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…
The resort town of L’Escala has never featured on our Costa Brava itineraries despite being among the closest towns to our customary base in L’Estartit. Its main claim to sightseeing relevance is in nearby Greco-Roman ruins, which is the type of attraction that rarely receives priority when I travel with…
This past summer I finally managed to visit the remaining point of the Catalonia Dalí triangle that was mentioned at the start of this post. In Portlligat the House-Museum of Salvador Dalí offers a delightful look at the place the painter called home for over 50 years. Portlligat is a…
I should be running out of superlatives after describing places like Rupit, Camprodon, or Beget. However, if I were to identify my most favorite village among the ones that I saw for the very first time on the recent Costa Brava trip, it would be Cadaqués. Located on Cap de…
Our “free time” in Barcelona the last couple of years has been structured around major highlights, ostensibly because one or another member of our party had not been to Barcelona since early childhood, if at all. In truth, when I am back in a city that I know really well…
We lately allow only a single day in Barcelona for our stays at Costa Brava – the distance between our base and the city makes more frequent visits a bit impractical. Last year, if you recall, we specifically targeted touring Palau de la Musica Catalana, and I also managed to…
I did not keep the promise I had made at the end of my last Girona photo-essay. A full-day exploration of the city’s various points of interest did not make the cut in the final plans of our recent Costa Brava stay. A dinner and a late afternoon stroll was…
With the largest residential marina in Europe, Empuriabrava is a magnet for people who love amphibious living. The lion’s share of houses back out on one of dozens of canals, and every household here owns at least one boat. The canal network was planned and built in 1960’s-70’s. Its main…
I used the word tiny to describe both Villefranche-de-Conflent and Rupit recently, but compared to Beget either of those can be called a metropolis. Beget is the tiniest of tiny. The postal stop at the edge of the village has 27 mailboxes, which may or may not be the basis…
There are places in the world that are effortlessly picture-perfect. Camprodon, in the Pyrenees an hour and a half away from Costa Brava, is one of those places. The view of its iconic bridge and the houses flanking river Ter is a ready-made postcard. The settlement of this site dates…
Canal du Midi is a feat of civil engineering, all the more remarkable for the fact that it predates the Industrial Revolution. It is hundreds of kilometers in length (240 if you consider the canal proper, or closer to 400 if you add the connecting Canal de Garonne to arrive…
One of the twelve apostles and the patron saint of Spaniards, Saint James the Great lends his name to three separate entries on the World Heritage list. One of them is the town of Santiago de Compostela, which grew around a shrine to St James (Santiago in Spanish). Two others…
Albi, in the southern France region of Occitanie, is hailed on the World Heritage list as a complete ensemble of urban development dating from the Middle Ages. The height of town’s prosperity and importance falls on the later part of the 13th century, when a powerful local bishop built Palais…
Tiny Rupit regularly features on selections of the most beautiful villages in Catalonia. The mountain village straddles a small gorge, with a hanging bridge connecting its two banks. The old part of Rupit is built on the ridge over the river and looks as if floating in the air from…
The tiny walled town of Villefranche-de-Conflent dates from the 11th century and, owing to its strategic position in the Catalan region of Conflent, changed hands between France and Spain a number of times in its long history. In the second half of the 17th century, French Marshal Sébastien Le Prestre…