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…
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…
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…
This past weekend, we joined our good friends for a relatively low-key birthday celebration that took place at the Storm King Art Center in Orange County, New York. It was a non-trivial schlep for us to get there – nearly two hours by car – but the weather was gorgeous,…
We’ve been to the San Diego area a handful of times over the last 30 years, and yet we barely know the city and its attractions. I tried to rectify that a bit on the most recent visit last spring by setting aside time to explore Balboa Park. The huge…
We spent the majority of our California trip last March in the parts of San Diego County that are home to one of the youngest established viticultural areas in the country – the San Luis Rey AVA. We may no longer be the wine aficionados on the same scale as…
Museums are always a feature in my traveling itineraries. Art collections claim the top priority, but nearly any aspect of human history, endeavor, and achievement is bound to be of interest to me in a museum setting. When researching things to do in the north of San Diego County, I…
Wait, what!? Wasn’t the most recent announcement about the return from Greece? What does California have to do with that? Back in March, we were privileged to attend a wedding of one of our beloved cousins in the San Diego area. I don’t like traveling long distances for just one…
It is a mildly curious quirk of fate that I haven’t really been to Boston. While we were young and in the process of building our American Dream, we traveled sparingly and almost exclusively within the US. Boston was our “bad luck” destination. On two separate occasions in the 90s,…
Among the flow of news of terrible destruction suffered by Los Angeles’ neighborhoods in ongoing wildfires, I found a bit about the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, which avoided significant damage due to its state-of-the-art fire prevention systems. It prompted me to review my pictures of it from our trip…
In between my fabulous foreign adventures, I occasionally travel for business. In that rare happenstance, especially when I find myself in a place completely new to me, I try to carve out a bit of time to explore. Right before Porto, my destination for a good portion of a work…
Chicago, in my humble opinion, is the most architecturally impressive big city in the US. Walk around its central area and you will come across monumental eye-catching buildings on nearly every block. The Great Chicago Fire that destroyed much of the city center in 1871 gave a huge impetus to…
A couple of weeks ago I was on a business trip in Chicago. This being my first long-distance foray since Austin, I had to incorporate a bit of sightseeing into the itinerary. As may be easily predicted these days, I focused on the World Heritage places that I had not…
On a business trip – what a concept, no!? – a couple of weeks ago I landed in a part of these United States that I had never been to before. In the Texan capital for less than 2 days, I could carve out an hour and a half in…
Having descended from the Edge, I took a stroll along the length of New York’s High Line. The elevated park has been around for nearly a dozen years now, but I had very limited familiarity with it to-date. The walk thus progressed very neatly the theme of my second day…
On another day of my January staycation (first mentioned in the previous post), my targets in Manhattan included sights in Hudson Yards and Chelsea that I never explored before. Starting with one of the newest attractions in the City – the highest outdoor observation deck in the Western Hemisphere called…
At the end of last month, I took a week off work, for reasons none other than I would lose a perfectly useable vacation week if I haven’t done so. It was my first staycation in recorded memory, a type of holiday that has never held a lot of appeal…