Because I have little inclination to chart my whereabouts on social media, it may come as a surprise to this audience that I was away on a foreign trip for a week. On the other hand, if you have been following this blog for some years, you could probably surmise…
At a broad glance, the last year encompassed quite a lot of traveling. There were three family trips to foreign destinations, a dedicated overseas World Heritage-centric trip, several business- and special occasion-oriented trips to various states within the Union, and an epic journey by my better half that put her…
Those who follow us on social media should be aware that we have continued our family tradition of spending the Christmas week in warmer climes and at a destination that we haven’t visited in the past. This year, the choice fell on the island of St-Martin. The relatively small island…
I haven’t done a lot of World Heritage chasing this past year. None, in fact. All of my trips have been to places where easy-to-reach WH sites were already part of my roster. UNESCO did me a small favor by inscribing in July two serial properties that I could claim…
Two weeks on the Cycladic Islands in the Aegean Sea is such a magnificent treat that my preferences for exploring new destinations were largely set aside for our summer vacation this year. We have already been in 2018, and we especially loved the island of Naxos so much that we…
It was somewhat inexplicable that after having lived in London for nearly 3 years, we have not come back to this great city in over 15 years since. Just as inexplicable is the fact that Francophiles such as we are, who used to go to Paris several times a year…
Do I travel enough? Clearly, it is nowhere near the scale that I would ultimately like, but at least I have re-settled into a habit developed for many years of the BC era (“before covid”): spending my entire yearly paid time-off allowance on foreign travel. Similar to last year, I…
In what has by now become an annual event, we decamped to a warmer destination for the few final days of the year. As we always try to do, the place was one that we haven’t been to before. In this case, Aruba. The small Caribbean island is a very…
Having a bunch of unused vacation days in the later part of the year allowed me an opportunity to explore a grand European capital that I had visited before but retained by now a relatively limited recollection of. As ever, spending more than a handful of days in the same…
With only a few non-European countries hosting me on my traveling itineraries to date, I feel a bit of a pretender calling myself a “world traveler”. While I expect to always remain a Europhile, I am certainly looking to expand my coverage of other continents. A just-concluded trip was the…
Most of my audience likely knows that I spent a few days in Porto, ostensibly to watch a football game. Such a standalone sporting event can hardly ever justify transatlantic travel, so I made a nearly week-long trip out of it. The result was a close reacquaintance with this wonderful…
The reporting year was comparable to the previous one in terms of the amount of travel, which suggests a measure of normalization in the post-Covid era. I visited 5 foreign countries (UK, Italy, Turkey, Belize, Guatemala), of which two were first-time visits. Aside from Edinburgh and Speyside in Scotland and…
Just as last year – this could become a family tradition! – we spent the last days of the year in warmer climes exploring a new destination. I was planning to use the term “Latin America” to describe the region, except this year we picked the only country in the…
It may be open to debate which cities would qualify for the label of a “major” European capital, but using my loose definition, I possess sufficient familiarity with all them. Until now, that was bar Istanbul. My trip that took place last week was part opportunistic and part long-planned, and…
When we stack-rank our trips based on how smooth and stress-free they went, our just-concluded voyage will be somewhere near the bottom. Transportation and natural events beyond our control tried our patience, forced us into on-the-fly alterations of plans, and left an unfortunate aftertaste that this was not the greatest…
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…
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…
Anyone following my lovely wife on social media would undoubtedly be aware that we have spent the last two weeks on a reasonably significant journey. Structured around our youngest’s Bat Mitzvah, it started with a bit over a week in Israel and then continued for a week on the French…
With all due respect to the Eternal City, which I not long ago declared the most satisfying place to visit, nothing compares to La Serenissima in terms of delightful walkability. People who have been to Venice only passingly do not realize that the city is not mostly water. Instead, it…