Not organic produce, smoothies, or whole grain bread. What I crave are the tastes that take me back to a moment in a time.

Sticky rice with mango from a crowded and bright food stand in Chiang Mai. Fig gelato from the gelateria with a line out the door in Florence. Moussaka from a restaurant in Athens, where I drank, ate and danced all night in a spot high above the city with new friends.

I can Skype, send emails, or Gchat with friends anywhere in the world to catch up with them. I can search the menus of every Thai restaurant, gelato place and Mediterranean restaurant in the San Francisco Bay Area, searching for a taste that might bring me back to my last adventure. But there is no way to recreate the sharing of a meal, a cappuccino, or a glass of wine, while discussing life so different, yet so similar, no matter how many miles lie between us.

The meal of mushroom risotto, lasagna, carne, salad and patate, exists nowhere but in the minuscule kitchen in the big four-story house on the hill with a view of Desenzano Del Garda, where my friend Chiara lives with her family.

This is the meal I must prepare myself for, by not eating before the four-hour train ride from Florence— through Bologna, Ferrara, Padova and Verona—looking out the window at cities with rich histories, leading me to a place that is my home away from home.

Chiara is waiting for me at the train platform, as if I just saw her yesterday, even though it has been more than two years.

After two blocks in her bright green miniature Volkswagen, with the trunk just big enough for my backpack, we are home.

I settle into my own room with Chiara’s engineering awards hanging on the wall. Her English-Italian dictionaries and other books are neatly shelved on a red metal bookcase. I set my sunglasses on the blue draftsman table covered with glass and painted with tropical fish. I can feel the ocean breeze through the window.

Chiara’s mother calls from the kitchen down the hall: “preparato.”

Time to eat.

I eat, and eat, and eat, because it is so good, even though I’m full after the first plate of risotto.

We sit at a table covered in white lace, as the breeze passes through lace curtains next to the Virgin Mary on the wall.

La Zia walks into the dining room, as Chiara and I chat, over espresso for her and chamomile tea for me, about our plans for the weekend. La Zia leans next to me with her blue floral dress and fuzzy white cardigan, takes my hand in her thin and warm wrinkled hand, as if I am her niece, too.

“Elizabeth, como stai? Sei stanca? Hai mangiato bene?” she asks, taking in the details of my face, with a smile. Are you tired? How are you? Did you eat enough?

In my slow, out of practice, Italian, I tell her I still have the medallion of St. Christopher, meant to keep me safe during my travels, that she gave me the last time I visited. I’m not sure she understands, or maybe she doesn’t remember.

The tiny medallion, that I’ve carried in my wallet since she gave it to me three years ago, sits in the palm of my hand.

“Eccola,” I say. Here it is.

Solo travel has the ability to create such a family away from home. A family that grows with each new journey.

Bookshop Santa Cruz has been in downtown Santa Cruz since 1966.

It survived bricks toppling its shelves during the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake, and two years doing business in a tent, until moving to its current location in 1992. I interviewed the shop owner, Neal Coonerty, as part of my master’s thesis project, seeing the passion and dedication behind the business.

It’s no surprise that the shop has a knack for picking books to inspire anyone. For me, that means the travel section.

At Bookshop (as locals call it), you will find the usual travel guides, travel memoirs and travel maps. However, it also has sections dedicated to specific travel interests, like the “Women’s Travel” section.

Flipping through “Go Your Own Way: Women Travel the World Solo” (a book I took home with me), was a reminder of my solo travels. The collection of short travel memoirs in this book is exactly the book I have been working on since my first solo trip in 2000. In the editor bios, I learned about a media company, Adventure Divas.

Adventures Divas is a group of women who create media for TV, web, and print, telling stories about the world—my dream job.

Discovering this media company got me thinking: If these talented women can do it, why can’t I?

I am the first to admit that getting paid to travel and tell stories is a profession many aspire to. It is not an uncommon response when I tell people about what they might consider my pipe dream.

When I made the switch from law school to journalism in 2005, on the circuitous path toward a travel journalism career, that was the first thing one family member said to me when I broke the news: “Everyone wants to be a travel writer,” he said.

Difficult? Yes. Unattainable? As Adventure Divas proves, clearly not.

As I recently said to a friend about my dream job: “It’s not as if I want to be the next Lady Gaga, or anything.”

If you want to read more about Adventure Divas, check out their blog, Divawire.

It’s a treat to stumble upon that yummy find on your own. The experience of eating at a local spot almost always makes for the most interesting meals, and stories.

You can always speed up the process of combing the streets for a restaurant with a line out the door or people eating elbow to elbow, by flipping through your guidebook or asking the locals.

But have you tried Foodspotting?

Just type in your location on their website or iPhone app, and photos of user-reviewed dishes pop-up on a Google map and as a list.

Sign up and add your own reviews, and you will see how Foodspotting is sort of a Foursquare, for food only.

Warning: The user-submitted photos will make you hungry.

There was story time, sitting in a circle on the deep red carpet decorated with the alphabet and numbers. Then, there was the stamping of books, my favorite part. I would perch myself next to Grandma as she checked-out library books.  Grandma would look at the patron’s library card, open the flap of the book, take out the card and file it, grab her date stamper, wheel to the correct month, date and year, ink the stamper up in black and press firmly on the lined page inside the book. It was about a five minute process that was fascinating as a four-year-old in pigtails and overalls. Today, when I visited the small neighborhood library in Fairfield, California, the friendly librarians like Grandma Barry were no more. Instead, there were automated checkout machines.

So simple, even little kids were using the machines. Scan the barcodes on your library card and books, and you’re done. I checked out “Caramelo” by Sandra Cisneros, “Chocolat” by Joanne Harris and “Animal Dreams” by Barbara Kingsolver, in about 30 seconds flat. Boy would Grandma Barry get a kick out of that!

Here’s an example of the library scanner I used as seen at the San Jose Public Library, from their Flickr Photo Stream.

After living in Florence and visiting several times, I have my favorite spots in the city.

Beautiful gated rose gardens near the Piazza Michelangelo that are only open for one month in the late spring. Step inside this “secret garden” and you’ll have the city’s best view of that red tiled sykyline.

Just past the road to the rose gardens, and up a steep climb of hundreds of steps, there is the church of San Miniato al Monte. It is a hidden treasure whose marble façade is still bright as day, located high above the city and away from the pollution from too many scooters zooming around.

Visit this beautiful church, golden flecks of mosaic decoration flickering in the sunlight, Wednesday at 5:30 pm. If you do, the chanting of Gregorian monks will soothe your soul. It won’t matter that you can’t understand what they are chanting in Latin. If you just sit, and close your eyes you will find peace, at least for a little while.

After I stood in the bathroom for a few seconds trying to stop the glass shower door from shaking (and perplexed why it wouldn’t), I ran downstairs to my 6-year-old brother who had been watching TV. On the way, I saw a smashed porcelain pink flamingo on the white marble floor in the entryway, an artifact from my grandma’s house in the 1950s. My brother ran to me, “The TV blew out,” he said looking confused. “The TV blew out?” I repeated, equally confused. “Where are Mom and Dad?”

Mom arrived home shortly, and we all walked outside to discover that what had happened was an earthquake. A big earthquake that left all of Santa Cruz, and the Bay Area, with no electricity, water or gas. All of the major roads were closed, and my Dad, who worked in the financial district in San Francisco, was not able to get home that night. As we sat in the kitchen with our candles, eating Ritz crackers, and maybe something else–but I can’t remember– listening to the radio hearing horrible stories about fires and bridges collapsing, all I could think about was Dad.

Dad came home, school was out for a week, and soon, the earthquake was just a memory, a scary one, that I filed away. I didn’t really understand why all of the shops downtown had to move in to tents, I figured it was because the buildings downtown were old and they weren’t strong enough to withstand the earthquake.

Fast-forward nineteen years. I no longer live in Santa Cruz. I haven’t lived there for seven years. I visit, but not that often, since most of my family has since moved away. I’m sitting in a magazine writing class at the U.C. Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, trying to think of a topic for my master’s project. David Simon, creator of “The Wire” is speaking to my class. He’s talking about telling stories about cities, telling stories about different aspects of a city. I’m taking notes, and suddenly, Santa Cruz appears in my mind. I suddenly remember that day, when chaos took over this quiet beach town. Those powerful fifteen seconds changed a city, and as a journalist who grew-up in Santa Cruz, I couldn’t think of a more powerful story to tell in multimedia for my master’s project.

See my multimedia project, “The New Downtown,” as part of the MediaNews Group’s coverage of the earthquake anniversary.

Photo in this post, courtesy Charlie Eadie.

“Nothing is easy,” said the 26-year-old Vietnamese woman, a hint of purple eye shadow reflected from the fourth-floor bay windows in Tranquility Nails at 130 Bush Street. “But when I want something, I have to do it.”

Tran, like the young professional women who fill the six chairs in her salon, is highly ambitious. She represents a trend of younger “more Americanized” Vietnamese immigrants in their 20s and 30s who are opening salons and “doing very well,” according to Tin Nguyen who in 2004 founded the Sacramento-based Vietnamese in the Beauty Industry, a national organization. About 75 percent of nail salon owners in the Bay Area are Vietnamese, he said.

Tran and her entrepreneurial contemporaries serve the city’s growing class of professional women who don’t think twice about spending an extra $50 every week or two to get a manicure and pedicure.

“In corporate America details are very important,” said Hollie Ashby as she sat in one of the salon’s oversized leather recliners on a recent Monday afternoon. Dressed in a Banana Republic black blouse, skirt and three-hundred-dollar Michael Kors black pumps, Ashby, 25, earns more than $150,000 as a sales representative at Merrill Corporation. And like many of the city’s householders aged 25 to 44 with incomes of six figures or more – a group that has grown to 42 percent from 32 percent in 2000 according to the U.S. Census Department – appearance matters.

“It’s a lot of work, but it’s worth it when you win the clients and get that paycheck,” she said, explaining how she gets touch-ups on artificial nails up to three times a week to hide her childhood nail biting habit.

Sandy Tran is Ashby’s manicurist, gluing, trimming and polishing her acrylic nails. When Tran isn’t working on nails, she moves easily among her clients, greeting them, scheduling appointments and talking about the latest fashion trends.

“Hi Carolina, how are you?” asked Tran, as Carolina Patino, an accountant who works in a building next door, stepped out of the elevator on a rainy Friday afternoon for her bi-weekly pedicure.

“Hey sweetie, put the umbrella over there,” Tran directed Patino’s friend and fellow accountant, Crickett Weaver, who was also in for a pedicure.

Tran chats comfortably with her clients and dressed in platform sandals, an elegant sweater and snug Seven jeans, she looks like many of them. Yet, Tran moved to San Francisco from Ho Chi Minh City just five years ago, part of a new wave of immigration that began in the early 1990s according to Tin Nguyen.

Vietnamese now comprise six percent of the city’s foreign-born population. At present 39 percent of the city’s residents are foreign born compared to 37 percent in 2000.

Like many other new immigrants, Tran spoke little English when she arrived here. But she went to Oakland’s International College of Cosmetology, where she trained for her manicurist’s license in Vietnamese and, after 12-weeks, took the state licensing exam in Vietnamese and began work at a Vietnamese run nail salon.

Since 1996 the state test has been available in Vietnamese and currently at the Oakland school, 75 percent of the students are Vietnamese and take the course in their native language.

Tran also wanted to learn English and after two years of classes, she also began the accounting program at San Francisco City College. At the same time she worked seven days a week as a manicurist until she had saved $40,000 to open her salon in January.

“I got along really well with everyone, and I loved to come to work everyday,” said Tran of her initial career as a manicurist. “One day I decided I had to open my own salon.”

The business, she said, offers the opportunity for “learning about American culture and having a lot of fun with her clients.”

Tran has learned, for example, that her clients “like to talk a lot” and appreciate it when people smile. She also discovered that unlike many women in Vietnam, many of her female clients are financially independent. She said she has learned to apply that same independence to her life here.

Once the accountants, Patino and Weaver, chose reds for their polish, they sank into the oversized recliners and opened their magazines. In minutes, their feet were soaking in large metal bowls filled with warm, aqua tinted water, fresh mint, lemon slices, and tingling sea salt.

Next, one of Tran’s four employees who are among the city’s 1,664 manicurists–a number that has increased 32 percent in five years – began to smooth their feet with a loofah.

“That’s my favorite part,” said Patino, as Kim Bui, who has worked part-time for Tran for five-months, took the loofah to her foot and classical music played on the speakers overhead. “I love it. It’s a nice feeling, someone touching your feet and pampering you.”

It was the Azam’s second grand-opening in the neighborhood. The first was for a smaller Faiz International shop they opened on San Pablo Avenue in 2004.

“For so long he had the dream of buying the big shop,” said Perveen. “We are opening here because business is really good on University Avenue.”

The avenue that stretches from U.C. Berkeley to the bay began to emerge as an Indian marketplace in the late 1970s, selling clothing, accessories and all things Indian. Today, as immigration from South Asia in the Bay Area has increased about twenty percent in the last twenty years, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the Azam’s two Faiz International stores are among about a dozen Indian clothing and accessories shops that line University and San Pablo Avenues.

Early November is the busiest time of year for the shops. The five-day Indian holiday Diwali– when new clothes are traditionally purchased as gifts– began November ninth, and the Indian wedding season that runs from September to January, is now in full swing.

“Every place here has a clientele that’s loyal to a point,” said Maulin Chokshi, president of the University Avenue Business Association who explained that business has been a little slower than usual, but the shopkeepers remain confident. His family opened Bombay Jewelry Company in Berkeley in 1985 after moving to Fremont from Baroda in the Gujarat state in Western India in 1975.

Chokshi– who is now 42– graduated from Cal State Hayward in 1985 and then started working at his family’s store. He’s still there, standing behind a glass case displaying gold necklaces and rings, and greeting his clients by name. As president of the business association, founded in 1993, he works to attract new customers to the avenue. A few weeks ago he strung white holiday lights on the shops of anyone who wanted them, and in the median on the avenue to liven up the strip during key nighttime shopping hours.

Indians from Fremont, Sacramento, San Francisco, San Jose and elsewhere visit their favorite shops on the weekends.

One of the three largest shops is the Sari Palace– 5,000 square feet of smooth white tile floors, fluorescent spotlights, and elaborately dressed mannequins. It has everyday saris, but specializes in bridal saris that cost anywhere from $2,000 to $5,600. The store, which opened in 1986, serves a clientele of primarily Fijian Indians and Americans who buy ready-made saris that are then custom tailored at the store.

Up to ten employees busily move about the store, carrying the latest designer saris– that are sewn from mixed fabrics and heavily beaded–in crinkly clear plastic wrappers, from the store’s parking lot. The saris are piled on glass cases filled with shiny costume jewelry in pinks, purples and greens in the bridal showroom.

An entirely different approach to the business of selling saris is found at one of the newer stores, Ahlishan Fashion Fabrics, opened in 1997 by Sarbjit Sian and her now 19-year-old daughter, Malki.

For years, the Sians sold bolts of Indian silk from their home on Ninth Street in Berkeley to friends from Vallejo, El Sobrante and Sacramento. Now, they do the same from their shop that now carries hundreds of fabrics and ten types of silk for custom saris.

“We have been here for almost 25 years, so mom has a lot of friends,” said Malki, of the business that has succeeded mostly by word of mouth.

Malki said their clientele–25 percent of whom are regulars that often purchase on a monthly basis–are primarily from Punjab, a region where the saris are sewn from flowing, intricately woven fabrics, and worn with large scarves. A customer in her 20s from New York City said she liked the shop’s “contemporary look” of chandeliers and hardwood floors.

Malki and her mother take three-week-long trips to India every six months to select fabrics. They design many of them–with elaborate beading, embroidery and metallic block-prints–themselves.

“I have not seen any store that has the variety of fabrics that we have,” said Malki. One of their most expensive fabrics is Banarasi silk, from Varanasi in the Uttar Pradesh state in Northern India that costs between $25 and $45 per yard.

Despite the new competition, the Sians were happy to find Sam Azam opening his new Faiz International shop next door. As Azam tied blue and yellow ribbons and balloons to a parking meter outside the shop’s front doors, and hung a white banner with “Grand Opening” in red lettering, friends– many of them loyal customers– came by to wish him luck in his new business.

There was not an ounce of worry on Azam’s face as customers slowly trickled in for the Saturday Grand Opening.

“We came with empty hands here,” said Azam who worked as a gas station cashier for three years, while his wife worked as a cashier at Safeway to save money to buy their first business. “In this country, if people work hard, they will

The Yas are among the 13,896 Burmese refugees who have arrived in the United States in the last year from one of nine refugee camps in Thailand near the Myanmar border. Since the 1990s the refugees have resettled in the Bay Area, with some 100 settling here this year, according to Leslie Peterson, Deputy Director of the International Rescue Committee in San Francisco.

Kamal, then just a year old, fled Burma with his family for the Mae La Camp– a Thai refugee camp just five miles from the border–after a 1984 military raid of his village home in the state of Karen. That year, his family was among some 10,000 refugees who fled Burma–a country that has been called Myanmar since 1989.

As Kamal stood in the small kitchen wearing a plaid green sarong tied around his waist he recalled life in the refugee camp. When the Myanmar military raided the Mae La camp, which they did often, his family fled to the jungle. To demonstrate the military’s method, Kamal moved his right hand toward a purple number 17 on a soccer jersey he wore, as if pulling a trigger.

Anil Verma, 34, a Burmese man who moved to Oakland three years ago, translated for Kamal and also spoke of the military’s tactics. “They [the military] are ruling the country at gun point. In Burma there are no basic human rights,” said Verma, who spent 12 years in Thailand and India as a political organizer and now works as a case manager for Asian Pacific Psychological Services in Oakland, helping new refugees adjust to life here.

While Kamal lives downstairs with his wife and three children, his sister Issa and her family live upstairs. They too arrived in June.
“We can live an easy life here,” said Issa’s husband Ah Did dressed in a black T-shirt, denim shorts, and black flip-flops.
In the camp, the family, including children aged 2, 6 and 9, lived in a hut “larger than their apartment,” but Ah Did often re-built it after the storms–and getting education for their children was difficult.

“We came here for education,” said Ah Did who never attended school in the Mae La camp, but now takes English as a Second Language classes at the adult school in Oakland. “Our future will be bright.”

While Ah Did learns enough English to get “any job,” the family lives off financial assistance, food stamps, and clothing donations Verma collects from friends.

Leslie Peterson from the International Rescue Committee said refugees who have been in camps or otherwise displaced for most of their lives are likely to take longer to adapt to life here. But those who are “opened minded and realistic, who can take initiative and also be patient,” she said, will do best.

Issa and Ah Did’s eldest children, Zakiya, 9, and Menaisa, 6, are learning English at Santa Fe Elementary. Zakiya smiled and nodded when asked if he enjoyed school. He added that he liked his teacher. He’s funny, he said.

Just before dusk, the children and their cousins ran around the backyard with its clotheslines, small patch of grass, concrete, and a single overturned dining chair. They chased each other up wooden stairs to the wrought-iron-screened door of their apartment. Inside, white rice steamed in an electric pot on the counter.

Chewing a mouthful of rice, Harisa, 2, slid on pine-like pergo floors into the living room, her tiny gold hoop-earings shining. Her giggles echoed off the high ceilings.

“In the camps they are living without a tomorrow,” said Verma. “If they work hard here they can get whatever they want. They can change their lives.”