Blue Lagoon from a distance
Braving the cold for some fishing on St. Petersburg's River Neva.
Ukraine: what looks to be an ambulance van left over from World War II.
Heroes Square
Europe
Go Gallic in Trier
Germany's oldest city is chock-full of ancient history.
Germany’s most ancient city is Trier, its name derived from the Roman name Augusta Trevororum under Caesar Augustus. It was known as the “Second Rome” before Constantinople. While the Romans had been in neighboring Gaul ...
Olympos, Turkey – working for it
Getting to Olympos, Turkey, our final destination, was turning out to be a real doozy. This sleeping spread-eagle business on the cold green floor of the Kharkiv, Ukraine, airport, catching a 3 a.m. flight with ...
Wagner's Lucerne
This idyllic Swiss city celebrates the composer's 200th birthday.
May 22 is the bicentennial of the birth of German composer Richard Wagner. Although born 1813 in Leipzig, the operatic genius has a strong connection to Switzerland. Wagner – then Royal Saxon Court Conductor – ...
Il Dolce Far Niente: Rome to Firenze
Italy is best explored at a leisurely pace.
"Il dolce far niente": The sweetness of doing nothing. Pleasant leisure. The joy of relaxation. Rome was a mighty city; an ominous feeling swept through the maze of narrow cobblestone streets and left me with ...
Warsaw revived, Poland renewed
Varsav (Warsaw) is a large, booming city full of treasures. The Royal Łazienki Park offers palaces, gardens, lakes and forests in a less intimidating, family-friendlier format than Versailles. Animals in the park include peacocks, squirrels, ...
Antwerp: spiritual, corporeal, coarse and refined
Definitive high-meets-low Belgian culture.
I got off the train to Antwerp, Belgium, at Central Station, named by Newsweek as the fourth most beautiful train station in the world, just around the crack of dawn. The town square was lifeless, ...
Skeletons in the armoire: Paris catacombs
Under the city's streets is a vast, ancient network of tunnels.
The air was cool and exuded a musty, almost earthy odor. The passageway with squat ceilings no more than six feet high was lit by small dim lights, each bright enough to see only a ...
Secrets of Ghent
Most of us in the U.S. remember the name “Ghent” from the Treaty of Ghent that finally ended the War of 1812 with the British. At the time, communication was slow, and Gen. Andrew Jackson ...
Spain's Costa Brava awaits
The road was treacherous. It was mid-Feburary. The blustery weather showed no signs of mercy. Driving along the northeastern coast of Spain from France, I felt like I was living some kind of nocturnal Spanish ...
Carl Durant is heading back to Belgium
Personal, political, economical
Belgian singer-songwriter Carl Durant, a mainstay of the local circuit for the past several years, is heading home. Durant arrived with his wife in San Diego during 2002 to work at an early-stages startup company ...
Iceland's Blue Lagoon
One of the strangest tourist traps in the world has to be the Blue Lagoon in Iceland, located 50 kilometers from Reykjavik en route to the airport. At a latitude equivalent to Siberia and Alaska ...
Outside Central London
Consider these 3 stops for your next UK itinerary.
Central London has so much to offer, most travelers never make it beyond the innermost neighborhoods. Seeing the main sights – like Big Ben, Buckingham Palace and the Tower of London – can easily fill ...
Perusing Poland
Gdańsk, Wrocław and more hard-to-pronounce Old World treasures.
A scenic train ride landed us in Gdańsk, at the edge of the Baltic Sea. Our apartment is 60M2. It's basically a two-bedroom apartment with a large living room that includes a third-floor balcony. I ...
Mesmerizing Mycenae
Window into the ancient world.
About 1.5 hours outside Athens, Mycenae is one of the essential stops for any visitor to Greece with an interest in ancient history. Arriving here, you're awed not just by the site and the ruins, ...
Jaunt up to Northern Ireland
Check off the UK province's must-sees, an easy drive from Dublin.
Ever since the peace accords of 1997, Northern Ireland has enjoyed a bit of a renaissance. Freed from 25 years of conflict, referred to locally as “The Troubles,” Northern Ireland has rebuilt its economy – ...
Featured Photo
France
The music-filled cobblestone streets of Avignon.
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