The third tri-annual Scotch-centric buddy trip – actually, #4 for me, counting a much earlier and much shorter foray when I lived in the UK – has been a resounding success. The itinerary was more ambitious than usual, taking us to farther outposts than we have been before. 1,300 miles…
This article was first posted in February 2020 and is updated at intervals with additional or corrected information. In our connected times, an aspiring student of languages can find tons of different tools online and elsewhere that each promise to get one to speak a foreign language in no time…
Whenever we venture outside of the major urban centers on our travels, I drive. Not having to depend on strangers for transportation and enjoying the unconstrained ability to stop and explore something of interest along the way are a couple of reasons that always tip the scales toward getting behind…
The pattern established in Arenal continued on the Pacific-coast leg of our Costa Rican trip. We went on a number of excursions in the Manuel Antonio National Park area – beaches, surfing, driving ATVs, dipping into the waterfall cascades – and in almost all instances my camera remained at the…
I doubt that anyone would ever expect surpassing nature photography from me. Therefore, you will not be overly disappointed by the realization that I have little in the form of exceptional from our stay in the Arenal National Park area in Costa Rica. We went ziplining, dipped in hot springs…
Hardly anyone budgets time for San Jose beyond an overnight stop on the way to other destinations in Costa Rica when the flight schedule dictates so. Spending time in the capital city in a country that is famous for its sun, sea, rainforests, and fauna sounds a bit wasteful. That…
To state the obvious, you can only see so much of a place when time is limited. While in Panama City on a layover that spanned two nights and one full day, we managed to set foot in three major locations of interest. Casco Antiguo and the archaeological site of…
The World Heritage site in Panama City, inscribed for being the oldest continuously occupied European settlement on the Pacific coast of the Americas, comprises two components. Both somewhat confusingly have the moniker “old” in their names. Casco Viejo (or Casco Antiguo) is the historic heart of the city but is…
The last time I did one of these, in 2019, after a really big traveling year even by my lofty standards, my prediction for the following year started with “next year shapes up to be relatively subdued”… Man, was that an understatement!! As the world more or less shut down…
For the first time in recent memory (and only the third time overall, if I recall correctly) we have greeted the New Year away from home. It was our first time in both Costa Rica and Panama, the first time in Central America overall, and by the nature of the…
Our trips frequently include boat rides of different varieties, and this stay on the French Riviera was not an exception. On one of the days in the area, we planned to spend a few hours on a sailboat going up and down the coast between Nice and Monaco. For reasons…
The Principality of Monaco is among the more curious countries. It is a constitutional monarchy whose ruler, while not being styled “the King”, has probably the most powers over his domain than any other remaining monarch in all of Europe. It is the second tiniest sovereign entity in the world.…
The village of Sainte-Agnès sits in the mountains high above Menton. It holds the designation as one of the Most Beautiful Villages in France. That entitles it to a separate look in our travel recaps. As with many such villages, there is not much in terms of defined points of…
Menton was one of the places we had not been to before and specifically targeted for a brief exploration this time. Literally “the last” point on the French Riviera – you cannot move eastward of Menton without crossing the border into Italy – it is a resort town famous for…
The capital of the French Riviera may enjoy continuous fame as “the playground for the rich”, but it is in essence a big city with big-city attractions. Certainly, there are plenty of visual highlights to be found in town, and yet its cultural offerings – museums, theaters, varied cuisine –…
This visit to the Riviera included a number of places that we had never managed to visit in the past. One was St-Paul-de-Vence. It is both a picturesque hilltop medieval village and one big art gallery. A large percentage of commercial establishments in the village core are contemporary-art boutiques. Makes…
I am starting this post with the same panoramic vista of Villefranche Bay that has already been posted a few weeks ago. Utterly mesmerizing! And then, somewhat gratuitously, here are a few other shots taken from the same spot on our apartment balcony, differing by the time of day, lighting…
While in Israel this past August, I ended up with an unusually small quantity of travel pictures to share. Between visits to relatives, the Bat Mitzvah ceremony (for which we hired a professional photographer), beach outings, and chilling in Tel Aviv, I only used my camera in a handful of…
Israel’s national parks system deserves many superlatives, encompassing over 70 historical and natural sites across the country. That includes all non-urban World Heritage sites, so on my first visit to Israel, I purposefully stopped by quite a few of the national parks. Tzipori was one that I haven’t been to…
Israel has ten World Heritage sites – and on my first trip a few years ago, I visited nine of them. The tenth – Bet Guvrin-Maresha National Park, inscribed on the list for its fairly unique conglomeration of distinct-purpose cave complexes – was on the itinerary back then as well,…