One of those random things that happen when traveling: An unpredictable intersection of simpatico people. In this case, nine Americans meeting at a mojito bar early in the evening in the Old City of a small Spanish seaside town in the autonomous region of Valencia. When the whole of the city of Altea may not, […]

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Seems like the older a town is, the more likely it is to have been founded on a hill. Such is the case for Altea, a city of 25,000 between Valencia and Alicante on Spain’s Costa Blanca. People have been living here for 2,000 years or more, and eventually they gravitated to the hill near […]

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How many consecutive days of eating plates of tapas (Spanish for snack) for dinner would a person need before he or she became tired of it? A week of it? A month of it? Ten years of it? We have had tapas on consecutive nights here in the Valencia region of Spain, buying seven or […]

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So, some time off, and we wanted to go to Europe and be somewhere with a bit of light and sun, and here we are on the coast of Spain. It may not be the smartest choice, this time of year, given that the UAE finally is cooling off. But everyone in Abu Dhabi knows […]

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This has been something of a flashback for me. The first Abu Dhabi Tour … the first Redlands Bicycle Classic. What do they have in common? Two-wheel bikes, whippet lean men, strange terminology and the same sports editor covering each debut, albeit 30 years apart. Abu Dhabi being Abu Dhabi, it started its bike race […]

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It is surprising how many people living in the UAE are eager to visit Las Vegas. No need to make that 20-hour trip. All the locals need do is check in to Atlantis The Palm in Dubai, and they can enjoy the whole of the mainstream Las Vegas experience — aside from the gambling, that […]

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For most of my life, airline food was mocked and derided. “Cold” … “rubbery” … “tasteless” … “inedible”. We ate airline food because it came with the ride. It was distributed, free. No, really. (And I realize some Millennials have never seen anything more tasty than peanuts given away/sold. Or, worse, a bag of mini-pretzels.) […]

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A lesson on how bad the drought has been in the “Golden (tilting towards brown) State”. It rained here today, and Californians were more joyful, verging on giddy, in reacting to it than are Emiratis, for whom rain is even more rare. We were on Fletcher Avenue, behind Griffith Park in Los Angeles, when we […]

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It is unusual to see private homes built right on the sand of the Pacific Ocean, in California. As is the one in which we are staying. It is even more unusual to sit inside that home and watch hundreds of recreational vehicles roll past on their way to the Ocean Dunes State Vehicular Recreation […]

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Monday, the scorched and dry hills. Today, the dramatic cliffs and crashing surf of Montana de Oro State Park. The latter is pretty much immune to the California drought — and it made for a very fine Central Coast hike.

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