Inspiring Travel Writing from Nancy Lyon
Nancy Lyon was marked for adventure at 13 when her mother, a bored Indianapolis housewife, took the family station wagon and her four daughters off to Acapulco for the summer with no man, no plan, and no Spanish. Nancy has tried to top that rollicking rite of passage with travels from Tunisia to Malaysia, Ireland to Australia, a 1970 VW Westphalia "Dame Gitane" and various lives in Manhattan, San Francisco, Switzerland, Dublin, and now Montreal, Quebec.
Her stories and photos have appeared in GEO, New York Magazine, Ms., The New York Times, Travel & Leisure, The Saturday Review, the Chicago Herald Tribune, the Miami Herald, In Dublin Magazine, the Montreal Gazette, and US alternative newsweeklies. Paul William Roberts in the Toronto Star called her first book, Scatter the Mud: A Traveler's Medley, "an impressive literary debut with prose by turns as frenetic as a Galway barroom jig, or as balefully evocative as the most mournful Celtic ballad."
Her stories and photos have appeared in GEO, New York Magazine, Ms., The New York Times, Travel & Leisure, The Saturday Review, the Chicago Herald Tribune, the Miami Herald, In Dublin Magazine, the Montreal Gazette, and US alternative newsweeklies. Paul William Roberts in the Toronto Star called her first book, Scatter the Mud: A Traveler's Medley, "an impressive literary debut with prose by turns as frenetic as a Galway barroom jig, or as balefully evocative as the most mournful Celtic ballad."
Articles by Nancy Lyon
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Before You Die: Fado to Make you Cry
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Nancy Lyon
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Portugal
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Madeira Region
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Madeira
Madeira, Portugal. Hiking on top of the world through a perpetual blooming springtime - intoxicated with light - drunk on opiate breezes laced with oleander and roses and a fruity reverie of pomegranates and mangos, loquats and quince. Enjoying...
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Madeira’s Floating Garden
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Nancy Lyon
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Portugal
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Madeira Region
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Funchal
Black bullwhips. That’s what they look like, these long black fishy strips glistening in the morning sun, dangling over marble slabs at the market in Funchal. When you buy one, the fishmonger rolls it into a hoop and stuffs its tail in its mouth...
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Before You Die: Visual Aphrodisiacs!
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Nancy Lyon
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Canada
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Quebec
Montreal’s Northern Lights, Quebec, Canada. Lying on a blanket by the shores of the St. Lawrence River on a balmy summer’s evening watching the world's most spectacular fireworks festival bursting overhead. Rockets shooting up from under...
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Before You Die: Put on a Big Sun Hat, Bring your Paperback Bible
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Nancy Lyon
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Israel
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Israel and the Palestinian Territories
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Dead Sea
The Dead Sea, Israel. Put on a big sun hat, bring your paperback Bible, and enjoy the bliss of total buoyancy floating on your back in the healing, mineral rich waters of the Dead Sea. Inhale the oxygen-rich atmosphere of the lowest point on earth,...
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Mountain Biking in Los Angeles
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Nancy Lyon
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United States
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California
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Los Angeles
It was my dirty little secret. And even more scandalous because I knew how. I’d done it in hot-blooded Latin Montreal, after 15 years of not doing it at all. And I’d even done it in England, on the left, and in Manhattan at mid-day. But I was not...
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Down the Drain
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Nancy Lyon
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United Kingdom
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Greater London
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London
On page four, the fugitive, Interpol-wanted Lord Lucan was lolling on his South African veranda, tweaking his false moustache and betting with himself which tsetse fly would land on the rim of his whiskey glass first. On page six, Baywatch sex-pot...
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Boomeranging Around Sydney
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Nancy Lyon
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Australia
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New South Wales
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Sydney
Would it whiz back around and hit me in the face? Or maybe even break my arm, like it did to that friend who was taught by the Aborigines? Or would it fly off at 100 mph and sink into the Sydney Harbour? That’s was what I was wondering as I stared...
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A Piper's Birl Around Cape Breton Island
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Nancy Lyon
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Canada
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Nova Scotia
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Cape Breton
Must you really bring a Scottish piper in a clan MacNab tartan kilt all the way from Scotland to answer the question "How Scottish is Nova Scotia?" Aye. Just how much of the Highlands and Gaels could you find on the hauntingly beautiful island in...
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Anticosti: Quebec’s Graveyard of the Gulf
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Nancy Lyon
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Canada
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Quebec
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Saint Lawrence River
It’s about time someone made a Hollywood film about Anticosti, the island in the Gulf of the St. Lawrence Jacques Cartier cursed as “the land God gave to Cain.” He cursed Canada's Hermit Island, also known as Jinx Island and the...
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Christ Must Be In Vegas
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Nancy Lyon
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United States
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Nevada
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Las Vegas
Ho ho ho. It’s Christmas in gaudy bawdy Las Vegas. Season’s Greetings from the talking camels at The Hotel Luxor...the sexy pirates at Buccaneer’s Bay... the zany drag queens at La Cage...King Tut’s clone (...or would that be...