Best spontaneous trip you've taken: Once my friend offered to fly me in his Cessna (a super small plane) to Garrattsville, NY, to visit the Butternuts Brewery. Despite the weather - it was freezing and had just snowed - we went, took a tour, and loaded the Cessna up with as much beer as was safe to bring back home. Needless to say it was loads of fun; if someone offers to take you day-tripping on a plane, go for it!

One place everyone should go: Everyone already goes to Paris, but jeez, go to Paris! And stay for a long time!

Favorite travel resource: If I’m traveling someplace where I know a friend has been, I like to ask for a handwritten list of the best stuff that’s there. The list has to be handwritten because people don’t like to write a lot, so I know that whatever is included will be done so thoughtfully. 

Item you can't live without on a trip: Running sneakers, though sometimes they’re attached to delusions of athletic grandeur that I’ll actually run on vacation. When I do run, though, I find that it’s the very best way to get my bearings in a new place. The best runs I’ve taken on vacation have been along the bank of Lake Michigan in Chicago. That thing is just a lake? Seriously?Last vacation you really loved: Galapagos. My boyfriend and I recently visited a high school friend who now resides on San Cristóbal, one of the archipelago’s five peopled islands. She’s married to a real Galapaganian man (not a tortoise!) and has a real Galapaganian baby. We spent thirteen days discovering that we’re really into birds, almost-touching sea lions, drinking bottles and bottles of the ubiquitous Ecuadorian beer (Pilsener) and sleeping very well. This trip became dauntingly adventurous-sounding the more we talked about it, so I was thankful that the reality of being there was a bit more balanced. That’s not to say that we didn’t snorkel in open water with manta rays and sharks or camp among scorpions on a remote beach or anything - we did those things too!

Recommended short jaunt: Take a Metro-North train up to Beacon, and walk to Dia:Beacon. It’s a contemporary art museum housed in an old Nabisco box-printing factory. The space, art, and general spirit of the place are all astounding and vast. This is a particularly perfect thing to do on a nascent spring or fall day when one just can’t take it – the winter, the summer, the city, whatever – anymore.

Travel quirk: I love to carry old-timey, hard-on-the-outside, cumbersome luggage. I used to run away constantly as a small child (my primary destination being my grandparents' side of our two-family home) and my grandmother donated a tomato-red train case to my cause. As a result, I’ve never used a wheelie suitcase in my life. I like to lug.

Meals you would travel for: If I could do this much traveling in one day, I would, because all these items are worth making a trip for.... I'd start with coffee – a large cup of Yirgacheffe at Philz in San Francisco (Mission location); Breakfast – bolones con huevos (large, fried balls of mashed plantains and queso blanco, with huevos) at Tres Hermanos in Isabela, Galapagos; Mid-morning cocktail – back to San Fran for a bloody mary at the Orbit Room; Lunch – the All American Buddy Holly Burger at Hut’s in Austin, TX; Afternoon beer – a mason jar (if it’s a Thursday) of Old Capital at the Keegan Ales Brewery in Kingston, where you will inevitably run into my parents, still awesome; Dinner – go either to Henne in Berlin for your very own perfectly fried hen(ne) or, honestly, my apartment in Carroll Gardens, because I love to cook and am pretty okay at it.