Roxanne Downer – My Articles

When in Rome—or a Roman spa—do as the local spa-goers do, with our primer on local spa etiquette.

A trip to the spa should be a relaxing, rejuvenating experience, but uncertainty about etiquette and local customs when visiting a spa overseas can be enough to get you all tied up in knots. Here’s a sampling of what you need to know when visiting spas around the globe.

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The $1.3 Million Vacation: An Asian golf outing might set some sort of new record.

If you’re bored with the links at St. Andrews and Pebble is passé, one California-based company thinks it has the golf vacation for you. This past spring, food-and-wine events impresarios Angel’s Share began offering a private jet golf vacation through Asia that may just be the most luxe — and priciest — golf excursion of your life. How pricey, you ask? How’s an even $1.3 million sound? Read the rest of this entry »

Da Bears: At this fly-in lodge, everyone has salmon on the brain — including some 900-pound guys who really need a shave.

In Katmai National Park on the Alaskan peninsula, spring begins in June. That’s when the icy landscape starts to break up and droves of Pacific salmon — sockeye, chum, pink, silver and Chinook — navigate the long distance from the ocean to the tundra’s thawing tributaries. Read the rest of this entry »

The Vacation That Just Keeps Going: Turns out the finest way to fly around the world in 80 days is to make it in 70.

Hopping in the Lear for a brioche breakfast in Paris is probably something you’ve done once or twice. But have you ever followed that with lunch in Gibraltar and dinner in Marrakech? Doubtful unless you’re Phileas Fogg or one of the lucky few on Air Journey’s first around-the-world jaunt.

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Gone Fishin’: This angler’s paradise is truly in the middle of nowhere.

For centuries, Panama’s mythic Darien Jungle has simultaneously intrigued and terrified everyone from conquistador Vasco Balboa to Romantic poet John Keats. Referred to by one sixteenth-century traveler as an “abyss and horror,” the isthmus that connects the Americas remains shrouded in mystery even today — in no small part because it’s where the otherwise uninterrupted Pan-American Highway stops dead in its tracks. But concealed in this sultry terrain of dense forest is a coastal oasis where bikini-clad fishing-show hosts and the mayor of Margaritaville reel in the big ones. Read the rest of this entry »

The scent of mesquite trees fills your nostrils as you skim between a pair of sheer, chalk-faced cliffs, barely five feet above the cracking red clay of a dried-out riverbed. To one side of you, a platoon of miniature warthog-like creatures feasts on a breakfast of prairie grass and prickly pears. Above you, the New Mexico sun rises to greet a tranquil blue sky. No human — save perhaps those ancient Native American vision questers — has ever set foot where you are now. Read the rest of this entry »

Days of Thunder: Enjoy the air at 30,000 feet? Wait until you try 50,000.

You corkscrew straight upward, moving at 700 mph. Past the indigo waters of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Past the green valleys of the Cape of Good Hope. Until the horizon is just a pronounced curve of pale, blue light. As your stomach lurches, a single thought floats to mind: Don’t throw up on the instruments. Read the rest of this entry »

Northernmost Exposure: At this lodge, they always leave the lights on.

Virtually every night for the next six months, the skies above Blachford Lake Lodge and Resort will erupt in shades of amethyst, emerald, gold, copper and crimson. Aurora borealis season has arrived, and this well-appointed fishing lodge near the roof of Canada is arguably the best place on earth to watch it. Read the rest of this entry »