It was practically a spur-of-the-moment decision for us. Rick and I always plan months ahead for a trip. But we were only four weeks out this time when we decided to make a pond crossing for an extra-long late-May weekend trip to Paris to celebrate our twentieth anniversary together. We
When war broke out October 7, 2023 between Israel and Hamas, the event truncated our plans to return to Tel Aviv after an exciting four-day adventure to Jordan. The outbreak shook our “travel mojo,” and we needed to leave the region as soon as possible. Our travel company, London-based Out
Just over two years later Rick and I joined Eva and Suresh, our Indian travel pals, for a month in their home country, including a nine-day visit in the middle of the journey to the island country of Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon), located off the southern tip of the subcontinent
In October, we planned a four-night stay in the city of Jerusalem, capital of Israel and a religious center of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. The stay included a side trip to the West Bank’s Bethlehem and Jericho. Little did we know our trip would be upended by the unimaginable.
When we pack our bags and hit the trail, Rick and I enjoy traveling by ourselves, or sometimes with longtime travel buddies Eva and Suresh. A lot of preparation goes into a travel adventure long before we board the plane. On trips to destinations that are culturally more familiar, like
On our two-week trip to Spain, four of us took high-speed trains to three outstanding destinations that are well worth your visit. We made a day trip to Segovia; the other two cities took us south into Moorish Andalucía––Córdoba for two nights and Seville for three nights. Each place rewarded
Bucovina is the home of eight fifteenth and sixteenth century UNESCO World Heritage Painted Monasteries, collectively considered one of the world’s great Byzantine art treasures. Richly colored graphic scenes of dramatic Biblical events and the holy men, angels, and demons who oversaw them decorate both their interior and exterior walls
El Peñol, a 656-foot granite rock, juts out of the earth. No ordinary rock, El Peñol, a Colombian National Monument, attracts thousands of people daily, many who climb the 708 steps for spectacular views of the region. On its top, vendors sell handicrafts, trinkets, and tee-shirts. One pays for the
Originally a farming town, Guatapé’s future changed forever with the construction of a hydroelectric dam in the 1970s that catapulted the town’s importance as the chief electric production center in the country. The dam created an endless network of interconnecting lakes, with hotels, exclusive homes, marinas and other recreational facilities.
I crane my neck to catch an opening through bobbing heads peering over the railing. I’m on a broad concrete ramp that snakes up the steep hillside community of San Javier, an impoverished jumble of brick houses known locally as Comuna 13, located in the west side of Medellín, Colombia’s