Q: What do you call a Roman with a cold? A: Julius Sneezer * Let’s get the obvious out of the way: it’s ironic and super-duper embarrassing for a travel blogger be afraid of flying. I AM TERRIFIED TO FLY. And yet I love to travel, so I fly all the time. My fear of […]
The view from the train through the Itria Valley, in the Puglia region of Italy, was stunning, and we had plenty of time to enjoy the scenery, as trains in South are slooooooooooooow. There were the silvery olive trees everywhere and then….what was that odd little hut with a cone on top in the middle […]
“French people are rude”. “French people are snobby”. “They hate Americans over there.” I hear this frequently, mostly from Americans that haven’t traveled much. Where does this idea come from, that roughly 65 million French people, living out their lives in their hexagon of a country, in between munching on baguettes, are beside themselves in a […]
2013 was a great year for travel giggles: A flasher climbing the House of Adam in Angers, France Go ahead, play soccer, drive and have a house. Don’t even think about playing soccer, driving or having a house. (Signs in Halberstadt, Germany). We probably felt it even more (from our hotel room in Stralsund, Germany). […]
Ambiance is overrated. There are times when sleeping in Granny’s rented spare room and being woken up by the singing of her parakeets is just the ticket. But more often than not, a cheap, generic, chain hotel experience is exactly what you need. Enter ibis budget and easyHotel. We’ve stayed at plenty of ibis […]
When my friend Greg asked me when I was going to write my first travel advice book, I told him I would call it “Shivering Through Europe”. I was only half joking. Since the cheap time to travel is winter, HOB and I have shivered our way through many a lovely European town. What makes […]
After several hours of gaping in awe at the Apocalypse Tapestry in Angers, France, I kept thinking “Why isn’t this masterpiece world famous?” Well, perhaps it is famous in France, but in the states you’d need to be a big medieval art nerd to have heard about it. The most likely reason is it’s a difficult […]
I suck at history unless there’s a great work of art involved. So, despite a general ignorance of French and British history, I can tell you all about the Battle of Hastings in the year 1066. Well, I can tell you the perspective as represented in the Bayeux tapestry: one of the best works of […]
Nothing engages a train car full of French people than when an old lady tells two Americans that their country’s cheese sucks. On our way to Tours, France, an elderly woman took up conversation with HOB, and in finding that we are American, loudly and in great detail denounced our country’s cheese, much to the […]
By now you know I have a total ladybone for Romanesque art, most especially Romanesque sculpture. The column capitals in the Église Saint-Pierre in Chauvigny, France, have been on my must see list for a long time, and they certainly did not disappoint. The good stuff is in the 12 century choir, which was “restored” […]
Picnic at the Cathedral 