STORIES Our gang in Havana

Recent Columns:

June 29, 2008
How I worked my summer vacation
There are no new ways to save money while traveling. None. Every conceivable idea has now been floated — and sent to me personally in a lengthy e-mail.

June 15, 2008
Veni, vidi, vendor: Enjoying the charms of street food
When the prospect of going to Australia recently came up, one of my first thoughts was: meat pies.

May 25, 2008
Solutions for hopelessly outdated landmarks
This year, after 85 years, the New York Yankees are playing their last season at Yankee Stadium. This exemplary American organization has concluded, amid much criticism, that just because your home happens to be a national treasure doesn't mean you can't trade it in for something more modern, more pristine, more dripping with profitable skyboxes.

May 11, 2008
The importance of traveling, no matter how near
Summer's coming so let's see where we are.

March 23, 2008
Traveling with the Stars
Choose a destination with Kellie Pickler: People think traveling is something anyone can do. (Unlike, say, dancing.) But it can be a challenge for folks who don't know the names and locations of the places that are out there. You get to plan a trip with the American Idol finalist who, when she appeared on Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?, didn't know what country Budapest was the capital of. She thought maybe France, but then wasn't sure that France is a country. Hint: Don't even mention Bucharest.

March 9, 2008
The people who create trips of intelligent design
The first person I met at the Educational Travel Conference in Baltimore last month was Susan, who works for High Country Passage and lives about five blocks from me in Fort Lauderdale. Smart travel, small world. Later, I checked the company's Web site (hcptravel.com) and found an impressive roster of trips and a wonderful company motto: "World Class Is Now in Session."

February 17, 2008
Miami will steal your corazón
It's time again for my day tour of Miami, since a few things have changed since 1999 and those that didn't you've probably forgotten.

January 27, 2008
Your country is happier than our country
"When was I happiest, the happiest of my life?" James Salter asks in his beautiful memoir Burning the Days. "Difficult to say. Skipping the obvious, perhaps setting off on a journey, or returning from one."

October 28, 2007
Is there a doctor in the country?
Medical tourism is an interesting concept, sort of a throwback to the era of Arthur Frommer's Europe on Five Dollars a Day. Then, comparatively wealthy Americans availed themselves of the cultural attractions of a continent still recovering from war. Today the draw is health care, in another developing, low-cost region. "Asian Hospitals on 150 Dollars a Day." Perhaps the next Patricia Schultz best seller will be "1,000 Medical Centers to See Before You Die."

Thomas Swick was born in Easton, PA, in 1952. He grew up in Phillipsburg, NJ, and received a B.A. in English literature from Villanova University in 1974.

After college he spent a year in France, studying French in Aix-en-Provence and working on a farm in Alsace. Returning to New Jersey, he got a job as a feature writer for the Trenton Times.

In 1980 Swick moved to Poland, where he married and spent the next two years teaching at the English Language College in Warsaw. Returning to the States, he worked as a feature writer for a medical magazine in Philadelphia and then as an editorial writer for the Providence Journal. In 1989, he became the travel editor of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

Swick's work has appeared in The American Scholar, The North American Review, The Oxford American, Columbia Journalism Review, Commonweal, Ploughshares, Boulevard, The New York Times Book Review, Washington Post Book World, National Geographic Traveler, and Travel & Leisure.

His travel stories have been included in The Best American Travel Writing 2001, 2002 and 2004.

He is the author of two books: a travel memoir, Unquiet Days: At Home in Poland (recently translated into Polish) and a collection of travel stories, A Way to See the World: From Texas to Transylvania with a Maverick Traveler.

This fall he became an adjunct professor at Nova Southeastern University, teaching a graduate course in travel writing. He and his wife Hania live in Fort Lauderdale.

E-mail Thomas Swick