but far too young, it seemed, to be living in Cyprus.

This was our first trip to the tiny eastern Mediterranean island. We were filled with anticipation as we knew we would be making a decision that would affect the rest of our lives, something that the butterflies in my stomach were quite aware of.