I’m not sure who was more gorgeous: the people or the horses. Weirdly, neither species was sweating, except for us, two Midwesterners broiling in the April Seville sun. The Seville April Fair or Feria de abril de Sevilla for all you non-gringos, is a yearly six day fair of Andalusian culture in Seville, Spain. […]
I had a jones for Italian street food on my lunch break. Normally, I’m pretty disciplined about eating only what I pack from home, but damn, this was what crack addiction must feel like. I NEEDED ARANCINI. There’s a place by my job called L’Appetito that I walked past for years but never eaten in […]
One of the best ways to be a great traveler is to practice–like anything else, the more you do it, the better you get. Yeah, I know, you don’t have a trust fund or infinite amounts of vacation time, so you can’t just fly over to Europe whenever you feel like it. But you can […]
I had it all planned: we were in route from Florence to Urbino , and we would jump off the train for a few hours in Rimini to visit Alberti’s Tempio Malatestiano. HOB and I were in the midst of our self-designed Ideal City trip across Italy. Were studying the work of five Renaissance architects/urban planners: Brunelleschi, Bramante, Alberti, Michelangelo and […]
My first time was in a rather upmarket restaurant in Paris. I asked for the bathroom and when shown the way I entered what surely was the wrong room, since it was only a porcelain hole in the ground. I ran out, looked at the sign on the door, went back in, and to my […]
It was snowing and we were lost in Halberstadt, Germany looking for a John Cage performance. There were signs: “The longest piece of music in the world-639 years!” but we still had to stop passersby and ask in terrible German “Wo ist John Cage?”. We followed a well-intentioned woman and two toddlers several blocks in […]
I get asked this a lot. I mean, I’ve gotten emails from co-workers I’ve never had a single conversation with that are like, “Hey, someone told me you can get me a cheap flight.” Sometimes it’s true. I don’t want to brag, but…. oh heck, I do want to brag. For instance: a friend just […]
We arrived by school bus. This was the only form of public transportation available, a once- a-week bus into Conques in Southwest France, population 281. A five minute walk from the bus stop, through the tiny but perfectly preserved village to our half-timber hotel room next to the Abbey-Church of Saint-Foy. The abbey has been a […]
Picnic at the Cathedral 