Peter Mandel

An egg with a coat of shellac that says "Ecuador." Acrylic paperweights full of Burmese jungle ants. A caribou that sings "O Canada" when you press its nose. Going somewhere far away means new sights, new eats. New stuff. If you're like me, one of the best sides of travel...

I know I'm good. We are the best. USA rules. To be American, these days, is to pound on a drum. Bim, bam, bang. Our king-of-the-jungle beat.

My kid did this. Hear me roar. Swallow my dust. We've got a national vibe: a steady vamp of self-esteem. Is this a...

Peter Mandel is a travel writer and the author of children's books like Jackhammer Sam and his newest, Zoo Ah-Choooo, about zoo animals passing on a very noisy sneeze.

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Everyone is kinder in the bush, but the customs guy at the airport...

Three stars, four stars, whatever its constellation, the hotel chain of your choice wants you to know that it is a lot like you. It may be a mass of buildings, elevator buttons and brass-plated trolleys for bags. But it is special. A brick-and-mortar being with a heart.

Starwood Hotels...

Tell someone about your bus trip and stand back. The Question is on its way. "Why would you do it?" they will ask. Why would you ride on Greyhound instead of driving -- or grabbing a train or plane?

A friend and I found out a few winters ago that...

Tell someone about your bus trip, and stand back. The Question is on its way. "Why would you do it?" they will ask. Why would you ride on Greyhound instead of driving -- or grabbing a train or plane?

A friend and I found out a few winters ago that...

Palermo, Recoleta, Monserrat, Congreso, San Martin. The neighborhood labels on my map belong in Italy, Sicily, Switzerland -- somewhere that isn't here.

The same could be said of some of the words on signs, the smell of cakes in bakeries and the European plants in parks, but this is...

It's an ancient tradition in Jalisco, Mexico. The jimador in his wide hat and boots, the elegant arc of attack, the final swift plunging of the sword. Bullfight? Not exactly. It's harvest time for blue agave plants: giant pineapple-like blobs that are chopped, roasted and distilled here into the world's...

It's a Banana Republic like no other. Fly into its capital from abroad and you'll catch a whiff of over-ripeness, even decay.

The baggage carousel clunks and squeaks. The road to your hotel is missing signs and it is a maze of crevices and holes. Soon you are lost...

Winds yell at you. Snow talks softly. But winter's always saying the same thing: Escape. Find some sun. Run as far from me as you can.

I listen, just like anyone, but keep suspecting this might be a trick. A January lie. Is there some frozen secret that the season...

It's the persistent mystery of the political season so far. What's been stopping steady-but-dull Mitt Romney from stepping up and sealing the deal? Some point to Romney's famous flip-flops. Some say he's just not enough of a "regular guy."

Critics, you can fold away those thoughts. Hang them up for...

In my last column, I gave some overdue ink to kids themselves on the sometimes sensitive subject of going on vacation. Drawing from an exclusive panel made up of a dozen kids ages 6 to 15, the blog post aired out panelists' little-known vacation "hates."

As it turned...

You're on the perfect vacation -- sampling history, adventure, cuisine -- and everything's shared because the kids are in tow. Then you hear it. Peep, peep. Ba-deep. No way. They wouldn't dare. They would. "Angry Birds" in the Musee d'Orsay.

Is taking the kids along all it's cracked up to...

You've been bad, very bad, so there won't be supper. No blanket, either. Want your bottle? Sorry. No free pours on tap for this teetotaling flight.

Airline passengers live the life of a toddler in the process of being punished. And, thing is, we're never sure exactly what we've done....

My earliest memory is of oatmeal. Not a crib, not a baby's toy. A bowl. Behind it and a busy spoon was my grandmother, Nanny Liz, who made it clear to me, even in those days, that I was by half a Scot.

My father's Russian Jewish roots seem...

When people think of pets in France, they think dogs: tiny, fluffy poodles poking their heads out of fashionable pocketbooks. As for my wife and me, when we think back on the two years we lived on Rue St. Didier in Paris, we think of a very different sort of...

It's a summer day in D.C., and I'm thinking Amtrak: I've got to be in New York by afternoon. On Connecticut Avenue, I see a smudge of orange slide up to the curb. It's a cab.

"Where you headed?" barks the driver. "Manhattan," I reply. In a cloud of...

Those of us who write for newspapers and still enjoy reading 'em tend to think of our travel articles as vital and indispensable to all who encounter them, but I'll concede that maybe, just possibly, we ink-stained scribes are a tad out of touch.

The thing about traveling by plane, bus, or train is that you're never alone.

You may be flying solo, roaming the globe without a single sidekick. But unless you're very lucky, you'll be sharing your row--38 D, E, and F--with at least one nut.

Baseball in the imagination, and in its real-life seasonal swings, is connected to being young. Boys of summer, we say. Rookies of spring.

But I am here to tell you that when it comes to uppercuts that get only air and eating dust on a headfirst slide, the kids...