“The cars crawl past all stuffed with eyes. Streetlights share their hollow glow!”

One of the oldest living things on Earth towered over me, with twisted limbs and a grizzly, green beard. It wasn’t a troll, or a primordial yeti. It was a bristlecone pine tree. And it has been standing in this corner of the continent for about 5,000 year

Here’s all the info you need to explore the southern California city’s sunny beaches, eclectic museums, and charming historic neighborhoods.

In the 1991 surf-heist movie 'Point Break', Keanu Reeves learns how to ride waves in a day. My own experience is a little different

The Great Murals are the oldest cave paintings in the Americas—but they are incredibly hard to access.

“I taught Sean Connery to scuba dive,” Stuart Cove said with an impish grin. “And I’ve got to be honest: He was petrified.”. Cove is the owner of Stuart Cove’s Nassau Bahamas Aqua Adventures, a dive shop and movie production company on the island of New Providence. I was sitting in his office chugging coffee in preparation for the long and challenging day ahead.

Landing at Dublin Airport, my cell phone springs into life, and I’m greeted with a slurry of Ulysses-themed emails. One in particular catches my eye. It’s from the President of Ireland. “Ulysses was a brave new departure whose influence continues to be re

Running along the Californian coast and through wine country from LA to Seattle, it’s a long but spectacular journey “Well, I wait around the train station, waiting for that train. To take me, yeah, from this lonesome town!” Jimi Hendrix’s “Hear My Train

The final day of my Los Angeles free-diving course happened to coincide with my 12th wedding anniversary. Instead of drinking wine with my better half, I was scheduled to dive the Pacific Ocean to a depth of 75 feet — on a single lungful of air. It seemed an inconvenient, not to say selfish, day on which to drown.

In the summer of 1879, an obscure Scottish author set out for California in pursuit of a married woman 10 years his senior. The three-week journey nearly killed him. And the shock and shame nearly killed his pious, Presbyterian parents in Edinburgh. The author's name was Robert Louis Stevenson. He soon was to become famous for "Treasure Island," "Kidnapped" and "The Strange Case of Dr.

Friday marks 80 years since Spain’s celebrated poet and playwright was shot to death by a firing squad, and I’ve come to his favoured stomping ground, the craggy, sun-cracked region of Andalusia, to follow in the master’s footsteps – from birth until untimely death.

Here’s how a breakup inspired one of the world’s quirkiest museums—and how you can visit. I once had a girlfriend who claimed—with some pride—that she had never been dumped. She dumped me soon afterwards, of course. But looking back, I can’t help but feel a little sorry for her. Everyone should experience heartbreak at least once in their lifetime.

I first saw mole negro on a menu in Mexico City back in the dim and distant 1990s. For me, the idea of combining two of my favorite ingredients—chicken and chocolate—seemed so debauched that I’d pretty much fallen in love with the dish before I’d even had a chance to taste it. I grew up in England in the 1980s, when chicken was usually accompanied with thin gravy and overcooked vegetables.

“Within an hour of being trapped, I knew I had to cut off my arm,” Aron Ralston said. The world’s most famous canyoneer had just landed in Denver. He was talking with me on his cellphone, and his voice sounded positively jovial. “Of course, my knife was so dull I couldn’t saw through the skin. It took me until Day 4 to figure out that the only solution was to stab myself.”.

“Well, I stepped into an avalanche, and it covered up my soul…” On the long drive from Los Angeles to Mammoth Mountain, Leonard Cohen’s ‘Avalanche’ is beginning to rattle my nerves. “…When I am not this hunchback that you see, I sleep beneath the golden hill.”

No photograph, however stunning, can do justice to the Grand Canyon. No account, however eloquent, can describe it in sufficient detail. To appreciate its grandeur, you must see it for yourself.