A Good Budget Choice for Toronto
I was in Toronto this May on my way to Niagara-on-the-Lake for a little biking, vino, and theater at the Shaw Festival, I was roaming around the city and found an intimate 6-room B&B called the Baldwin Village Inn. Located on Baldwin Street, a block known for its variety of good ethnic restaurants, and only a 2-block walk to the AGO, you’re in a great locale to check out the city. Rates start at $90 CDN a night, including continental breakfast, and reviews on TripAdvisor are excellent.
Some of us chase after the morning train to get to work. The more indulgent will chase down that shot of bourbon with a pint of Guinness. And the truly intrepid? They follow Ed English as he chases icebergs. Come June, it’s not unusual for villages on the east coast of Newfoundland to wake up to a mountain of electric blue ice the size of a 15-story building. The icebergs calve from the glaciers of western Greenland and begin a slow 1900-mile journey south with the Labrador Current on a route dubbed Iceberg Alley. English, owner of 
Many riders have biked the 6-mile loop around Central Park, but to really appreciate Manhattan, you have to bike with the skyscrapers at your side around the perimeter of the island on 
Each semester, I’m asked to speak at classes at Emerson College and Boston University on both magazine writing and screenwriting. On Tuesday night, when I return to Emerson, I will bring a thick folder of more than 200 rejection letters. It includes my favorite from Mad Magazine, a check next to a line that reads: “It just didn’t tickle our funny bone.” Universities do a wonderful job of teaching the craft of writing, but rarely touch on the psychological aspects of rejection and the necessary business skills to market your wares. Close to half my time, especially in those early years, was spent peddling my writing to editors and production companies. And almost every day, I would return from the mailbox with a stack of rejection letters. It was an incredible struggle, the reason why many of the creative people I met in New York are no longer in the business. 
We wake up to blinding sunshine at Buck’s Harbor in South Brooksville, best known as the spot where children’s book author and illustrator Robert McCloskey (“Make Way for Ducklings,” “Blueberries for Sal”) summered. FDR would also stop here on his way to Campobello Island for a short ice cream break. We found some of those famous wild Maine blueberries in our pancakes that morning before hoisting the sails and setting a course for that hump atop Big Spruce Island. Each one of these Penobscot Bay harbors and islands has a legacy and Big Spruce Island is no different. This is the place where artist Fairfield Porter and his brother, photographer Eliot Porter, would spend their summers and there’s still a working artists’ community on the island today.
Last month, we were excited to learn that Conde Nast Traveler chose ActiveTravels to design a 10-day New England itinerary for a family of four. We created a