What We Loved This Week: The Moth Podcast, David Sedaris and More

Our contributors share a favorite travel-related experience from the past seven days:

Eva Holland
I love a good summer thunderstorm, and I got caught in a doozy this week in New York City, while on my way to meet a friend on the Upper West Side. It was the best lightning show I’d seen in years.

Stephanie Carrie
I loved having the through-the-looking glass feeling of waking up in a foreign, beautiful place after arriving blind from fatigue and the night. After transfers, lost baggage, and a two-hour drive into the country, it took my boyfriend, Chris, and I 14 hours to travel through the rabbit hole from the concrete jungle of Los Angeles to the woods of New Hampshire. We arrived at his parents’ home in Lyme at 2 a.m. I have only been here in the winter, so to me the state has always meant snowdrifts, shoveling, and white white white. This morning it was excitingly unnerving to wake up to solid green outside my window.

Frank Bures
James Braly had a fantastic story on the Moth podcast about backpacking in Europe, love and love handles. A few weeks ago, there was another amazing story by Alex Draper, about starring in the Bollywood mega-film, “Kala Pani.” That one comes from the Moth’s CD, Innocents Abroad: Stories of Strangers in Strange Lands, which has great pieces about people’s lives in places around the world.

Michael Yessis
I loved David Sedaris’ Australia story in the New Yorker. I haven’t enjoyed one of his pieces this much in a couple years.

Jim Benning
I loved the Book Passage Travel Writers & Photographers Conference, which ended Sunday. The publishing world is a mess. Writers and editors are struggling to make sense of it all. And yet, I never fail to leave after four days feeling inspired to travel and tell stories. It always comes back to that.

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