Amidst the daily scramble of mobile communications, information overload and intrusive technologies, who wouldn't want to take a holiday from our postmodern (on the cusp of post-human) era?

I recently had the opportunity to ditch the tech in favor of the timeless when I visited Venice for the first time.

On an Autumn weeknight in London's Banqueting House, the octogenarian media impresario and Reuters Editor-at-Large Sir Harold Evans moderates a panel of press players to his right and U.K. politicians to his left. An audience, mostly dotted with graying heads feverishly takes notes.

The topics of this...

"Where are you staying?" asked a sweat-glazed, red-faced Englishman at a party I was attending in London's staid and pristine South Kensington.

"Notting Hill," I replied, feeling a bit proud of the location of the flat I had rented for the month.

"Oh, of course, you're American, Notting...

Your knees buckle, you feel off-center, yet filled with joy. A sense of the "anything is possible" comes over you. You're not yourself; nor do you want to be. You're in love. And, to keep this love affair afloat, you'll do anything...

Even move to another city or country.

Yet,...

Before Starwoods and superstars, Tuscany's seaside Hotel Il Pellicano was calling out to royals and fashionistas... albeit in hushed tones.

A new book tells the story of the infamous and exclusive retreat in Porto Ercole through photographs -- from its inception in the '60s through to...

City travel and shopping go together like frick and frack. But in today's era of personalization and customization, there's nothing like tailor-made clothing. I've had garments constructed and altered in Amsterdam, New York and of course Hong Kong and been pleased with my unique take-backs to the States. Beyond the...

Rome has exquisite Renaissance artwork. Paris has the Musée d'Orsay. But where should art trekkers obsessed with street art, new contemporary art movements, and cool gallery scenes go when journeying overseas?

Here is a short list of a few cities overseas that are making waves with international art aficionados, or...

These days, the notion of "interactive travel" connotes using your iPhone overseas (at a hefty cost) and then tweeting or Facebooking your friends, or perhaps stalking your contacts via Foursquare.

But that's not really my idea of being present, interacting, and engaging in a locale. Sometimes you have to...

In the film A Good Year (based on a Peter Mayle novel), a London investment broker discovers that he has inherited a chateau and vineyard in France from his late uncle. After arriving in Provence to arrange for the sale of the property, fateful events convene to alter...

About a month ago, just before departing for a media trip to South Australia, I met celebrity chef Tom Colicchio at Craft in Los Angeles. Colicchio is a brand ambassador for S. Oz and he recently toured the state. On said night he was also helping...

I visited the charming and multifaceted city of Adelaide in South Australia for the first time last week on a travel writers' trip with Mike Richard of Vagabondish and Melanie Waldman of Travels With Two. It's actually Australia's cultural capital -- in more ways...

I am currently touring South Australia and recently went on a handful of wine tastings through its famous Barossa Valley region. I was lucky enough to have been put under the care of Life is a Cabernet Tours and its guide Ralf Hadzic who shuttled my...

Proposition 19 ('The Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010') looms as other states look to California as a bellwether of marijuana legalization. I got in touch with Prop 19's chief promoter and originator Richard Lee and asked him to outline his top 10 reasons for marijuana...

If you like your travels offbeat and spooky, consider a trip to England's most haunted, ghost-infested region. I've created a video overview of it, featuring Diz White, author of the newly [U.S.] released book Haunted Cotswolds and as-of-yet unpublished comedic memoir A Love Note to the...

Follow me on my brief trip to Paris with this video collage of quirky bits and bytes, along with snapshots of Parisian vibes and rituals:

Wine glass in-hand, at a cocktail party held by my architect friends, I systematically build my case like a lawyer. A handful of us graduate-level educated folks are engaged in a heated debate. We hit a stalemate as emotions run high. "Team Edward!" I chant for the last time. "Team...

[Warning: spoiler]

How do you capture a zeitgeist? If that zeitgeist is of a viral nature--as is the case with the worldwide street art movement--the answer might be in the term "viral." In Exit Through the Gift Shop, (opening April 16th in LA, New York and San Francisco)...

As the fast-paced [portable] Information Age moves forward, yet another industry's number is up: journalism. OK, this death knell has been sounding for a while. A broad range of magazines have folded. And of course newspapers have been struggling to reinvent themselves lest they turn to dust in...

Two-thousand-and-nine is drawing to a close. We’re at the end of the decade and inching towards the culmination of the ancient Mesoamerican Mayan calendar...nearing the epoch of who knows what?

Literally, philosophically, pop culturally and sociologically, the zeitgeist points to the fate of the world hanging in the...

Earlier this week, I attended my first two screenings at the Indian Film Festival Los Angeles: the L.A. premiere of Firaaq by actress and first-time director Nandita Das and the much-anticipated global premiere of Sikandar released by Big Pictures (as in Anil Ambani/Reliance, of Dreamworks deal fame). I am...