The Mountains of Hash: and Other Matters of Colonial Gossip
Morocco is not all narrow souks and sleepless nights. It is also a country of unique natural beauty. With…
Category: Travel Dispatches
The Souk’s Tangled Webs Weave Winding Lanes and Lies
Amid the souks of Morocco, and for all the Islamic world for that matter, one’s normal lie-dar is rarely…
Morocco: Where Dreams Lie Thicker than the Leaves
To Morocco. At last I have arrived in the country of Choukri; the country of Bowles; that most famous…
Andalusian Adventures
The beauty of southern Spain is comprised of many things which I love dearly. Chief among these delights were…
Oh, It’s Just Another Walled Medieval City on a Hill
In Umbria, a place of extraordinary beauty lies, as things so often do in Italy, at the top of…
Sitting on the Buckle of Italy
We all know how much Italy looks like a boot. This August I traveled right across where the laces…
Move Over New Zealand Tuscany is the Shire
“In his heart I think Frodo is still in love with the Shire. The woods, the fields, distant rivers,”…
Musings on the Slavosphere
Ukraine is one of those countries that, like so many parts of Europe, once belonged to one people, and…
Wide and Worthy Kiev (or Kyiv as the Ukraine Language calls it)
Kyiv! Oh wide and worthy city, forgive me for almost passing you by. As brilliant as any capital city…
Touring the Carpathians — an Almost Perfect Forest I Thought
As I mentioned before and will quickly reiterate again, the Carpathian Mountains is the third longest mountain chain in…
Here I Am (Ukraine) Stuck in the Middle With You
Some countries are more eager to see COVID-19 recede into history than others. On the back of immense frustration…
There is an Opportunity this Spring to Go Back in Time
I knew when the possible implications of the rapidly spreading coronavirus back in February became clear, that I didn’t…
Another Lake, Another Great Day in Lombardia
While often characterized as both the industrial and financial engine block of the Italian peninsula, there is great natural…
Hunting for Porcini Mushrooms in the Mountains of Piedmont
On a gloomy, cloudy morning in the Italian region of Piemonte, I climbed into a car with my uncle…
In Fair Verona Where We Set Our Scene
I played, albeit only for a short time during preparations, Romeo when I was a young man. I would…
Marriage in a Foreign Land
Marriage in a foreign country can be really difficult because all of a sudden you have two governments involved…
Napoli, Pozzuoli, and the Roman Empire
It was on August the 4th that my future fiance and I traveled from our home in Lombardia to…
Beautiful Northern Italy – the Other Land of 1,000 Lakes.
Far from the protest and riot – ridden streets of Minneapolis, Minnesota another land famous for its lakes beckoned…
Buona Pasqua – Spending Another Holiday Like a Character in a Jane Austen Book
Italy is where I have spent yet another major holiday, passing as I did Christmas and New Years in…
3 Months in Italy and How Being a Digital Nomad Sometimes Requires Settling Down
I don’t think anyone needs anymore details about COVID-19. I want to take this blog post to start talking…