I trust that I well established in these pages that a trip to Scotland is never about just whisky for me. The itinerary may be defined by the distillery locations, but points in between also get a modicum of attention. Herewith is a small array of depictions of such points.…
I already mark the Frontiers of the Roman Empire World Heritage Site as visited (#74 on my list) on the strength of the brief stop in 2015. Considering that the inscription lists 414 locations, a passing look at a single one clearly stretches the definition of “visited”. Improvements are welcome.…
On my third visit to Edinburgh, a full day exploring the wonderful city center was the least I had to set aside, including several landmark visits and a large walkabout circuit. The skies were dreary in the morning, turned cloudy blue for a short time midday, and then reverted to…
With World Heritage exploits on top of two unmissable distillery visits, the day we spent on Mainland Orkney had more designated activities than any other day of the trip. In between those, taking advantage of a relatively bright day, I caught a few nice perspectives around the island. Probably the…
While in Orkney on the recent trip, we mixed a history-seeking outing into our scotch-centric itinerary. A group of monuments known as the “Heart of Neolithic Orkney” offers a remarkable record of life on this remote archipelago that dates back 5,000 years. Of the four locations, two can be visited…
Multiple travel quarters mark the island of Skye as one of the most impressive destinations in the country that sets a pretty high bar when it comes to magnificent landscapes. Since our whisky trips are never about just scotch – or so I’d like to believe – I was very…
As previously mentioned, the recently concluded trip was larger in scope and time than its predecessors – we visited 20 distilleries over the course of a week-plus, of which 15 were first-time visits. Following my traditional approach, I will start the series of trip retrospections with a quick round of…
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…