While you’re biking around Brittany, you should stop pedaling long enough to take in some views. We did, barely. But they were good views. Check out some of them here.
Top Shore Excursions on Viking’s Rhine River Cruise
In May this year we sailed the Rhine River from Basel, Switzerland, north to Amsterdam with Viking River Cruises. Amazingly, this is our fifth river cruise, fourth with Viking, and we’re surprised, even ourselves, at how much we enjoy these experiences. What we appreciate in a river cruise is the combination of onboard relaxation and […]
Japanese Beetles, Saint Paul, Minnesota
Ok, this is not exactly travel photography. But it is sort of landscape photography. If the landscape is the potted plants hanging on the porch rail outside my apartment. And, hey, they’re Japanese beetles. And they’ve done some traveling. In fact, like some terrible tourists, they’ve come to Minnesota recently to wreak havoc on every […]
10 Postcards from a Brittany, France Bike Tour
Our first extended bike tour in our seven years of travel was a most enjoyable one arranged by Exodus Travels around the coast of Brittany. Kris has done most of the writing about what we saw and did. And you can find those accounts, and her lovely photos, here and here. I was so busy […]
A Land-Based Visit to the Galapagos
The Galapagos Islands’ main draw is the wildlife: the marine life, botanics, birds, and mammals that have populated the volcanic islands since they were formed some million and a half years ago. Like most visitors, our expectations revolved around spotting and photographing wildlife, and with Galakiwi Tours, we anticipated lots of land and water based […]
Stay and Eat: Culinary Highlights of Brittany, France
Earlier this summer, we pedaled our way around the northern part of Brittany, France, on a self-guided tour designed by Exodus Travels. The experience–a first for us–was thoroughly enjoyable, and we surprised ourselves a bit at how quickly we got into the swing of cycling across the countryside for hours on end. We wrote about […]
Tips for Capturing Great Wildlife Photography on an African Safari
Susan Portnoy’s spectacular photography and expert advice will inspire, whether you are shooting close to home or on safari.
Tips for First Time Travelers to Vietnam
The challenge for Vietnam visitors like us–Americans old enough to have lived through the war or at least to recall the nightly news images–is to acknowledge those memories and then let them go. First-time visitors, especially, will want to get out of their own heads and embrace today’s Vietnam, its people and food and culture…but […]
Our First Bicycle Tour: Brittany Backroads
Note: In May, we took a week-long bicycling trip around the northern part of Brittany, France. We’d never done anything like this before; our only biking experience had been rides across town and on urban trails. Over five days of cycling in Brittany, we covered 200 kilometers (125 miles) and climbed a cumulative 2,000 meters […]
Berlin Arts Walk with Context
Berlin’s a city begging to be recognized for something other than its cold war history. On our second visit, we were interested in getting to know different neighborhoods and meeting the town on its own terms rather than approaching it via the usual tourist sites. One of our hopes was to join our friends at […]
The Holocaust Memorial, Berlin, Germany
The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe is the official name in English. It’s a beautifully somber sculpture of over 1300 concrete stelae set into an undulating ground of spaced granite pavers set intentionally to make your walking slightly precarious. And as you move further into the two-block square memorial, the ground falls away […]
