Letters from Rona / Places I love / Sort by date

Around 9 o'clock on Saturday morning, while less obsessive types have barely settled down to their first cup of coffee and favourite section of the paper, I hot-foot it over to St. Lawrence Market for the ritual foraging that, in my book, weekend cooking demands. [more]

Every time I fill my kitchen with the racy aroma of sizzling Berkshire bacon, so generously marbled that my rashers crisp in a splattering pool of golden fat, I think wistfully to myself, "Will no one ever tell me that this wonderful stuff is good for me?" At last someone has risen to the challenge: Jennifer McLagan, the pleasure-loving author of Fat: an Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, with Recipes. [more]

By the time you read this, my husband and I will be in London, which as far as we're concerned is the world's most glorious city. We'll have a mental checklist of favourite places to revisit, and far too many ideas for other places we haven't yet seen. But if there's anything we've learned in our travels so far, it's that the best vacation moments can't be scripted. They take you by surprise, and then they take your breath away. For instance, the once-in-a-lifetime Leonid meteor shower of 2002. [more]

These special spots aren't the ones I dreamed of visiting for years. Some I checked out in an idle moment, just because they happened to be there. Others tend to be upstaged by more celebrated sights down the road. What they all have in common is that I can't think of them without smiling. [more]

The beauty of working at home, according to the popular notion, has something to do with the dress code: you can get down to business in your bathrobe (or nothing at all). The downside, I've learned the hard way, is that it's just too easy to find yourself working all the time. That's why I now go out every morning to a funky rented office around the corner. [more]

It's been a few decades since I was last accosted on the street by a strange man keen to tell me something. But last week I was hailed by a local shopkeeper who'd been watching me go by every day. I was always smiling, he said. And he just had to thank me. [more]

Argentina reminds me of that gorgeous, prodigiously gifted friend who can?t seem to get her act together. She has infallibly bad taste in men, and a habit of dwelling on her tortured family past. Still, she?s so much fun that you want to be around her. And much of the pleasure unfolds at the table, where fabulous food and wines of distinction can be had for a fraction of what you?d have to pay almost anywhere else. [more]

Some say Buenos Aires is the city of tango. Others call it the city of soccer. Let me be the one to tell you Buenos Aires is a a city of independent bookstores, including the most extraordinary shrine to the printed word I have yet seen anywhere. [more]

This brilliant fall day in Argentine wine country, I?ve done nothing at all except absorb the sights and sounds of a new place. Knowing it?s spring back home makes the whole experience more refreshing. [more]

A trip is like a breakfast buffet. I want to taste everything because it looks so tempting, and because at home I can?t start my day with scrambled eggs unless I?m going to scramble them myself. So of course I overdo it. The reality is, I?ll never taste it all. [more]

I used to think I'd return to all the travel destinations that have stirred my soul. Now I've had to face reality: too many enticing places to see, not enough years of healthy wandering. And if I go back to the Alhambra, I might miss the Great Wall of China. [more]

The city I thought I knew like a friend revealed another side of itself when my husband and I took a long evening walk through urban corners we'd never explored. Right on our own turf, we had a mini-vacation that was full of surprises. [more]