Miss Adventures

Paul Theroux may be a curmudgeon, but he’s a damn good travel writer (if that’s what you must call him). This piece in the Guardian about how and why Theroux became a travel writer comes a few days shy of the release of his books The Great Railway Bazaar and The Old Patagonian Express as [...]

Dear friends,
I must apologize for the long delay in writing. But, I have been up to big things. First of all, I have been concentrating on my writing and my other blog Italofile.com. I am using Italofile as a way to explore the Italy travel landscape beyond the pages of my books The Unofficial Guide [...]

My staple during this hot Turkish summer has been kisir, what some call Turkish Tabbouleh. It’s not really a salad, but it makes the perfect cold side for stuffed peppers or karniyarik (another Turkish dish I’m making a lot lately).
I learned this recipe from my maid, but you can also find a perfectly good version [...]

There are a ton of books, both fiction and non-fiction, about Turkey and the Middle East. While most of them are useful in learning about the region’s history and culture, few hold my interest for more than a couple pages. That’s not the case for the following three books, which I am reading or have [...]

It’s an hour later and I’m still bawling over a piece that I saw on BBC News regarding the Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange. A situation this grave is enough to make an inactive person like me want to do something to help. While I may consider a letter-writing campaign at some point, I’m moved right [...]

Last weekend we went to Beypazarı, a small village an hour and a half by bus from Ankara. Located on the old “Istanbul to Baghdad route,” Beypazarı has been inhabitated by various tribes and peoples, including the Seljuks, who left behind a 12C mosque, and the Ottomans, whose “konak” houses dot the town’s hillside. Beypazarı [...]

No one ever writes anything particularly special about Ankara. Guidebooks don’t dedicate many pages to the capital. And, when I mentioned to people that I was moving to Turkey, their faces lit up:
They: “Istanbul?!”
Me: “No, Ankara.”
They:”Oh, too bad. Istanbul is great.”
My first impressions of Ankara had been quite favorable, up until this past Tuesday, when [...]

Earthquakes. Forest fires. New Orleans. Iraq. So many natural and man-made disasters are in the news lately that I keep hearing about “evacuation plans.” As serious as such things may be, I couldn’t help thinking about using the phrase in a humorous way on a baby onesie. Click on the photo above to see the [...]

In case you missed it, the New York Times ran Seth Sherwood’s 36 Hours in Istanbul this weekend. I’m looking forward to following Sherwood’s suggestions and telling you all about them very soon. Before that, we’ll be doing some traveling in Anatolia. Stay tuned…

We arrived in Turkey at a very interesting time. The Battle for Turkey’s Soul is afoot, pitting the “sons and daughters” of Atatürk (as well as the Turkish military) versus the “headscarf republic,” or Islamists. Hundreds of thousands of Turkish secularists have marched in Istanbul and Ankara at the slightest hint that the prime minister [...]

Hi there! Are you looking for Ms. Adventure, the website of the Animal Planet television show that launched in January 2007? Or are you looking for Miss Adventures, the on again-off again blog of freelance travel and food writer Melanie Mize Renzulli?
If it’s the latter…welcome! If not, check out Ms. Adventure here.
It’s unfortunate I didn’t [...]

It has been almost nine months since I left India and last posted on the blog. (You’ll also notice I moved cyber addresses - from http://tblogs.bootsnall.com/miss to here.)
I was ready to leave India last April, but now I look back on that chaos quite fondly. Indeed, I was also fond of today’s holiday - Republic [...]

It’s not fair to compare Bombay and Hong Kong, two bustling Asian cities once under the realm of Britain, but I couldn’t help doing so while on a recent trip.

Good news, everyone! As you may or may not know, in between voiceovers, observing India, and blogging, I’ve also maintained a pretty full freelance writing/editing schedule. The results of those long days and nights last fall have been two guidebooks on Italy that I am quite proud of.

I apologize for the long silence. In fact, not much has been happening around here. Well, not much except bird flu, temple attacks, and presidential visits. At this point, nearly two years later, India and Bombay have almost become everyday for me. And, sad as it may seem, there comes a time when you become [...]

Senator John Kerry came to India recently to discuss, among other things, his opinions on outsourcing. During the U.S. elections of 2004, Indians (or at least the Indian media) never quite warmed to Kerry, so I suppose this was a chance for him to go on a goodwill tour and to see outsourcing at its, [...]

Bombay is one of the most progressive cities in India. For most intents and purposes, both the New York and L.A. of India.
It is also the capital of of Maharashtra, a state that is proving to be more backward which each report of a book ban. On Monday, the Maharashtra government banned a scholarly book [...]

I don’t think I had ever planned my life beyond 2005, so New Year’s 2006 hit me from the out of the blue. We hadn’t made any plans for New Years, either, figuring that something low-key would come along. Ha! This is Bombay. Something came along, but it certainly wasn’t low key.
A friend of a [...]

Another sign that Bombay is booming: it seems like a new club opens each week. Since I arrived over 15 months ago, a number of new clubs, including Zenzi, Seijo and the Soul Dish, and Squeeze have opened in Bandra (north Bombay), the home of the nouveau riche, Bollywood stars, and the majority of Bombay’s [...]

Bombay has changed to Mumbai. Madras to Chennai. Calcutta to the much less evocative Kolkata. Now, it looks like Bangalore is jumping on the renaming bandwagon. It intends to change its name to Bengaluru, which means “the town of boiled beans” in the local Kannada language.
Is this really necessary?
When a friend sent me the headlines [...]