In between nuptial-related festivities and visits to Gilded Age mansions, we also explored the historic center of Newport a bit. The mansions along Bellevue Avenue may be the top attraction in town, but the precincts between the northern stretch of the same avenue and the wharves to the west are…
A few weeks ago, we found ourselves in Newport, Rhode Island, where our cherished friends held a wonderful wedding celebration for their child. We’ve been to Newport ages ago, on a targeted exploration of the Gilded Age mansions in the Preservation Society of Newport County portfolio. This time around, participating…
My to-date photographic portfolio of Cinque Terre on these pages is the extreme example of “outsourcing” photo hosting to external services. I included a single picture of each village in the summary WH post, and revisited that only a couple of times within the intermittent “Postcards from” series (one picture…
Princeton University campus must be one of the loveliest in the whole country, and we have had the good fortune of residing fairly close to it for nearly three decades now. We probably enjoyed the setting for leisurely weekend outings more times than at all of the nearby state parks…
One of my children has spent a few days in Florence this spring. Me, I haven’t been back there for over a dozen years now. My last visit took place right around the time that I rediscovered interest in photography. However, back then, my standard M.O. was to post minimal…
A couple of weeks ago, we spent the long weekend on a stretch of the Florida Suncoast, where our good friends had moved a couple of years ago. The trip was meant as a friendly reunion, to be spent mostly by the pool or on the beach. I explicitly considered…
Last Sunday was a gorgeous day. Just the right balance of sunny and breezy, warm but not hot. The rhythm of our lives – and the peculiarities of the weather swings in our neck of the woods – rarely offer such perfect opportunities to go out and explore, but the…
Back in early March, we spent a weekend in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where the youngest was participating in a regional volleyball tournament. We’ve been to the area years ago and even did some sightseeing back then, so I did not initially form any specific plans for exploration. But then the…
Þingvellir National Park (the first character in the name denotes the Icelandic unvoiced “th”, hence the frequently transliterated spelling of Thingvellir) is inscribed on the World Heritage list for cultural criteria: it is the place where the Icelandic Parliament was founded in 930 CE. The Althing (or Alþingi, if you…
The term “Golden Circle” is a marketing device. There are several natural wonders located close enough to Reykjavik that they can all be visited on a single day trip, and some bright hospitality executive came up a few decades ago with a moniker that shouted “must-do!”, and it has since…
Forty-eight hours in an unfamiliar destination is usually enough to check out the highlights, form a limited impression – basically, scratch the surface at best. My stay in Iceland was exactly that long, and it gave me roughly one cumulative day to explore the capital of Reykjavik. Which, for a…
If you look through the UK World in Pictures category on this blog, you will find quite a few “glimpses”, “impressions”, and even dedicated sets of Scottish sights and locales that caught my eye in between whisky tastings on various trips to the country. The itineraries may be structured around…
The Scotch Whisky Association lists over 70 distillery visitor centers in various corners of Scotland. Our whisky trips to the country are meant essentially as discovery vehicles for heretofore untried single malts. I’m happy to make a repeat visit here or there, but most of the target distilleries on a…
When someone who rarely takes pictures on his phone brings his trusted advanced-level camera to a place that is not exactly known for sightseeing, the obvious outcome is very limited photographic material. St-Martin is a lovely island that offers a broad range of beach and water-based activities. Plenty of amazing…
My flight back home was leaving in the afternoon, and with a few hours to kill before that, I always planned to add another tick to my World Heritage visited roster. It is a non-trivial drive from Milan to Ivrea and then back to Malpensa airport, but on a rainy…
On any given week-or-longer trip, my last full day practically never features formal targets on the itinerary. I prefer to leave that day for either catching up on a must-see that was not accessible earlier in the trip or simply for a bit of aimless wandering around a big city.…
To a certain degree, my visit to the sanctuary of Orta – the second part of my exploration of the serial Sacri Monti WH site – was coincidental with another target. Although I prioritize World Heritage properties in my itinerary, I also sprinkle in other destinations that I expect to…
From the late 15th century on through the early 18th century, Northern Italy built a number of sanctuaries as alternative places of worship in Europe to the Holy Land, which was becoming increasingly difficult for pilgrims to access owing to the rapid expansion of Islamic control over the Middle East.…
Here’s that “short days in November” conundrum again. Brescia always projected to take more than half of a day to see, and there was no reasonable way for me to fit something significant in the remaining couple of hours of daylight. All I could attempt at best was a walk…
As mentioned in the previous post about the Longobards World Heritage site, I was planning to acquaint myself with the city of Brescia in addition to my WH-chasing priorities. The Santa Giulia Museum and the archaeological site of Brixia Romana held my attention for nearly three hours combined. I wanted…