Driving along the banks of river Dordogne, it is impossible to miss Château de Beynac. From its perch atop one of the highest hills in the area it presides over the stretch known as “the valley of the five castles”. Here is the main road approach view. And a longer…
We started our exploration of Dordogne with one of the larger destinations in the area, Sarlat-la-Canéda, or simply Sarlat. Its charming medieval core is a maze of honey-colored buildings, narrow streets and passages, and hidden squares. The most photogenic views, as is frequently the case, are found on the few…
Those who follow my better half on Facebook are well aware that we have just spent over a week in France. Those who don’t know that now as well. We explored for the first time the department of Dordogne and then re-acquainted ourselves a bit with Paris. Walked over 20K…
Vienna is the grandest of the European capitals, offering so much exterior visual gratification that you may be wholly forgiven for never stepping inside any of its edifices, palaces, or museums. In fact, I feel that you can do Vienna justice with only a few major-time-investment stops. Conversely, if you…
For me, Vernazza is the most beautiful of the five villages that comprise the incomparable Cinque Terre. It could be because Vernazza was our base when we explored the coast and, subsequently, we got acquainted with it to a larger degree than with any of the other villages. Or it…
This is one of my favorite pictures from the simpler times when I traveled with a pocket-size point-and-shoot camera. The setting is the banks of the river Limmat near the mouth of Lake Zurich, with the twin towers of Grossmünster providing a recognizable point of reference. Zurich is a nice enough…
I have come to the end of my photo-notes from the recent trip to Scotland. For those interested, a cross-section of the best photos is now also available in my Flickr photostream.
While criss-crossing parts of Scotland in search of not yet tasted whisky, we occasionally stopped to admire the surroundings. Here is a collection of glimpses. The first shot can be filed in “in the middle of nowhere” category, but I can very definitively place it in the hamlet of Carbeth,…
The Forth Bridge, which had the longest spans of any railway bridge when it opened in 1890, and was the earliest great multispan cantilever bridge, was inscribed on the World Heritage list a few months after my previous visit to Scotland. I must have glimpsed it from a distance while…
A day set aside for exploring Edinburgh offered me a chance to see sights that I did not manage to see three years ago, and just to walk around town. On-and-off wet snowfall conspired to make the walk challenging, but I can nonetheless share a few highlights captured in between…
Our trip to Scotland was structured around whisky, but we did not completely neglect the country’s history and culture. Among our non-drinking stops was the majestic Stirling Castle. The storied castle was a main royal center at various points in history, and nowadays offers plethora of educational exhibits on the…
If you start with a middling photographer who is still learning the finer aspects of a new camera, deliberately mix it with scotch, and garnish that with intermittent cold rain, your concoction will not be a tremendous photographic portfolio. I duly tried my hand in capturing the sights of the…
Let us take a few more glimpses of various distilleries visited on the recent trip to Scotland. First, let’s clarify my frequently used “Friends of the Malts” moniker. If you visit any of the 12 distilleries owned by Diageo, you can sign up for being a “friend” of their entire…
Just as I did three years ago, I will start retrospective of the recent Scottish trip with the brief run-through of visited distilleries. We stopped by 15 distilleries over the course of 6 days, in Highlands, in Lowlands, and on Islay. Only one was a repeat visit to a distillery…
Another best-buddies whisky discovery trip is in the annals of history. When we did our first one, we came back with a clear feeling that we wanted to reprise the experience. It took us 3 years to align our schedules for the second time, but we did it. This time…
This past Sunday was a brilliant after-snow day begging for an outdoor activity. In my case, it meant finding a picturesque locale to test out a new camera that I had recently acquired. The historic town of Cranbury – which I inexplicably have never visited before even though my house…
I do not recall ever being too invested in model assembly kits. Surely in my childhood I received a fair share of constructor set gifts, and seem to vaguely remember assembling a model navy cruiser when I was in elementary school. But nothing that I can point to in the…
Year 2017 continued the slowing trajectory established by the preceding year in terms of my travels. I again visited only 4 foreign countries (Ireland, United Kingdom, Spain, France), two of those on intraday trips. Going by the methodology of the Travelers’ Century Club, which counts geographically segregated parts of a…
The fall of 2017 has been generous on gorgeous weekends and a few weeks ago we spent one such afternoon in the pretty town of Red Bank, less than half an hour away from our home. This was not our first visit to town but it was the first where…
I have reached the end of my photostream from the recent Costa Brava (and Barcelona, and French Occitanie) trip. All of the pictures worthy of public display can be found on Flickr in my albums: Villefranche-de-Conflent Albi Barcelona Catalonia and Costa Brava The final picture is similar to the one…