10 latest experiences http://www.hereorthere.com/members/marisabella en-us It is the sunniest neighbourhood in a city where a few blocks' walk can bring climate change. it is also the site of San Francisco's earliest remaining building, a whitewashed clay church on Dolores Street. But most notably, the Mission District is colourful, figuratively and in physical fact. When I lived here in 2005, it was on Dolores -- a long avenue that sweeps up and down the hills below Market with an air of insouciance, punctuated by towering, barrel-trunked palms on a grassy median. Two blocks to the east lay Mission Street, the heart of Spanish-speaking San Francisco, where mangoes and bananas spill out of produce stands and tacquerias' stoves sizzle all day long. San Francisco, United States marisabella Sun, 29 Jul 2007 16:14:43 +0100 http://www.hereorthere.com/members/marisabella/experience/499 http://www.hereorthere.com/experiences/499 No matter how familiar you become with New York's daedal subway system or its hip Village eateries, the city will never run out of new things to show you. I guess that's almost a truism of life here, but it took me many months of residence to grasp that this place may be one of the world's last great undiscovered territories. When you happen on -- or follow a tip to -- some rarely mentioned, relatively quiet spot in the metropolis, the ensuing sense of satisfaction must be similar to what frontier explorers felt. It is the slightly secretive thrill of revelation. You do occasionally get tipped off about interesting corners of the city, and in other cases your instinct leads you. This spring, with a friend visiting from out of town, I embarked on a 'mystery tour' partly premeditated, partly improvised. New York City, United States marisabella Tue, 17 Jul 2007 01:25:40 +0100 http://www.hereorthere.com/members/marisabella/experience/474 http://www.hereorthere.com/experiences/474 My family never made a very big deal out of the 4th of July: our celebration amounted to watching lightning bugs compete with the fireworks sent up from the university campus nearby. But in 2005, I finally got to taste of the holiday at its all-American best. Living in San Francisco, my boyfriend and I were generously invited by a friend to spend the weekend in her family's house while they were away. They lived in Half Moon Bay, an idyllic and quiet town only 40 km south of San Francisco. Lured by the magical-sounding name, we had driven here one Saturday in late April and discovered the harbourside Half Moon Bay Brewing Company -- featuring microbrews and a patio with seating around charcoal fires -- as well as Mezza Luna, a cosy Italian restaurant serving delicious pasta. We welcomed the chance to explore the town more, and when we saw our friend's house, we fell in love with it. It sat at the end of a dirt lane, and beyond it stretched green hills where the tinkling of goats'... Half Moon Bay, United States marisabella Fri, 13 Jul 2007 21:27:32 +0100 http://www.hereorthere.com/members/marisabella/experience/466 http://www.hereorthere.com/experiences/466 My cousin Michael is an eclipse-chaser: having witnessed his first total solar eclipse in Indonesia almost 20 years ago, he vowed to see every subsequent one he could in his lifetime. For years, I knew that this quest would take him to either Mongolia or Siberia in the bleak March days of 1997, and I dreamed of tagging along: the sheer, unyielding space of the Eurasian steppe has always held for me a fascination proportionate to its dimensions. In the summer of 1996, my aunt and I decided to go on tour with the eclipse groupies. She, my cousin and I joined a party at JFK in New York on March 5, and roughly 24 hours later -- via Anchorage, Shanghai, and Beijing -- we touched down in Ulan Bator. The final, 2+ hour leg from Beijing took us over stunning expanses of terrain; from a cloudless sky we could see the tawny contours of the Gobi desert's dunes and valleys. The runway was not busy, and few if any passengers on our flight knew anyone in Mongolia, yet the meet-and-greet ar... Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia marisabella Thu, 12 Jul 2007 22:04:35 +0100 http://www.hereorthere.com/members/marisabella/experience/460 http://www.hereorthere.com/experiences/460 My cousin, Caitriona, and I had just spent several nights in Transylvania's mountain capital, Brasov. Before heading to Budapest, we wanted to stop in Sighisoara, home of that most celebrated of bloodthirsty 15th century princes, Vlad the Impaler. We were dropped to Brasov's train station by the man from whom we'd rented our accommodation, a hyperactive thirtysomething in a baseball cap whose preferred admonition to us was "very, very be careful." On the platform, I handed him a small tip and received a spontaneous kiss in return. "That was a first," I reflected, as we boarded the train. It didn't take long to realize we'd picked a rather fitting day to visit the seat of modern vampirism. Every car of the train was packed -- I imagined it to be what intercity travel in India feels like -- and almost every other soul was under 20 years of age, arrayed from head to foot in black. The disaffected youth of Romania -- perhaps of all Europe -- were converging on this little medieval jewel... Sighişoara, Romania marisabella Mon, 09 Jul 2007 21:54:38 +0100 http://www.hereorthere.com/members/marisabella/experience/451 http://www.hereorthere.com/experiences/451