Farsighted Fly Girl

I travel a lot. I love the whole experience of travel, from packing to hanging out in airports, but I have a secret. I'm prone to motion sickness. Fortunately, it never happens on planes but boats, trains, cars? Big worries. I know every old wives tale and trick to prevent it. Don't read, make sure your eyes can see the horizon, eat salt, eat ginger, stay in an upper level cruise cabin. Sometimes these work, sometimes they don't. This poses a nasty little problem for a travel writer. I refuse to miss an experience because there's a chance I'll get sick. That means that I have clutched the railing of a sailboat, reeling with nausea as I gazed at a sublime St. Lucian sunset. I have curled up into a ball on a stunning Belize beach because I was retching from the big cruise ship(I hate cruises, this is just one reason) that brought me there. I barely made it through the 2 hour car trip through Brazilian coffee plantations before I was overcome with dizziness. ...

Gullah food wraps the richness of the culture into dishes heaped with flavor. As descendants of skilled rice planters, the cuisine focuses on rice, rice and more rice. A typical Gullah restaurant will serve at least three kinds and I'm not taking about white or brown rice. There's red rice, a mixture of tomato sauce and pork, a mini meal of rice, chicken, shrimp, sausage and vegetables called Gullah rice and the famous Hoppin' John, which blends rice with field peas. At Gullah Cuisine Restaurant, just off Highway 17 in Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina, owners Charlotte and Frank Jenkins (pictured above left) serve up country charm along with the rice. The extensive menu offers okra gumbo, shrimp & grits, fish head stew, oyster salad, fried flounder, collard greens and macaroni and cheese. Charlotte hovers over customers like an indulgent mother and the eatery envelopes guests with friendliness. I couldn't finish all of my flounder and Charlotte whisked it off to pu...

I write about most lifestyle and arts topics, including travel, fashion, art and culture but they don't always connect to each other. Occasionally, they relate in ways that are mind-boggling. I was assigned to write a designer profile for the jeweler's trade publication, JQ International. When I cover fashion, I expect to focus on the designer's artistic process and inspiration. For Miami-based designer J.R. deBellard, travel, art and culture turned out to be all a part of his process. Born in Venezuela and raised in Paris, J.R. mixes fascinating elements of his interests and background into his jewelry. His Ghana collection, featuring Adinkra symbols, sharks teeth, bear claws and rubies, blew me away. I studied the necklaces for a long time, trying to figure them out but I never did. J.R. had to break it down for me. He only designs in yellow or rose gold because that's what he remembers elegant ladies wearing on the French and Italian Riviera when he was gro...

From salsa-tinged Humboldt Park, to jollof rice-scented Uptown, Chicago offers some great cultural experiences. You don't have to hop a plane to absorb some of the sensations of India, Mexico, Puerto Rico or Nigeria. Although I love the neighborhoods that supply these escapades, I have to admit that one of my favorite Chicago cultural experiences doesn't involve an actual area or just one culture. Katrina, the genius/diva behind Chicago-based Vosges Haut Chocolat, combines her love of world travel and sustainable chocolate so seemlessly that I swear I didn't notice that I was munching on candy that represented my favorite places until last week. I stop into the purple swathed (always a good sign) Vosges boutiques about once every 6 weeks to stock up on my fave $7-$8 chocolate bars. They happen to be deep milk chocolate and smoked almonds sprinkled with fleur de sel grey sea salt, for the Barcelona bar. Then there's the dark chocolate spiked with Mexican ancho and ...

                                                        My first introduction to Gullah culture came with Julie Dash's seminal 1992 film, Daughters of the Dust. The film showcases the languid beauty of the land and the language. Set at the turn of the 20th century on St. Helena Island, the movie tells the haunting story of three generations of Gullah women. Since the tale took place in the early 1900s, it never occurred to me that the culture was still alive until I stepped onto the dusty roads and marshy landscape of St. Helena myself. The lyrical dialect of the Gullah people floated around me and it drove me crazy. I have a pretty sharp ear for language and what I heard sounded like Jamaican patois, but not quite, like Nigerian Yoruba intonations but not completely, like the sing-song melody of St. Croix Cruzan speech but not totally. When I...

Learning about a destination's culture and history are important aspects of the travel experience for me. I enjoy gathering insight into a place from a cultural perspective. One of the most fascinating culture's I've ever encountered is Gullah culture. This week, I have a feature story about Gullah culture in Travel Muse . The piece focuses on Gullah history in Hilton Head and St.Helena, South Carolina but the culture extends way beyond that. The Gullah trace their heritage directly to the skilled rice farmers of Sierra Leone, West Africa. They were enslaved specifically because of those skills and were transported to work on rice plantations in South Carolina, Georgia and parts of Florida. The swampy conditions and malaria that went with it, made it uncomfortable for the plantation owners to live so they left the Gullah people to work the plantations mostly unattended. The isolation allowed Gullah dialect, customs and art to survive undiluted for 100 years. One of the hal...

All of my favorite places host some kind of arts and cultural scene. If there's no art, museums or music, I'm not going. One of the reasons why I love St.Croix is because of the vibrant art work that fills most spaces in Christiansted and Fredericksted. Colorful landscapes, smiling children and kinetic carnival scenes jump out of St. Croix artwork, the best of which can be found in Christiansted art galleries. One of my favorites is Twin City Coffee House and Gallery, which showcases a host of St. Croix artwork every month. Cozy and blazing with color, from the tapestries on the tables to the woven pillowcases on the couch, the bi-level gallery is run by local artist Diane Butler and Theresa Calpano. "African Dance," a striking portrait of a kneeling naked woman with a scarf on her head and a background of dancers by Kendi Peguero captured my attention as soon as I walked in. I didn't walk out until I bought two hand-painted ceramic tiles that portray St. Croix s...