When we lived in England, we had a tradition of going to some interesting destination for my birthday. Be it Amsterdam, or Andalusia, or Rome – I’d rather be someplace fun for my birthday. (Ok, part of the reason for that “tradition” was that school holidays coincided with my birthday…
I hope that every one of you had smashing time greeting the New Year! We did our usual thing with a group of our good friends, gathering around the table, eating, drinking, laughing around, eventually moving on to karaoke and movie-watching. We did this in practically the same company for…
This year, with the new baby, I managed to leave almost all of my allotted vacation time till the very end. Spending three weeks at home in quick succession would be a challenge both to my wandering spirit and to my saintly wife’s patience. Although she cannot yet join me…
We have been back in the States from England for exactly a year, and Natasha made a fairly sad observation the other day: For the first time in over a decade, she spent an entire length of a year without venturing abroad. Not even to Dominican Republic or Canada… Not…
Where do you think I’d go for my first real vacation since repatriating? Duh! Europe, of course! We did not manage to visit Prague while we lived in Europe, even though it kept my designation of “The Most Beautiful City” bestowed upon it after our first visit there. We always…
Spent a few days in Chicago on business. The schedule was fairly packed, but I managed to squeeze in an evening with the little brother and his family. Did not manage to find much time for idle city-seeing, although I did try to take different routes between the hotel and…
The kids will be out of school for two weeks in late March-early April, and we are suddenly faced with a dearth of places to go for a holiday. The big part of it is undoubtedly our “spoiled” attitude after several years in Europe – we simply do not find…
For our first family trip since coming back to the US, we decided on a pilgrimage to Our Nation’s Capital. Ok, not exactly. In truth, our old college friends have long settled down in Fairfax County, Virginia, and we’ve made several visits to stay with them over the years. The…
When I last tried to solicit questions from my readership, Tamila jokingly suggested that planning a grand Asian trip would occupy my mind for a while. I don’t think we’re ready for any adventure of such kind as yet, but I did put away a simple idea for a post…
You did not think I’d stay put for long after repatriating, did you? Actually, I did not expect myself that my first travel experience back in America would happen so soon. My brother and his family never made it to London in the three years that we lived there. I…
Our last European holiday for the foreseeable future was by far the laziest of them all. We came to the place that we knew quite well from the previous year. We spent time alternating between the beach and the pool. We went to a few nearby picturesque locations for brief…
And so our last sightseeing trip of the London era is now in the past. It was fantastic and fulfilling, as almost every other of our trips has ever been, and it took us back – or for the first time, for kids, – to two cities that are subject…
Two and a half years of living in England, and we finally braved the concept of taking a day-trip to the continent. From a certain point of view, it was a last-ditch effort to save the short tradition of spending the Early Spring Bank Holiday weekend on the mainland (specifically,…
The April summer of previous years is late to materialize this year. It’s been reasonably sunny and pleasant for the last few days, but still on the cooler side of things. That does not prevent a large segment of young English women to adopt a summer-y dress code. We went…
Two major destinations, three new countries, and, not the least importantly, eight days of almost uninterrupted sunshine – that was the tally of our long-awaited new adventure. We started with three days in Krakow. On our way from the airport to the hotel upon arrival, Natasha and I had the…
Well, at least, one of us is. Becky has returned from her school trip, properly enchanted with the Far East, although expressly for reasons other than I might imagine myself being excited about. Most notably, she was impressed with the enthusiastic reception that she and her classmates were met with…
I’m reading a passage in a travel book that describes a little town on canals in Italy as “not exactly Venice, but rather Bourton-on-the-Water disguised as Portmeirion”. I realize that not only am I familiar with these references, but I can vividly imagine what the town should look like from…
Can I pass up a chance to travel someplace new, even when the focus of a short trip is on a subject of limited interest to me and the logistics involve spending a lot of time on the bus with a bunch of strangers that I have little in common…
I commented a few times in the past (most notably here and here) that the notion of cheap air travel on discount airlines within Europe is rarely as good as advertized. How about another example? We are planning to fly to Costa Brava in the summer. There are two airports…
I know you all have been holding your breath waiting to hear what we decided in regards to our travel plans. So, let me provide a quick run-down, lest the suspense kills someone and decreases my not very numerous faithful audience. During the February half-term, we will have a glorious…