Paulie Dibner

1 week ago | oprahdaily.com | Paulie Dibner

Maybe it’s the hours I spent watching Ever After and Romeo and Juliet when I was younger, or the teenage urge to hide behind something pretty, but going to a masquerade ball has been on my bucket list for as long as I can remember.

2 weeks ago | oprahdaily.com | Paulie Dibner

“I feel like we should go to Italy that weekend.” It had become a small tradition in my home to get the hell out of Dodge after important or stressful medical appointments—a welcome distraction from the interminable waiting for results delivered bloodlessly by a no-nonsense nurse. And so, in advance of another tedious interlude that April, I stuck my head unceremoniously into my husband’s office and announced my plan.

2 weeks ago | flipboard.com | Paulie Dibner

For more than 900 years, between the fifth century and the Renaissance, Romans didn’t cap their buildings with domes. Why? Before the fifth century of …

2 weeks ago | oprahdaily.com | Paulie Dibner

ACP/Trunk ArchiveA walk through the Arashiyama Bamboo Forest at nightBook a midmorning Shinkansen from Tokyo to Kyoto—the high-speed bullet train can get you there in under two and a half hours. Make sure to sit on the right-hand side of the train; if you get lucky with the weather, you’ll have a good view of Mount Fuji on your way down. Enjoy dinner that night in Ichijoji, Kyoto’s ramen district. You really can’t go wrong anywhere, but the thick broth at Gokkei is a standout.

2 weeks ago | oprahdaily.com | Paulie Dibner

We’ve broken out a guide for the Golden Route (a reference to the old Tōkaidō road, an Edo-era major thoroughfare that connected Tokyo and Kyoto) perfect for first-time visitors to the country. The strategy here is to
organize your days by neighborhood—both Tokyo and Kyoto are quite large, and it’s more enjoyable (and manageable) 
to focus on one part of town at a time than to spend hours crisscrossing the cities by subway.