Get More Bang for Your Buck in Cotacachi
Ecuador is packed full of beauty, and it comes in many different forms. I've walked along golden beaches awash with turquoise waves. I've explored cloud forests under a lush canopy of broad-leaved trees.
Ecuador is packed full of beauty, and it comes in many different forms. I've walked along golden beaches awash with turquoise waves. I've explored cloud forests under a lush canopy of broad-leaved trees.
Italy is home to the Cittaslow movement which combines “Slow Food” with the art of leisurely good living. As delectable dining is one of the great joys of Italy, make time to discover at least one or two of the network’s 70 small towns. Most Cittaslow communities come with historic treasures, but the big attraction is their strong sense of identity and spirit of place. To be accredited, they must have less than 50,000 inhabitants. With an emphasis on regional recipes, traditional agricultural practices and seasonal local produce, it’s an authentic taste of Italy guaranteed to make your tastebuds zing. Here are four inland and coastal gems to whet your appetite.
“We don’t have stress like we used to,” says Nancy Naftchi-Medoro. “If something doesn’t get done today, there’s tomorrow. Back in New York, the city that never sleeps, finding time to just nap was close to impossible. But now we take naps just because we feel like it.
I recently took a trip to colonial Oaxaca, Mexico, which is a place I highly recommend for a budding suitcase importer to find their feet. The villages surrounding the city are home to some world-renowned artists, and each village specializes in a different type of folk art.
Can anything be better than trying out beaches for a lifestyle choice? I don’t think so. For the last year, I’ve been searching the world for the perfect place to spend my retirement years.
“My job required me to travel the globe and it was then that I discovered the world is a big, interesting place,” says Toronto native Jim Pierson of his past life as an engineer. In the mid-90s, a chance encounter on a commuter flight from Chicago to Toronto brought Jim and his wife Helen together.
Before moving to Ireland, my husband Joe and I knew we wanted to live an international lifestyle. But where? We researched all sorts of places: big cities, small towns, beaches, mountains, and deserts. The connection with my Irish ancestry finally became our turning point.
Los Chorros Waterfalls, just outside the town of Grecia, is a wonderful park that is mostly overlooked by tourists. The park has two waterfalls for you to enjoy, which are set in a gorge surrounded by greenery.
As I drive east out of San Jose and its suburbs, the gridlock, gleaming shopping malls, and dense urban development of Costa Rica’s capital slowly melt away. Within 30 minutes I’ve found myself in the countryside, following a winding road that hugs a mountainside as it descends into the valley below.
If you want to relax in a more natural setting, then act like the locals and head to the grassy slopes of the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont, in Paris’s Belleville quarter. Here, amid the laughing children and hand-holding couples, you’ll find massive, slanting trees.