Fred DeVinney, Walnut Creek, CA

In Condé Nast’s 2009 Readers’ Choice poll, Oaxaca, Mexico, was listed among the top 10 cities in the Americas (excluding the US). After my late-October ’09 trip there for the marvelously colorful Day of the Dead festivities, I can certainly understand why.

El Diá de los Muertos is celebrated each year in Oaxaca during the week leading up to the first of November. Instead of mourning the dead, Mexicans celebrate their memory, and this is the time...

by Beth Habian, ITN

Living on the West Coast, it’s a very rare occasion when I get to see the landscape covered in snow. It might be a romantic notion, but I think that during the holidays it’s something that helps to usher in the Christmas spirit, especially after my senses have been repeatedly assaulted by the commercialization fest that seems to start earlier each year.

So when the opportunity arose to spend a week on an AMA Waterways small-ship winter cruise visiting the...

by Julie Skurdenis, Bronxville, NY

I’m not a surfer in any sense of the word, certainly not in the electronic sense, but one bleak, rainy Saturday I found myself surfing the Internet. Without knowing exactly why, I sat at my computer searching for short-term rental apartments in Paris — but only those with terrific views of the Eiffel Tower — ‘just to see if anything is available,’ I told myself.

I’d been to Paris at least a dozen times (most recently in July 2006). I wasn’t...