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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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’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 […]
Changing exhibits, illuminated texts, mummy hands, and musical instruments are just some of our new discoveries in Florence. I never feel like I’ve seen it all, and I never feel like leaving this ever-evolving city.
It’s been a year and many miles since I last posted about travel footwear. I’m still relying on my fleet of black sandals. And, as I write, I’m wearing my Bernie Mev woven shoes that pack small and go anywhere. On the other hand, the clogs and moccasins I mentioned in that post I save […]
We’ve never kept a ‘bucket’ list of places to visit before we die. But if we had, the Galapagos Islands would surely have been on it. Somehow, even living in mainland Ecuador for nine months back in 2010, Tom and I didn’t manage to visit these equatorial Pacific Islands. We’ve been attracted, meanwhile, by Darwin’s […]
While Torres del Paine and Patagonia at Chile’s southern tip get heaps of inspiring coverage (including by us, here), the stark Atacama desert at the northern end of the elongated country is no less impressive. It’s been a while since we ventured up to the Atacama for a long weekend when we lived in Santiago, […]
