Issue #8
November 26, 2023

As person who lives closer to the North Pole than the equator, I’m dreaming of warmth as the temperature turns and the days contract. Since now is most definitely a good time to book January and February travel, I’m just going to say: Puerto Rico.

Our recent trip there was a three-parter: First, a family visit in Old San Juan, where my cousin Hernán grew up and still resides. (I have a deeply embedded soft spot for Puerto Rico, as we visited most winters until I was about 10.) Old San Juan is a grid of blue cobblestone streets and candy-colored, centuries-old facades,

punctuated by a pair of massive fortresses, El Morro and San Cristóbal. They were built by the Spanish to ward off the English, the Dutch, and assorted pirates. Old San Juan can get thronged with tourists, but you’re never far from an ocean breeze or a view of the Atlantic.

Second, we flew to the island of Culebra, which is as quiet and rural as San Juan is hectic. Its tiny, sun-bleached main town, also Culebra, provides a few shops and restaurants, but the island is mostly rolling green hills. We drove our rented jeep from beach to beach to snorkel with the tropical reef fish.

For phase three, we flew back to San Juan and stayed in a boutique hotel in the modern neighborhood of Ocean Park, a few blocks from the beach. We met up with friends and took a day trip to El Yunque — the only tropical rainforest in the U.S. National Forest system. (I live near the decidedly untropical Hoh Rainforest in Olympic National Park.) We ate a grill-centric meal at the much-touted Bacoa, in a rural hacienda on a man-made pond. In San Juan, I loved the contemporary art at the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico.

My tendency not to take actual vacation-vacations may have made this one especially memorable. But I left wishing that I lived closer, so that I could get there more often. I hope that’s helpful to anyone mapping out their winter. (My photos: La Perla; Old San Juan; Old San Juan; El Yunque.)

Where are you finding warmth in the cold months?

Book News and a Trip to Toronto

Drum roll, please: I have a publication date for my first novel! “The Outlier” will be released on August 6th, 2024, in Canada and the United States. For normal people, eight months sounds like a long way off, but for me it’s like my formerly slow-moving train is now hurtling down the tracks.

Earlier this month I traveled to Toronto to meet with the publishing team at Random House Canada. Sadly, my fantastic editor, Anne Collins, came down with Covid, but I still met with the publisher, the sales director, and the U.S. and Canadian marketing leads. The book is about a successful biotech exec – and reformed psychopath – who goes looking for a troubled person from her past. In the coming months I’ll reveal the cover and more details, but for now our working tagline is, “What if the person you should fear most is you?” What do you think?

I’d never visited Toronto before, which maybe makes me a bad Canadian, but I’m from the opposite side of the country – Vancouver. Still, it felt like high time I get myself to the cultural capital that Vancouverites and Montrealers love to besmirch. Some quick highlights:

I stayed at the modernist Ace Hotel, which features a lot of big windows and soaring concrete shapes. Only after checking in did I remember that in the opening scene of “The Outlier,” the main character mildly maligns an Ace Hotel. But what does she know?

The Toronto Ace is in the Fashion District, good territory for walking and dining. I had the hamachi crudo and the roasted cauliflower at Alder. A bowl of ramen at Ramen Ishiin on Queen Street West. A risotto with squash and blue cheese at Le Sélect Bistro.

After lunch with the Random House crew, we all stopped by the new Indigo bookstore at The Well, a just-opened downtown shopping complex. This Indigo has movable shelves, a record store, and a coffee truck. Back at the office, Evan from sales gave me copies of Ann Napolitano’s Hello Beautiful and Bonnie Garmus’ Lessons in Chemistry, both of which I’ve been eager to read. Before heading to the airport, I picked up pastries at French Made, and the croissant elevated my travel day.

(My photos: The Ace lobby; CN Tower.)

Five Faves: Apps That Changed How I Travel

Love them or hate them, these apps have transformed the way I move through the world in the last 15 years.

Google Translate. I first used the app’s translate-image function around six years ago in Hungary and Korea, and it was one of those rare moments when I felt like the future had arrived in a useful and exciting way. Very helpful in restaurants without English-language menus.

Duolingo. It’s a language-learning app, but I count it as travel technology because in five minutes a day, I can train myself up on “hello” and “goodbye” and “where’s the cheese?” in even some pretty obscure tongues. Right now I’m using it to brush up my Spanish, but I’ve also used it to practice French and Arabic, and dabble in Korean, Hungarian, and several Slavic languages. I’m on a year-plus streak.

Citymapper. Do you remember the London A-Z, the Paris Plan, or the Hagstrom New York City 5-Borough Pocket Atlas? No? They were these little map books you carried around to figure out how to get places in big cities. Now I’ve got Citymapper in my pocket.

AirBnB. We use it both as travelers and as homeowners. It’s become so ubiquitous – and stirred up so much change, for good and ill – that it’s easy to forget that it was founded only in 2007. It’s the perfect option for dodging cramped or cookie-cutter hotels. Also in the category: VRBO and Hipcamp.

Lyft. Now they may seem boring or worse, but rideshare apps also felt like a bit of futuristic magic the first time I used them in the mid-teens. Sure, we had cabs, but now I could press a button and have a ride show up in minutes, and there was so much supply in cities that were previously underserved. Also: Uber and Didi, which operates in 10 Latin American countries plus Australia, Egypt, Japan, and New Zealand.

Do you love or hate any of these apps, and if so, why? Do you have a favorite digital travel tool?

Still nostalgic for these paper tomes.

Let’s Talk

Write to me at eavesdrop@elisabetheaves.com. I read every email, and I’ll try to answer every question.

Happy trails,
Elisabeth