We had an exceptionally full day today, from the Spanish Steps, the Trevi Fountain, and Trajan’s Column in the morning (all before 9 a.m.), mid-day wandering the Forum, the Colosseum, and Palatine, to the Villa Borghese in the afternoon, where we snapped this photo and enjoyed the relative tranquility of the park. It’s been a […]

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We visited Cheyenne, Wyoming a number of times during trips to northern Colorado as a kid. In my mind, the visits consisted of looking at giant steam engines and buying plaid cowboy shirts, though we probably did other things, as well. During our 2005 trip from Seattle to Rochester, Aimee and I stopped in Wheatland […]

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The view from our hotel on this beautiful Sunday morning… We’re off to see the sights now.

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I’m sure Nebraska belongs a lot earlier in the list, if it were strictly chronological, but I didn’t work that all out beforehand, so here it is. My dad was born in Nebraska, and my aunt, uncle, and cousins live there, so we visited many times during trips to Colorado growing up. I remember many […]

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Florida was the one coastal southern state we missed on our 1997 road trip; we couldn’t hit them all, and it was a little too much out of our way to swing all the way down. Besides, the car, which has been purchased specifically for the trip (buy a car, drive it across the county, […]

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It feels like it’s snuck up on us, but tonight, we leave for Italy for a week for Matteo and Laura’s wedding. We’re really excited – I’ve only been to Italy once, and never to Rome or Florence. We’re trying the week-in-Europe-with-no-checked-luggage thing, so we’ve each got our carry on and have crammed everything – […]

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Chicago was always a place that intrigued me, but I never seemed to get around to visiting, probably because it wasn’t on a coast, and wasn’t really near anything else (both of which are also probably reasons why it’s such a great place). Finally, in the summer of 2001, Aimee and I caught a game […]

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Cereal City, U.S.A.! What more needs to be said? A perfect roadside attraction: education, nostalgia, strangeness, and snacks. Sadly, it seems to be closed now, which is a true loss for road trippers and cereal fanatics around the country. My first trip to Michigan involved a quick stop in Detroit to see a Tigers game […]

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As Aimee and I became friends during my first months in Boston, we discovered a mutual love of baseball and road trips. At the end of my first year in town, in the summer of 2001, we took off on a baseball road trip; Aimee was on school vacation, and I was, in a way, […]

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I first encountered New Jersey when I went to camp in Pennsylvania in junior high; people from New Jersey seemed to talk about being from New Jersey, and others made a point of describing them as being from New Jersey, more than anyone from any other state. Living in suburban Connecticut after college, I had […]

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We had a bit of a shortened weekend, as I was at a film preservation conference at work all day Friday and all day Saturday, but we made the most of it, with a nice dinner out at Barefoot Restaurant on Saturday night and an afternoon walk in Beachwood Canyon on Sunday. And I thought […]

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Continuing in semi-chronological order, we’ve arrived back on the East Coast. After the road trip, and a summer in Anchorage, I returned east for my first post-college job, in Greenwich, Connecticut. As much as I was eager to leave Connecticut when I lived there, and as much as I would disparage it when driving down […]

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Finishing up the 1997 road trip arc is Oregon, a state I’d visited before the trip, and a state I thought for a long time I’d end up living in “when I grow up.” Oregon, and Portland specifically, seemed like a good mix of Alaska-like Pacific Northwestern-ness, with a healthy dose of cosmopolitanism. The city […]

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The film was released more than six months ago, won its Oscars three months ago, came out on standard-def DVD two months ago, and Blu-ray on Tuesday; I wonder, what exactly are they waiting for? I love the fact that this giant banner is still up, and when you drive down Hollywood Boulevard at night […]

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So we’ve reached the last state new to me on our 1997 cross-country road trip, a long way from western Massachusetts where we began. When we crossed the border from Nevada at the end of June, 1997, and were greeted with a sign reading “DUMP / DEAD ANIMAL PIT,” we didn’t have high hopes. We […]

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