See the Met Fashion Show at The Cloisters
In the world of exhibitions, there are juxtapositions of talent and space that just work brilliantly. Take Chihuly’s twisting and curving glass, now a mainstay at botanical gardens across the country. Putting contemporary fashion into five medieval cloisters is another gem of an idea. The Cloisters, at the tip of northern Manhattan, is now the uptown branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Take the A-train to 190th Street, grab an elevator up, and you’ll soon be walking through Fort Tryon Park high above the Hudson to the monastery-like buildings that John Rockefeller donated to the city in the 1920s. Living in the city for close to a decade, I only made it up here once to see the celebrated Unicorn Tapestries and Medieval manuscripts in the towering buildings. Now there are crowds coming to see Alexander McQueen, Valentino, Balenciaga and more than 50 other designers presenting their interpretations of a Catholic theme in the show titled Heavenly Bodies, on view through October 8th. Dresses created with the imagery of Bosch’s "Garden of Earthly Delights," from Japanese designer Jun Takahashi, was a favorite of our group. Just as impressive as the show and the architecture, including massive wooden doors from the 15th century that lead to each room, are the outdoor terraces. My niece, Sarah, who goes to school at Teachers College at Columbia University, about 70 blocks south of the exhibition on 120th Street, showed me around a Medieval garden of intriguing curiosities straight of Shakespearean times. Definitely worth the effort to make it up here!
Home to vivid street art and a bounty of sculptures and paintings by Botero, Colombia’s only public transit system (including cable cars), and a burgeoning dining scene, Medellin has transformed from Pablo Escobar’s former hangout to one of the safest and most vibrant destinations in South America. It doesn’t hurt that this city of 4 million people sits in a valley surrounded by mountains at an altitude close to a mile high, offering sublime temperatures in the 70s and 80s degree Fahrenheit year-round. This lends itself well to outdoor cafes and bars, the ideal place to start your night out on the town. To see the rest of my story on Medellin in the latest issue of Global Traveler, 
Mention the Charlevoix region to a Quebecois and they’re bound to sigh, thinking of the mountains and long inlets that dot the shoreline of St. Lawrence Seaway northeast of Quebec City. Home to the classic 
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived,” wrote Henry David Thoreau in his best known work, Walden. Thoreau ventured to the woods with ax in tow in March 1845 to build his historic hut. Never would this modest writer imagine what an impact his philosophical musings would have on the world 160 years later. For two years, two months, and two days, Thoreau lived alone in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in his rustic abode built near the shores of