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 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 […]
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 […]
We arrived late afternoon in Dinan, Brittany, a medieval city which retains most of its centuries-old architecture because it seems to have avoided most of France’s wars since just before William invaded England in 1066. We shed our biking gear, showered, and headed up a steep hill into the walled city. By the time we’d […]
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, […]
You could say all my travel is family travel, since Tom and I are rarely far from each other. But twice in the last six months I’ve had the pleasure of inter-generational travel. The most recent family trip took me, without Tom, to Tenerife, one of Spain’s Canary Islands. Bonus points: this was the first […]
The first hint for enjoying Alsatian wines is to forget what you think you know and like about white wines. Riesling wines are not necessarily sweet, for one. And there’s a range of wines on the sweetish side that have their place at the table with any and all courses of a meal. A visit […]
One of the disappointments of visiting Germany for a church art freak like me is that so much of Germany was destroyed during World War II. That’s especially true of the tall church towers, which were often used as targeting bullseyes for Allied bombers and artillery men. Moreover, although small towns along the French German […]
