Portfolio
A selection of articles published in newspapers
and on line magazines.
Ecotourism & Birding in Tobago
By Meg Pier
Published on Petergreenberg.com
2/3/12
Every eco-lodge has its own story and every proprietor a unique motivation, Meg Pier continues her Peer to Pier interview series in Tobago with Ean Mackay of Adventure Eco Villas.
Meg Pier: When did you open Adventure Eco Villas?
Ean Mackay: My father started Adventure Farm in 1972. His concept was to plant every type of tree that was on the island, mainly fruit trees. However, over the years we’ve had challenges with bush fires so farming is really not a profitable venture.
When I retired from running two of the hotels I had opened, I started the eco project. For many years it was just myself and my wife and my family enjoying it. But a few years ago we opened it up to the public, to sustain the property. I went into ecotourism and agrotourism. We have schools coming here as well–we try to help the next generation to save the environment. And the kids here are very enthusiastic.
Read the complete article at Petergreenberg.com
The Old Believers of Lake Peipsi: Uncovering the Secretive Culture
By Meg Pier
Published on Petergreenberg.com
11/22/11
With a history that has seen its share of tears, perhaps it is not surprising that onions are the chief crop of the people known as Old Believers who live along the western shores of Lake Peipsi in Estonia. Members of this once-closed community peeled back layers of their lineage here for Meg Pier, sharing how events four centuries ago shaped an insular society that is now welcoming outsiders.
On what is known as the “Onion Route,” a stretch of gravel road that strings together several small villages.
I met the ancestors of a 17th century contingent of Russian refugees who had fled being persecuted for their faith. Amidst green garden plots and brightly painted houses, each fronted by humble stands overflowing with onions, I learned the story of these exiles, who in 1653 found safe haven in the isolated borderland between Russia and Estonia along Europe’s fifth largest lake.
Read the complete article at Petergreenberg.com
Exploring Folk Art Traditions: Puerto Rican Vejigantes Masks
By Meg Pier
Published on Petergreenberg.com
6/2/11
Puerto Rican Vejigantes Masks – Folk Art TraditionThe Puerto Rican Vejigantes mask tradition offers a unique link to the island’s past.
Contributing writer Meg Pier went beyond the tourist markets and sought out three of the island’s best known mask makers to learn about their techniques and the history of this ancient folk art.
In Puerto Rican museums, restaurants, and homes, the mystical creatures known as vejigantes leered at the tourists with their grotesque features contorted into a maniacal grin.
While the vejigantes are inescapable, few people take time to explore the rich history and craftsmanship behind these masks.
The vejigante is a colorful character that is a blend of Puerto Rico’s African, Spanish, and Caribbean influences. It’s a key figure in several of the island’s annual celebrations, particularly Ponce’s Carnival and Loiza’s Santiago Apóstol Fiesta.
The vejigantes represent either the devil in the battle between good and evil, or the Moors that Saint James fought during the Catholic Reconquista of Spain.
Wearing a Vejigantes MaskThe name originates from the Spanish word for bladder, vejiga. During the Carnival and Santiago Apóstol Fiesta festivities people dressed as vejigantes roam the streets in groups that try to scare people by hitting them with a balloon-like sack made from cow bladders.
Read the complete article at Petergreenberg.com
Isle shows Québec history around every turn
Boston Sunday Globe, May 22, 2011
By Meg Pier, Globe Correspondent
ÎLE D’ORLÉANS, Québec — Entering through the front door of Auberge La Goéliche, we were greeted with a festive crowd that burst into song, voices raised in sweet French cafe music featuring the nostalgic chords of an accordion. We quickly realized the serenade was not for us but the couple who had preceded us: According to a small placard, Robert and Jocelyn were celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary.
Family and tradition were hallmarks of the visit my husband, Tom, and I took to Île d’Orléans. This small island in the St. Lawrence Seaway, located a couple of miles downriver from Québec City, represents a microcosm of traditional Québecois culture, where the ancestral essence of its early residents and their way of life are preserved and celebrated.
In 1970, Île d’Orléans in its entirety was designated a National Historic District. Settlers from Normandy arrived here in 1651, establishing one of the first colonies of New France, naming it in honor of the second son of King Francis I, the Duke of Orléans. The road around the island’s 47-mile circumference is itself a piece of history: The Chemin Royal was built in 1744.
From the Pont d’Île that connects the island with the mainland, we had set off on this “Royal Road,’’ soon entering the smallest of Île d’Orléans’s six parishes, Sainte-Pétronille, situated at its western tip. Our stomachs growling for lunch, we had tucked into the long driveway of Auberge La Goéliche. The lodge’s name is a nod to its maritime heritage: Until the middle of the last century, small schooners called goéliches were used to transfer goods from the river’s banks to larger schooners offshore.
The sprawling white manse was located on a point jutting into the water and we sat in its glass-enclosed dining room. From our perch, we enjoyed a meal of scallops, shrimp, and mussels in a ginger cream sauce while mesmerized by what was probably an age-old drama here. A sailboat struggled against the fierce forces of the channel’s waters in an area known as bull’s point. Once beyond the island’s tip, the craft shot forward and sailed peacefully away.
Eco-Travel: Casa Grande Mountain Retreat – Utuado, Puerto Rico
By Meg Pier
Published on Petergreenberg.com
3/23/11
Steve Weingarten
Dropping everything to move to the Caribbean and run a resort sounds like a dream come true. But in practice, that experience can be riddled with roadblocks and pitfalls.
In her series of “Peer to Pier” interviews, Meg Pier sat down with Steven Weingarten, a New York City attorney-turned-owner of Casa Grande Mountain Retreat in Puerto Rico.
Read on to learn about his process of transitioning from high-stress city living to running an eco-lodge and yoga center in the mountains of Utuado.
Meg Pier: Can you describe the trip to Puerto Rico when you decided to buy Casa Grande?
Steven Weingarten: I lived in Sea Cliff, New York, in a charming carpenter gothic home overlooking Long Island Sound. I was more or less content—not looking for nor thinking about a major lifestyle change. It was mid-November and I was in my Great Neck law office gazing out at the snow. I said to myself “I need a winter vacation.”
I immediately thought of the tropics and then remembered Puerto Rico where I had worked at a travel camp in the hills of Bayamon for couple weeks one summer back in the late 1960s. I went to the library for some guidebooks and discovered the fact that Puerto Rico had an extensive mountain range. I thought it would be interesting to split the vacation between beach and mountains so I checked the possibilities in the central mountains. There were three: Hacienda Gripiñas, Hacienda Juanita and Casa Grande. The trip was planned for Christmas week and Gripiñas and Juanita were full.
I had to call Casa Grande four or five times before I got through to someone who didn’t hang up the phone on me and who spoke English.
MP: Tell me about your first visit to the property.
SW: The place was down and out.
Read the complete article at Petergreenberg.com
By Meg Pier
Published on Petergreenberg.com
12/21/10
Could you live and work in a place with no cell phone reception that relies entirely on solar power?
In her series of interviews with eco-lodge owners, Meg Pier speaks with Claudia Scholler, a German transplant who runs a traditional Andalucian farmhouse, Cortijo El Saltador, in the Almería province of Spain.
Meg Pier: Tell me a little bit about your background.
Claudia Scholler: The start is Hamburg. I’m really a proper city girl, born and raised in the center of a big, big city with no nature at all…
When I was 11, we went on holiday to the North Frisian Islands, which are very close to Denmark. Next to the little hotel, there was an Icelandic horse-riding farm.
Back in Hamburg, it got more and more complicated with my parents, so they agreed that I would go on a holiday the following spring. I was 12 and I was going by myself. I guess a big part of my courage is because I was brought up so strangely, which you don’t realize as a child. But for me it was normal that at 12, I took my suitcase, took the bus to the train, took the train to the ferry, walked on the ferry. And then walking off the ferry, there was nobody to pick me up. I arrived on the island, and nobody expected me because they had forgotten about the booking.
Because it’s a tiny island, I was brought to the riding farm. There was only one boy looking after the horses and a cleaning woman that came every three days. I didn’t tell anybody at home what was happening and stayed 10 days on my own. Those 10 days were probably the luckiest days I remember in that period.
Read the complete article at Petergreenberg.com
Peer to Pier Interview: Charles McDairmid of Vancouver Island’s Wickaninnish Inn
What’s the recipe for a successful eco-lodge owner?
In part two of her series of interviews with eco-lodge owners, Meg Pier chats with Charles McDairmid of the Wickanninish Inn in Tofino, Vancouver Island, about growing up on the rugged island, and the ties that brought him back to the community.
Meg Pier: I understand that you grew up in Tofino, after your family moved here when your father assumed responsibility for the Tofino General Hospital. What was it like growing up on the west coast of Vancouver Island?
Charles McDairmid: Really a kid’s adventure paradise. With very few outside visitors in those early days, kids were allowed to roam freely in the community and so my buddy and I were most often at the beach, fishing off the rocks below our house or the docks in town, exploring the forest or roaming about Tofino with our Chesapeake Bay retriever in tow. When we got to be a little older we were able to take our small boats out on the water—we had a 12-foot aluminum boat with a 9.5 horsepower motor which was great for wave jumping and exploring in and around Tofino Harbor. It was kind of like a Huck Finn-meets-the-West-Coast-of-Vancouver-Island kind of childhood.
UNESCO’s Ten Best Intangible Cultural Heritage Sites
By Meg Pier
Cultural Travel, Featured — By Lost Girls on October 25, 2010 at 6:00 am
Most people are familiar with UNESCO’s “World Heritage Site” designation, but may not know that the organization also has identified cultural “intangibles”— traditions or living expressions that are deemed equally important to safeguard, such as traditional performing arts, social practices, festive events or traditional craftsmanship.
You can visit UNESCO’s site for a complete list and to understand why the traditions are being inventoried, but you can get a more in-depth view by seeking out these 10 dynamic cultural practices as you travel.
Read Meg Pier’s article at LostGirls.com
New England Travel Beyond Fall Foliage
By Meg Pier
Published on Petergreenberg.com
10/11/10
Mention “New England” at this time of year and the conversation subject will likely turn to where to find great fall foliage. Yes, there are all the colors of the changing season but there are treasures of another sort. Meg Pier takes us out of the driver’s seat of leaf peeping and into the more experiential side of New England in the fall.
From Arts & Crafts architecture to steam trains and artist colonies, New England’s multi-faceted identity goes far beyond passive leaf-peeping. The region boasts offshore islands, bogs and river banks that are bastions of an independent spirit, creative flair and Down East practicality.
The rivers of Connecticut, New England’s southernmost state, afford a vantage point that can be enjoyed from vintage vessels.
A 90-minute cruise aboard the 1908 Sabino, one of the oldest wooden, coal-fired steamboats still in operation, makes for a novel way to enjoy the scenery along the Mystic River. Designated a National Historic Landmark in 1992, the Sabino is one of four vessels with that distinction and can be appreciated at Mystic Seaport, one of the world’s largest maritime museums. The historic site spans 19 acres and more than four centuries of nautical heritage, including a re-created 19th-century village, a preservation shipyard, marine paintings and scrimshaw, and a planetarium.
Less than a half-hour away, the 1920s Pullman Essex Clipper departs from historic Essex Station and chugs along the Connecticut River through scenic towns and past picturesque farms and a millpond with waterfall.
Read Meg Pier’s article at Petergreenberg.com
Exploring The Folk Traditions of Cyprus: Food, Festivals & Art
By Meg Pier
Published on Petergreenberg.com
10/1/10
In the first part of her profile on Cyprus, Meg Pier discovered lace makers, musicians and dancers who strive to maintain their nation’s ancient crafts.
In part two, she reveals how gastronomy and art bring together history with modernity, as well as one tradition that’s rapidly slipping away.
“I took my children fishing and we called it a day at 7:30 p.m.,” recalled George Demetriades. “My mother lives only 15 minutes away—I called and asked her if she could prepare something for us to eat on the way back to Paphos. In that time, she already had about 10 dishes on the table—olives, capers, salad, cheese, fried eggs, cured and smoked meat.”
Demetriades was describing meze, which he told me means “delicate taste,” originating from Farsi, the ancient Persian language. On the island of Cyprus, meze is one of the country’s many traditions handed down from one generation to the next. This particular custom is a part of daily life for most Cypriots; at least one other ancient practice has become a fond memory.
Cyprus Food – Delicate Taste – Meze“Meze is a culture of eating, meaning that you have a variety of dishes of delicate tastes in small quantities, but at the same time, it is an occasion,” he continued. “You take your time, you relax, you converse and, many times, you sing.”
Demetriades is the owner of 7 St. Georges, a Geroskipou taverna that he runs with his sons. The restaurant is so-named because there are seven chapels dedicated to the saint in the immediate area.
Read Meg Pier’s article at Petergreenberg.com
The humble cranberry gets dressed up for visitors and harvest time in the bogs
Boston Sunday Globe, September 26, 2010
By Meg Pier, Globe Correspondent
Picking, corralling, and loading are not in most leaf-peepers’ repertoires. Since nearly three-quarters of Americans reportedly have never heard of a cranberry bog, perhaps that’s not surprising. But to experience a new way to see fall’s colors — head for the southeastern Massachusetts cranberry harvest.
Nestled among the towns between Carver and Harwich are more than 14,000 acres of cranberry bogs. October brings a brilliant crimson carpet from which rises the better-known seasonal skyline of gold, orange, and yellow.
For more than 25 years the bogs have inspired Gail Marie Nauen, a Carver resident and painter (www.gailmarienauen.com).
“The tall pine trees provided the shade patterns on the floating pinks, reds, and peaches that make up the cranberry harvest,’’ Nauen said, recalling a recent scene. “Tomorrow, with another sunrise, the berries will take on a whole new look.’’
The harvest can often be seen from the side the road; the Cape Cod Cranberry Growers’ Association publishes a harvest route trail guide. But the bogs in their most vivid hues are a short-lived phenomenon.
Read article on-line at Boston.com
Alpacas, artisans flourish side by side in New Mexico
Boston Sunday Globe, September 19, 2010
By Meg Pier, Globe Correspondent
SANTA FE — Deep in a wide valley encircled by snow-capped mountains, I stood surrounded by dozens of creatures with soft brown eyes. A few nudged me gently, while others spat noisily on the ground.
The 1,100-acre Victory Ranch, home to 300 alpacas, is one stop on New Mexico’s recently blazed rural Fiber Arts Trails. Envisioned in 2005 at a gathering of the state’s cultural tourism advocates, the circuit features more than 200 artisans at 71 destinations.
From downtown Santa Fe, I had driven east to Las Vegas, a small railroad town, then veered north on a country road that took me into the southern Rockies. Arriving at the spectacular expanse that is Victory Ranch, I felt as though I had reached Patagonia, an illusion enhanced by the grazing herd of alpacas.
Alpacas, members of the camel family and native to the Andes, do well in the 7,000-foot-plus elevation of northern New Mexico with their enlarged hearts and lungs.
“Their fiber can be finer than cashmere,’’ said Darcy Weisner, ranch manager. “It’s very lightweight as it is a hollow hair, which gives it unique insulating qualities. We analyze every alpaca’s fiber every year when we shear. This helps us with our breeding program as well as with deciding whose fiber should be sent to a mill and whose will be handspun or sold as raw fiber in our store.’’
Read article on-line at Boston.com
By Meg Pier
Published on Petergreenberg.com
9/17/10
On the Mediterranean island Cyprus exists a cross-section of people who are seeking to safeguard their ancient cultural legacies.
Meg Pier sought out some of these locals to learn more about the heritage they’re striving to maintain.
Known as the birthplace of Aphrodite, Cyprus is a treasure trove of historic sites. Near Larnaka, for example, a visitor can view the ruins of Neolithic settlement Tenta, cross the street to the remains of 13th century Limassol Castle, and down the road find the 4th century Stavrovouni Monastery, founded by Emperor Constantine’s mother.
The ravages of time and greed of looters are the nemeses of archaeologists who preserve the stone monuments of sites such as these. But Cyprus also has a wealth of ancient riches that its everyday citizens protect from the more insidious threats of progress and benign neglect.
Cyprus Lace-Making Lady Minds Her StoreFrom lace-making to traditional music and dancing, residents here continue to create beauty in much the same ways as their ancestors.
Both an art and a custom for the women of the village of Lefkara, lace-making is a powerful strand that intertwines their identity, economics and social life.
Creating heirlooms and show pieces while sitting together in the winding streets is still the principal occupation of many women here. Young girls study the craft from masters—their mother and grandmothers.
Read Meg Pier’s article at Petergreenberg.com
Iceland’s Culture of Folk Tales
By Meg Pier
VIE&VOY Publications, July, 2010
On March 20 Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull erupted several times in a row and caused major disruption to air travel across western and northern Europe. Our writer Meg Pier went there last May and found out firsthand why the Icelandic people have such a healthy respect for the power of Mother Nature, and how the mystery of the country’s landscape has led to a culture steeped in folk tales.
In a 2007 survey conducted by the University of Iceland, 64% of those polled had some belief in huldufolk or hidden people, and alfar, or elves. Almost two-thirds had some belief in guardian angels, or fetches. I found out why during a four-day, 400-mile round-trip jaunt from Reykjavik, Iceland’s capital, to its southernmost point of Vik.
One of the newest land masses on the planet, the sweeping vistas here are alternately eerie, majestic, playful, and even frightening, giving rise to some of mankind’s oldest emotions. Goosebumps, gasps, giggles and even tears are among the gamut of reactions that Iceland’s landscape elicits. Within an hour’s drive, a visitor can walk on lava fields and glaciers, across black beaches and verdant fields, and under waterfalls and rainbows. In our trek across southern Iceland, my husband Tom and I experienced the magic of an otherworldly geography that has inspired long-held folk traditions.
Read Meg Pier’s Iceland article at Vie & Voy
Tradition guides the lights in Oak Bluffs
Boston Sunday Globe, June 13, 2010
By Meg Pier, Globe Correspondent
OAK BLUFFS — The spotlight often shines on the Vineyard because of its visiting luminaries. But residents of the Camp Meeting Association here have long basked in the glow of bright lights. Since 1869, for at least one night a year, these campers take center stage.
The association first celebrated Illumination Night 141 years ago to welcome the governor of Massachusetts. Residents have continued the tradition every summer since, with owners adorning their pastel-painted cottages with Chinese and Japanese lanterns, many of them family heirlooms.
The camp, a collection of concentric circles of tiny Victorian gingerbread houses, is a National Historic Landmark. Still, one can forgive a visitor’s perception of the campground as a movie set, an open-air museum, or a seasonal dollhouse display.
Download your own pdf version here
Nature is the connector on Vancouver Island
Boston Sunday Globe, April 4, 2010
By Meg Pier, Globe Correspondent
VANCOUVER ISLAND, British Columbia — We had driven for some time on Highway 4 without seeing another car, in a wilderness more vast than anything I had experienced. I checked my cellphone. No reception. A bank of clouds moved in above tall, densely packed trees and long shadows reached across our path. I envisioned grizzlies appearing from behind the trees.
My husband, Tom, and I were making a 100-mile trek to the west coast of Vancouver Island, through Pacific Rim National Park Reserve, traversing old logging roads that weren’t paved until the 1980s.
Suddenly, Tom slammed on the brakes.
Courting legends, inspiration in Lynn Woods
Boston Sunday Globe, January 24, 2010
By Meg Pier, Globe Correspondent
LYNN – I had lived in Nahant for more than a decade when a friend told me about the 2,200-acre park in neighboring Lynn.
“From the first day I went, I was hooked by its beauty and it’s been a sanctuary for me ever since,’’ Maria Manning said. “One of the most tranquil memories I have of winter was two years ago. My year-old son was asleep in the stroller and our dog Molly was on a leash. In the middle of our walk, it started to snow. It was so quiet we could hear a pin drop. Suddenly, Molly and I heard something off in the distance. It was
two beautiful white-tailed doe. They stared at us with their sweet brown eyes, and then quickly galloped off. That was right before Christmas. It certainly put me in the spirit.’’
The ninth biggest city in the state, Lynn is largely known as home to industries like General Electric and manufacturers ranging from those that have shod Revolutionary soldiers to putting marshmallow in your sandwiches. But perhaps its best-kept secret is Lynn Woods Reservation, a forested park encompassing one fifth of the city. Hiding in plain sight, the reserve is by some accounts the second-largest municipal park in the United States.
Malta: Colorful Boats Tell The History of an Island Civilization
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VIE&VOY Publications, October, 2009
By Meg Pier
Taking the strong arm offered to me, I was the last to board the small boat. I plopped down at the rear of the craft, next to the man who helped me on. During the next half-hour, he navigated my journey into a remarkable world of a hundred shades of blue and green.
A boatman in Malta’s Blue Grotto, Carmel D’Amato has the sea in his veins—his family has been plying these waters for over 80 years. He is a third-generation captain of one of 77 boats that bring visitors into the gaping caverns that rise out of the aquamarine waters here. The vessel Carmel and his fellow boatmen use is a frigatina, one of several kinds of traditional Maltese boats.
download pdf to read Meg Pier’s Malta article
Time Traveling in Gozo
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VIE&VOY Publications, October, 2009
By Meg Pier
“If you do any digging in the Maltese islands, you’re bound to find something—it’s all just one big museum,” said my guide, Amy Pace of Sliema. “When the streets of M’dina were being repaved about four years ago, they discovered they had hit a buried column of an old Roman temple.”
Indeed, the list of artifacts found in this archipelago could be longer than the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the variety of cultures that have called the island home perhaps considered more diverse than membership in the European Union. This island nation lays claim to a treasure trove of history and mystery, swashbuckling and secrecy.
download pdf to read Meg Pier’s Gozo article
. . . in an exotic place, Ybor City or Ann Arbor, Berlin or Bordeaux, savoring this sweet season.
Boston Sunday Globe, Aug 30, 2009
From film festivals and street parties to football games and balloon rides, our writers find there is more to celebrate in fall than pumpkins and foliage.
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Salton Sea: A Mix of Misfit Attractions
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VIE&VOY Publications, August, 2009
By Meg Pier
With easy access from L.A. and San Diego, and more than 125 courses, Palm Springs, California, is a golfer’s paradise, attracting armies of tan, fit, and well-to-do who enjoy America’s favorite pastime here.
Yet 43 miles to its south is the quirky Salton Sea, a controversial mass of contradictions with a history steeped in myths, and an eclectic mix of misfit attractions around its circumference that can make you laugh–and cry. It’s hard to find a more offbeat, thought-provoking, and moving way to spend a day than prowling around its perimeter. But you better get there soon–according to some, it may not be there long, despite having a history that goes back eons.
download pdf to read Meg Pier’s Salton Sea article
A Magnificent Island for Many an Odyssey
On Malta, discover ancient salt pans and the stuff of legends
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Boston Sunday Globe, July 26, 2009
By Meg Pier, GLOBE CORRESPONDENT
GOZO, Malta — Edward Lear, the Victorian-era nonsense poet, was a six-time visitor to Gozo. He termed the island “pomzkizillious and gromphiberous, being as no words can describe its magnificence.’’Today tourists and locals alike are taken with the tiny Mediterranean isle.
“I go every year to Gozo with friends; sometimes we hire a farmhouse or stay at a hotel. The sea in most places is fresher and cleaner, the air is cooler at nights, and the picturesque countryside and the beaches are a treat for us,’’ said Joe Pisani of Birkirkara. “We seek the tranquillity, an escape from the dense cities of Malta. All in all, Gozo is considered as a haven for Maltese, even in winter.’’
As for me, I had come in hopes of lightening a heart made heavy by the poor health of a family member. I was in the right place.
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download pdf of Meg Pier’s Gozo MALTA article
Madeira’s Waterworld: Walking Along A Mountain Paradise Pathway
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VIE&VOY Publications, May, 2009
By Meg Pier
MADEIRA, Portugal – After hugging cliffs, walking through waterfalls, and admiring an outcropping of wild orchids, we emerged from the ravine, ravenous and ready for lunch. You would be too, after a morning trek through cumulus clouds, five ecosystems, and a Tertiary Period forest. All just another
walk in the park in Madeira, where two-thirds of its land has been set aside as just that.
Madeira is a subtropical volcanic island that is closer to Morocco than its motherland of Portugal. Pico Ruivo at its center is more than a mile high, with radial ridges reaching down to the island’s 90 miles of Atlantic coastline, off northwestern Africa. This dramatic difference in altitude means a lot of biodiversity on a little island just 14 miles long and 34 miles wide. The isle’s north gets about five feet of rain annually; the south, two feet.
download pdf to read Meg Pier’s Madeira’s Waterworld article
Home values only grow in these exchanges.
Boston Sunday Globe, November 30, 2008
By Meg Pier, GLOBE CORRESPONDENT
Condoleezza Rice and Bono grab the headlines for their diplomatic efforts, but there are others fanned out across the globe, everyday ambassadors quietly dispelling myths about their own and other nationalities.
Their movement, at least 45,000 strong, began with a few people posing a new idea for the barter system: home exchanges.
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Looking for light and comfort with the Danes
Boston Sunday Globe, November 23, 2008
By Meg Pier, GLOBE CORRESPONDENT
SKAGEN, Denmark — Disembarking from the 30-minute flight from Copenhagen to alborg Airport in North Jutland province, I saw a wiry gent with white hair holding sign with my name. I had splurged on the services of a driver for four hours on each of the two days I was to be at the northernmost tip of the country and Kaj pronounced ‘‘ky’’) proved an able guide.
As we made our way to Skagen, about 50 miles north, I asked him about ‘‘hygge’’ (pronounced ‘‘hue-ga’’).
‘‘Well . . . it’s the family, around the table, having wonderful conversation,’’ Kaj said.
‘‘With a fire in the fireplace. And candles lit, lots of candles.’’
‘‘I see . . . so warmth is important in hygge?’’ I said.
‘‘Noooo . . .,’’ he replied. ‘‘A snowball fight can be hygge.’’
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Guatemala treasures Maya ruins and their rich history
Boston Sunday Globe, July 6, 2008
By Meg Pier Globe Correspondent
TIKAL NATIONAL PARK, Guatemala – On the road to the Maya ruins we sat in our guide George Hernandez’s van, waiting for him to complete the paperwork in the concrete immigration building at the Guatemalan border. As he jumped in and shifted gears, he warned us it would be a long, bumpy ride with no facilities en route, suggesting we stop at the gas station just ahead. My heart raced as I watched my husband, Tom, get the men’s room key from a uniformed soldier with a rifle. A few miles down the dirt road, we passed an army barracks and saw armed men in camouflage fatigues looking out over the horizon.
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An exotic Portuguese garden in the ocean off Africa
Boston Sunday Globe, December18, 2005
By Meg Pier Globe Correspondent
MADEIRA, Portugal — ”The floating flower pot” is how people sometimes refer to the Portuguese island of Madeira. Sitting 530 miles from the mainland and 378 miles off the coast of North Africa, it is a volcanic subtropical island, part of an archipelago in which only two islands are inhabited, with an alluring median year-round temperature of 68 degrees.
Everything grows here. Two-thirds of the 13-by-35-mile island is a national park, ornamental gardens abound, and someone with a green thumb resides in virtually every home.
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A Scenic Base for Touring Italy’s Ankle download pdf to read article
Boston Sunday Globe, October 31, 2004
By Meg Pier, GLOBE CORRESPONDENT
SORRENTO, Italy — Fall is lovely on the Cape and islands, but if its allure has
faded with the waning daylight and you’re willing to venture farther afield, you might consider a peninsular community, on a different continent: the Amalfi coast of Italy and the island of Capri.
The Amalfi Coast, in the Campania region, the ankle of Italy’s famous boot, stretches 43 miles from Sorrento on the Bay of Naples to Salerno on a gulf bearing its name. With a Greco-Roman heritage dating to 1000 BC, about 250 years before the founding of Rome, this stretch of shoreline abounds in rugged natural beauty and picturesque cliffside villages, with dwellings in shades of spice, sky, and sea, amid fragrant expanses of olive groves and lemon trees. Sorrento is an ideal scenic base from which to rest, relax, and explore.
find something—it’s all just one big museum,” said my guide,
Amy Pace of Sliema. “When the streets of M’dina were being
repaved about four years ago, they discovered they had hit a
buried column of an old Roman temple.”
Indeed, the list of artifacts found in this archipelago could be
longer than the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the variety of cultures
that have called the island home perhaps considered more
diverse than membership in the European Union. This island
nation lays claim to a treasure trove of history and mystery,
swashbuckling and secrecy.
Malta’s sister island of Goz
