Porto is my new favorite European town. We took the metro from the train station and as soon as the elevator doors opened, both Tony and I stood at the top of a hill and oo’ed and aw’ed at the view. We were right on Rue de Flores, where we would be staying for the next three…
We had been told by many that Lisbon is nothing like the Algarve Coast, that it is more cultural and historic. We had also been warned by many that the hills are steep and the paths are made of cobblestone. All of this was correct. We hadn’t been on a European train in three years, so the…
September 2021 Albufeira Ahhh, Europe. It had been almost three years to the day since I had been to Europe. We arrived at the Faro, Portugal airport late, so we stopped and grabbed a bottle of Douro wine (one of my new favorites) and some croissants from an airport stand for breakfast the next day. We had a…
Curacao was our last stop on this trip. The three islands are just 40 miles apart, so we took small puddle jumper planes to move between the three islands. I can’t remember which flight it was, so I’ll tell the story here. Each flight is about 20 minutes and holds no more than 18 passengers. The staff sprays…
Bonaire might be my favorite Carribean island. It’s small – something like 12 miles across – with just one little village. It’s an island surrounded by coral reef, so there aren’t many sand beaches, but rather the picturesque beaches covered by rocks or just cliffs that fall into the blue water. Everyone seems to know everyone, in a…
February 2020: I traveled to eight new countries and took 17 flights. Six of the flights were eight hours or longer. March 2020: The coronavirus pandemic hits and I don’t leave my 1,000 square foot apartment for 77 days. ~~~ I had so gotten used to traveling. It was rare for me to be home more than two…
I read once that when you die you experience at one time all of the feelings, emotions, and experiences of all people that have walked the Earth. It’s a profound thought and something that troubles me greatly the more and more I see. ~~~ I was not at all prepared for the intensity of the…
I don’t think there has been a country that has touched me quite the way that Cambodia has. We arrived about an hour before sunset. The AirBNB we were staying in also provided a tuk tuk that picked us up from the airport. Seriously, who has been picked up from the airport in a tuk…
Amelia had visited Luang Prabang last year on her own. She raved about how beautiful of a city and country it was, and couldn’t wait for us to experience it ourselves. I had also read over the years and heard from other travelers just how beautiful it was. And it is. For years, Budapest and…
Ninh Binh is an area in Northern Vietnam full of rice fields and limestone mountains. We spent an hour and a half driving from Hanoi into Ninh Binh. Here we got into a boat and a woman, probably weighing around 90 pounds, rowed us up and down the river, through three caves (the Tam Coc). …
