That was the subject line on an email my daughter sent me 14 years ago. “Il Palio is Madness!” Her brief account of the horse race run inside the medieval Piazza del Campo of Siena, which she witnessed while studying in the hilltop Tuscan city in the summer of 2000 … and it put in […]

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It had to happen. In addition to the various and sundry tours of Florence, we have a semi-new option: The Dan Brown Inferno Tour. Not to be confused with Dante’s Inferno. Though in 2014, especially in English, Dan Brown’s “Inferno” might be better known than that other guy’s “Inferno”. The “other guy” being Dante Alighieri, […]

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Let’s be honest. We often don’t know what we’re looking at. The Grand Canyon. The Eiffel Tower. The treasures of Florence. A guide can enhance our understanding and appreciation of what our eyes take in. A good guide can make us see things in an entirely new way. Our group of six spent most of […]

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Modern travel is fairly astounding. When it works, of course, and it generally does.  Far more than it did in the past. Wake up in Abu Dhabi, and two cab rides, one six-hour flight and an 80-minute train ride later … you can be checking into your friend’s hotel in Florence, Italy, in plenty of […]

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And so the Baltic cruise ends where it started … in cosmopolitan, friendly Amsterdam. The ship docked early, just after 6 a.m., because Celebrity had to offload 2,100 passengers … clean up a bit … and then load another 2,100 to head back out the same day at 4 p.m. Those who appreciate logistics probably […]

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Cruising is not for everyone. If mobs of senior citizens set your nerves on edge … stay away. If proximity with uninformed opinion annoys you … don’t come. If the notion of a bare brush with exotic cities and people leaves you frustrated … don’t bother. If a disconnect from the greater wired world leaves […]

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Four days, three Baltic capitals, and we were left to mull, again, the apparent goal for which Finland, Sweden and Denmark (and presumably Norway) are striving — a kinder, gentler social order. While riding the bus around Copenhagen we again heard (for the third time in four days) about the cradle-to-grave benefits guaranteed to citizens. […]

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I am convinced a potential bestseller is waiting to be written. “Life Below Decks: The Secret Lives of Cruise Ship Staff”. In which a veteran employee of the cruise ship industry, preferably someone with a job that puts them in daily contact with passengers, dishes dirt on the cruisers as well as fellow crew and […]

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It seems as if humans are never quite satisfied with their portion of sun. At this moment, in Abu Dhabi and the UAE, the consensus certainly is that entirely too much of ol’ Sol is irradiating the parched landscape. While in Stockholm, which is closer to the North Pole than it is to Abu Dhabi, […]

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What a little treasure, is Helsinki. Granted, we can’t speak of much personal experience. The Celebrity Constellation’s time at port, in Finland’s capital, was a total of nine hours, beginning at 8 a.m. But our brief time ashore yielded a particularly positive impression of Helsinki. Personally warm. Visually pleasing. Tidy. Sedate. Orderly. Helsinki is attractive […]

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