Mother's Day is just around the corner. And this mother wants…a girlfriend's getaway. Oh yes, and I want those sweet homemade cards from my little ones too. But there's nothing like travel with your friends. So impossible to arrange with all our busy lives, but so impossible to forget too. 

In this story for WestJet magazine, I round up four places that are ideal for girlfriends' getaways from the fields and horse paddocks of Ontario's Ste. Anne's Spa to the trails and rivers of Banff, Alta, above. 

Often I interview successful types who make me feel a bit like a slacker that the most I get done beyond my work day is the dishes. Take California surfer Rob Machado. Besides a dozen World Championship Tour victories and an induction into the Surfers’ Hall of Fame, he's involved in so much more: film making, surf board shaping and charity work focusing on children and the environment. Here, in this Insider for The Globe and Mail, he plays tour guide, sharing five places he'd send a traveller on his home turf of San Diego. And doesn't surfing sound like a nice change from snow about now?

So there we were: four women casually climbing the stairs to our East Village rental like real New Yorkers. The Airbnb apartment, up four flights of stairs, was basic with a strong Ikea vibe. But it was a bargain and we planned to use our savings on important things such as Uniqlo sweaters and champagne and fried chicken.

"Oh, they lit candles to welcome us," I thought as we looked around and saw the burning votives.
Then we noticed the smell. Was it the kitchen trash? Had it been hurriedly taken out before our arrival? But the unpleasant and awful scent stretched beyond the small kitchen and spread throughout the apartment.
"I think something died in the walls," said my savvy friend Kira. "I think it's a dead rat."
By now, the scent of the heavily perfumed candles was starting to make us feel nauseated as well. 

To see if absence would make the smell grow weaker we headed out for our dinner reservations. When we returned, however, it was as bad as ever. It also created a feeling that made you wonder: What else was here? Bed bugs? Cockroaches? More rats? 

Sometimes it's the lowlights on a trip that you remember -- and laugh about most when it's all over. And while this trip to New York had so many highlights -- seeing Alan Cumming in Cabaret, squeezing into a table at  Prune, encountering a character of a saleswoman at Bergdorf Goodman, touring the Tenement Museum -- I know we won't soon forget the Dead Rat Incident. Because travel contains so much more than the brochure dream. And that's one reason I started this travel blog. To share tips about destinations, my passion for outdoors, cultural and family travel, but also share stories about the trip itself. It's about the journey right? 

In the end, it all sorted out. We contacted our Airbnb hosts, who immediately (and we must assume guiltily) offered half-price that night or a full refund. And we found, thanks to online searches, a pleasant hotel in Tribeca. We didn't feel the slightest bit like real New Yorkers pulling our suitcases into the lobby and riding the elevator to our plushly carpeted room. But boy, did it ever smell good. 

You know when you're wandering a new city and find yourself hungry and tired and somehow eating at a tourist joint? That won't happen at Amsterdam's De Hallen. 

The 19th century tram repair station has been converted into a hub for fashion, crafts and food. It's one of those renovations that gives hope to old buildings. And its Foodhallen brings together the best of the city under one roof offering everything from Dutch bitterballen to Thai fish soup. This is my story in The Globe and Mail on Amsterdam's first indoor food market.

Looking back at 2014, chefs dominated The Insider, the feature I write for The Globe and Mail, in which locals in the know dish on top experiences in their own backyards. And this year, I was lucky enough to get a lot of top cooks to play travel guide. 

So here I pay tribute to these tour leaders that didn't make it on to the blog yet. (Ahem, I like my blog to slowly simmer.) Heading to Florida? Daniel Boulud shares where to get the best grilled sea bass in Palm Beach, one of the cities blessed by his culinary empire. "This is my town," says Mario Batali about New York, who pushes us to try a cocktail made with beet vinegar in the Big Apple. Craving seafood? PEI's favourite celeb chef Michael Smith takes us to an old-fashioned lobster dinner in Charlottetown. And Top Chef Canada victor René Rodriguez confesses his love for a maple candied bacon doughnut in Ottawa. Ready to escape winter? Tim Tibbitts, the chef behind the Bahamas' Flying Fish on Grand Bahama island sends you on an cone run for soursop ice cream.

Note: All recommendations were accurate at the time of publication. But that's a cool thing about culinary travel no? It just keeps changing.

Frank Laino, the executive concierge of the luxury hotel The Stafford London, has arranged everything from tai chi on horseback and a private viewing of a royal painting to reservations at the current restaurant hotspot Chiltern Firehouse. “Most of the time we can,” says Laino, who puts his skills down to networking in the age of Google research. “I’m not going to say all the time. Unless you’re an A-lister, you won’t get a guaranteed table.”

Here, in this Insider for The Globe and Mail, he shares five picks that mix London's rich cultural and culinary scene. Blog Bonus: Another theatre worth checking out: The Almeida Theatre, he says, is almost like a testing ground for shows before they break out in London.
 

Bells from St. Lawrence, the only medieval church that survived the blitz of the Second World War, chime and toll as shoppers hurry across the square, headed for the lunchtime rush at the new Markthal. So much of Rotterdam is new – the city core was essentially flattened in 15 minutes when more than 1,000 German bombs dropped in May, 1940 – that it feels unlike many European cities. Instead of centuries-old stone, shiny towers rise up on the banks of the Maas River and iconic buildings have taken root. The latest is the Markthal, the first covered market in the Netherlands.

But it’s much more than your average grocery shop or even farmer’s market stroll. In this story, for Doctor's Review magazine, I join the pilgrimage to the latest architectural star. And in my Insider for The Globe and Mail, I interview Anton Wubben, the architect project leader from MVRDV, the leading Rotterdam firm that designed the building. Anton, who lived and dreamed about the project for five years, shares five other not-to-be-forgotten places to visit in this modern port city. 

Have I mentioned lately how much I love my job? I get to interview chefs, bartenders and musicians about their favourite spots in their own backyards. Recently I spoke with Matt Peters, the lead singer behind Winnipeg's Juno-nominated Royal Canoe, about the town he calls home. 

You can catch them on the road -- currently on tour for Today We're Believers -- or follow Peters' guide to  Winnipeg's urban essentials. And for a bonus 'Peg fix, check out the band's video for Exodus of the Year, a grainy, black-and-white homage to workaday Winnipeg. My own favourite Winnipeg sign, Nutty Club, makes a cameo!

Ready for a good-time escape to Chicago? Meet Paul McGee, one of the city’s top mixologists, whose latest venture, Three Dots and a Dash, is a tiki bar that mixes pink-umbrella fun with a list that heavily favours rum. Starting out in Houston and moving on to big-name casinos in Las Vegas, including a stint with the Wolfgang Puck empire, McGee has had a long run behind the bar. But it has been in Chicago, where he opened his own places, that he has found a home.

In this Insider with The Globe and Mail, McGee shares five places to bookmark for your next Chicago adventure. As for his own joint, he recommends trying the namesake Three Dots and a Dash, a concoction of rhum agricole, Guyanese rum, honey and lime. "It's got these cool winter baking spices -- cinnamon, clove -- but it's still very refreshing," McGee says. Cheers!

Note: Since this first ran, Billy Sunday's Snakes on a Flag dropped off the menu (you can still ask for it at the bar), but the folks there suggest trying the Nevada -- also based on rhum agricole, "but more appropriate for fall." Billy Sunday photos, below, by Matthias Merges.