The Outer Banks are a string of barrier islands off the coast of North Carolina. Quiet, but saturated with history, they’re a thoughtful person’s paradise, nurturing the delicious and slightly rebellious sense of surrender that comes with leaving the mainland and its expectations behind for a few days. I’ve been on trips ranging from a… Read More 10 Things to Do on North Carolina’s Outer Banks
Magnolia Plantation in South Carolina boasts the last intact large-scale romantic gardens in the United States. This post contains affiliate links. For more information, click here. But Magnolia’s history and her gardens go back a century before there was a United States, when Ann and Thomas Drayton established the rice plantation in 1676 along the Ashley… Read More Magnolia Plantation & Gardens in South Carolina
Charleston’s Battery and Rainbow Row faded from view as my travel companion and I sailed aboard the ferry toward Fort Sumter, perched on a small island in Charleston Harbor, site of the first battle in America’s bloodiest war. The five-sided Fort was planned during the 1820s, in the wake of the War of 1812, designed… Read More Fort Sumter
Boone Hall is one of the oldest working plantations in America. Since its founding in 1681, it has produced a range of goods from cotton to pecans and been owned by a cast of colorful characters from an early English settler to a Georgian prince. The plantation is named for its first owners Elizabeth Patey… Read More Boone Hall Plantation & Gardens in South Carolina
Road-trip season is here, perhaps this year more than others. After months of lockdown, we’re ready to see new places and old friends. In early July, I jumped into my silver sedan and headed down the east coast to visit friends who’d recently moved to South Carolina. It was absolutely wonderful, a much-restorative break after… Read More How to Plan a Road Trip during Lockdown
The Winery at La Grange in Haymarket, Virginia, features 5.6 acres of vineyards and a three-storey, red-brick, 18th-century manor house with a small garden blooming with pink hydrangeas. With our commonwealth inching toward reopening, a friend and I decided to head out to Prince William County and enjoy the bucolic setting. We decided on the… Read More Reopening Report: Winery at La Grange
Lafayette Square is a seven-acre public park directly across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House. It is one of the most meaningful areas in American history, where citizens have lived out the freedoms protected by the First Amendment amid statues of the men who won our independence from Great Britain. The Park and its surrounding… Read More Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C.
Northern Virginia began reopening under Phase One last Friday, and two friends and I made plans to meet for our first restaurant get-together in three months. We settled on Carlyle, an American mainstay located in the Village at Shirlington, an open-air neighborhood retail area featuring boutique shops and midscale restaurants, in the Washington, D.C., suburb… Read More Restaurant Report: Carlyle in Shirlington
