Dream getaway: To take a summer off - or a year? - and travel to those far-off places different from anywhere I've been and what I experience every day. Top on my list: Thailand, coastal India, Africa for a safari, and Mexico. I'd love to go back to Italy for an extended period of time and also see the South of France. I'd take off on a boat in the Mediterranean in a second. I'm also longing for a surf and yoga getaway somewhere with spicy food and a chance for me to practice my lapsed Spanish skills.

Meal you would travel for: The best food I had by far in almost four months of traveling around Europe was the night after hiking through the Cinque Terre in Italy. Liguria is the region that claims the invention of pesto, and they have a special type of pasta, trofie, that is a little twisted dumpling created to showcase their (amazing) pesto. The local dessert wine, sciacchetra, is made from sundried grapes and absolutely the best wine I drank in Italy. Their regional snack, farinata, a fried pancake made of chickpea flour, is perfect during your afternoon hikes between the fishing villages. The sunset on the water in the Cinque Terre is among the most stunning I've seen.

When you travel you collect: Matchbooks! And I always buy my mom a ceramic tile decorated by locals when I travel. She uses them for trivets. 

 

Drink of choice in flight: I always take an Airborne or an Emergen-C to fight off other travelers' germs. I always crave a tomato juice on a flight inexplicably, but I stick to seltzer or regular water to stay hydrated. On that note, always, always accept water when it's offered to you on a plane. 

Worst travel experience: When I moved to Italy in 2006, there was an Alitalia strike the day we were meant to fly into Rome, so we were re-routed through Paris and didn't arrive in Rome until after the last train had left for Florence for the night. The area around the Rome train station is way sketchier than anyplace I'd go after dark in New York, and we were loaded down with bags heavier than we'd expected to be carrying ourselves. The few cab drivers we encountered were trying to drastically overcharge us so we ended up wandering around trying to find a hotel. It was late at night and I stumbled into a boarding house with a terrifying proprietor who I think was taking part in some sort of animal sacrifice. I ran out of there as fast as I could. Needless to say, scary!

Biggest travel tip: Always have a valid passport. You never know when a last-minute invite will come! Oh, and always carry a pack of travel tissues in case you find yourself in a public bathroom without toilet paper.

Favorite short jaunt: I lived in Rhinebeck, NY for a summer at the Omega Institute a few years ago. It's a fantastic place if you're into yoga, and they have a lovely lake with boating facilities, too. It's a nice city escape but still close by. Fire Island is another absolute favorite. I love going somewhere and not needing a car, especially if the beach is involved! 

 

Cold weather getaway we should be planning now: Last winter I went to St. John (American Airlines has great fare sales to the Caribbean in January and February), which was my first time really escaping the cold even through I suffered through long winters growing up in Vermont. After a nice five-day burst of sunshine and beaches, I came back to NYC immune to the case of the winter blues everyone else was suffering through. 

Little known escape: I once stayed in a dune shack on the tip of Cape Cod, past Provincetown. The little cabins nestled into the dunes seem to be at the end of the world, and you're far removed from other people. I went with my roommates after college, and we had a fun, girly weekend of playing on the beach and sunbathing topless just because we could on our own secluded beach. We saw one person about a half-mile down the dune, and other than that we were totally removed from the outside world. I'd recommend it, but unfortunately the place is entirely private, and you just happen to have to know one of the owners to be able to stay there. I feel lucky to have been able to go; it was a special place.

Ideal way to experience a destination: Stay with locals, if you can; I always try to go visit places where I know somebody to get an inside view of what a place is really like. A trip to San Francisco staying with friends in a Victorian house  in the Mission is infinitely better than a hotel by Union Square. I lived in Italy for a while in 2006, and it was great to have an apartment there as a home base to return to after other European weekend jaunts. I stayed in a friend's apartment in Berlin and loved the grocery store experience there --lots of healthy, organic products and all so cheap! A friend of a friend took us out for a night in Beijing and we had the best time, speeding around the city in a cab with our friend directing the driver to some hidden alleyway restaurant, and going to a special tea shop where he arranged for a special tasting for us (plus his language skills really helped us get good treatment!).

Favorite travel sites: The New York Times has some very helpful travel resources. And I love Kayak.com's new explore feature. Of course, I've found great hotel tips and trip inspiration on Jauntsetter! [Editor's note: We're blushing.]

Best hotels you've stayed in: When I turned 21, my grandmother, mother, and I stayed at the Waldorf-Astoria. I loved it although they didn't card me for my first legal drink, a gin martini with extra olives (hilarious because I don't like gin or martinis, but my grandmother figured it was the right way to enter into adult drinking life). The Boston Harbor Hotel was the first nice hotel I stayed at. It has a pretty view of the harbor and the yachts that dock there, plus is close to the North End and tasty Italian food. Still, with all that said, sometimes the smallest hotels are the nicest. I stayed in a little place in Amsterdam that had such a tiny bathroom you could barely sit in it, but it was in a posh neighborhood close to the Rijksmuseum and I loved it. It was great to wake up and be where all the action was. I enjoy a fancy hotel as much as the next girl, but location is key when traveling!