Bari, Italy. May, 1988

Nick and I were tooling around Italy, doing the heavy research (finding restaurants and bakeries, getting recipes, photographing the food, eating) that resulted in his Great Italian Desserts book. Our day in Bari began by calling on Paola Pettini, a wonderful cooking teacher who had relocated here from her native Rome. She warmly welcomed us at her elegant home where her handsome assistant soon brought us refreshments. As we chatted and laughed, she had an idea: Would Nick teach an impromptu baking class that afternoon for her club di cucina? “Something American,” she suggested. “What can I do that’s American?” Nick quietly asked me as he struggled to come up with a shopping list for her. “I do French and Viennese.” A quick conference resulted in a stars-and-stripes solution: apple pie and chocolate chip cookies. The day was saved, the class was a big success and all of the Barese housewives left extolling the delights of “CHOcola-CHEEpa KOOkies.”

Santiago de Compostela, Spain. October, 2009

One of the blessings of living in (or visiting) Galicia is the availability of a wide variety of Atlantic seafood. Clams anyone? This amiable woman at the town market has several delicious types to choose from. As well as the currently chic (and therefore astonishingly pricey) percebes, or gooseneck barnacles, ugly as prehistoric sin but, once maneuvered, tasting unmistakably of the sea. Other nearby vendors specialized in eels, lobsters, squid, crabs, cuttlefish, mussels, shrimp, octopus and the city’s ubiquitous symbol, scallops. Oh, yes, you can get fish, too. There’s even a cafe called Churro Maria within the market that will, for a small fee, boil or steam whatever it is you bought (boiled octopus was a hot seller the day we were there), just in case you can’t wait to get back home to cook up your caldeirada a la gallega...or, like us, had no kitchen facilities at our disposal, always a bit of a torture when visiting these wonderful foreign markets.

Pigalle, Paris. December, 2005

When Billy Wilder’s 1963 film Irma La Douce opened, I couldn’t wait to see it. (I was 14 and didn’t meet the age requirement, but I managed to “dress older” and get into the Lavalette, NJ, theater where, two days earlier I’d passed for the under-12 discount to see Hayley Mills in Summer Magic. Just saying.) I loved it. The music, the clichéd presentation of Paris, the forbidden humor and intrigue surrounding ladies of the night. (And I also liked the film’s ads, the graphics of which I reproduced with driftwood charcoal on the side of a lifeguard shack late one night to the general disgruntlement of the awakening Silver Beach, NJ, community.) So, arriving in Paris for the first time in 1969, I made a beeline to Pigalle. Well, it was short on Hollywood glamour but still possessed a seedy charm. I can recall an older, heavy and worn woman leaning in a doorway, humming “La Vie en Rose” as I walked by. Know your audience, chérie. On a recent visit to the City of Light, I noticed that even the Parisian sex trade in Pigalle has been commercialized, the human element removed, with a supermarché erotique on almost every block, porno DVDs for sale on the sidewalk...and few ladies to be found. I suspect a misguided, late-1980s Times-Square-style cleanup by a politically motivated mayor with little respect for tradition. Have you no sense of indecency, sir?

Chateau Marmont, West Hollywood, CA. October, 2007

The first time I went to Los Angeles was on business in 1981. I was working at The Caption Center at WGBH Boston, and just before my trip, we were told that there was a real chance our department would shut down. I quickly changed my reservation from the Motel 6 to the Chateau Marmont. I knew nothing about the hotel except what I’d read in Gore Vidal’s Myra Breckenridge: that Garbo had always stayed there, that it had a faded splendor, that a huge lady cowboy sign revolved outside, that it had history. That was more than enough for me. I arrived to the great news that The Marmont had no more single rooms available, would a small suite be OK? I loved the place right off -- the small, shaded pool, the Spanish colonial atmosphere, the whispered conversations, the cool tiled floors, the huge sunglasses everyone wore, the haunted secrecy of it all. (Who, I wondered, had occupied my suite in the past?) That night, I took a walk along Sunset Boulevard (I had to!) and was stopped by the police: Why was I walking? I quickly learned that respectable Los Angelinos rarely walk anywhere, least of all along The Sunset Strip, least of all at night. Whatever. Years later, the Chateau Marmont was the scene of John Belushi’s highly publicized drug overdose, and since then it has undergone a major facelift with a consequent skyrocketing of prices. Still, that magical first visit remains with me to this day.

Istanbul. June 3, 2007

A little jet-lagged but unreservedly enthusiastic about seeing this fabled city, Nick and I woke up on our first morning, a warm and sunny Sunday, and climbed the steep hill to Tünel for breakfast at Kaffehaus. We were not disappointed. Strong tea, a sesame-coated simit, cheese, olives, a warm hard-boiled egg, tomato, cucumber, honey and jam. “Let’s take it easy today,” Nick suggested as we ate. Sure. Before the day was finished we’d been to Asia and back, ferrying across the Bosphorus to dine on Anatolian cuisine at Çiya, a restaurant we’d return to over and over again. Each June 3 since then, no matter where I am, I always recreate this breakfast plate as best I can, remembering that first morning in the City of the World’s Desire.

Cliffside Park, NJ. October, 2007

I first knew about Marta Curro from her frequent appearances on The Merv Griffin Show when I was in high school and college. Griffin's sidekick, Arthur Treacher, would list the guests during the opening of the evening's program, and if he mentioned Marta's name, I would always stay tuned. "The Gypsy Lady" they called her then, back when she was married to actor Jerry Orbach. Who would have imagined that some 40 years later she and I would become friends…through Nick at whose 60^th birthday party I snapped this photo. Always the glamour girl, Marta was wearing these same sunglasses one evening a year later at Christmastime when we went to see her at the Village Nursing Home in New York. (Recuperating from a fall, she was under the mistaken impression that she'd be released on New Year's Day, and when she wasn't, she dialed 911 and announced she was being held hostage. She was thereupon transferred to a ward in nearby St. Vincent's Hospital for “further observation.”) During a happier time, having lunch at her favorite NYC spot, La Luncheonette, I'd asked her why they called her "The Gypsy Lady." "I have no idea," she told me. "Actually there were a lot worse things they could have called me back then."

San Francisco. November, 2005

Why, I wonder, do I always wind up at the public library whenever I visit a new city? Miami, Las Vegas, Montreal and here in San Francisco, the most beautiful library of them all. Open and airy, with a multistoried atrium dotted with the names of writers of consequence. And where else but in this populist city would they paper the walls with the old cards from the card catalogue when they switched over to a computer-based system? Everything about this wonderful library speaks to its vital place in the lives of the people it serves. One example: the quiet and hallowed room devoted to gay and lesbian studies. A small and dignified space, it is crowned by an awe-inspiring trompe l’oeil ceiling that depicts a community in the process of building a monument to honor gay and lesbian authors, artists and other leaders throughout the world, throughout history. Oscar Wilde, Tennessee Williams, Gertrude Stein and James Baldwin, of course. But also Raphael, Michelangelo, Frederick the Great, Ma Rainey, Cole Porter, Yukio Mishima, Aaron Copland, Willa Cather, Lorraine Hansberry, the list goes on and on, as the building of the monument seems to. A place so uplifting, it’s hard not to become emotional. Plus, Vasco da Gama...who knew?