Bo Smolka

We thought a cross-country train trip would be great. We were half right.

Travel at age seventeen, on the cusp of independence, is ripe with discovery, impressions, and memories that endure.

When do we ever get to see who our parents were, before they were our parents?

With its weathered docks, faded wharf signage, and pleasure boats in the harbor, Baltimore has always had a connection to water.

The Harriet Tubman Byway covers roughly 125 miles from the riverside town of Cambridge, Md., to Philadelphia, traversing geography that has changed little since Tubman’s time.

There is horse racing, and then there is the Palio, the no-holds-barred, bareback mad dash that defines the town of Siena, Italy.