I really don’t know how this works, but the UAE seems to have about a thousand major hotels. Big hotels. Name-brand hotels. They … are … everywhere. So this latest story about the UAE and hotel building? No surprise.

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It’s vaguely disconcerting to think you might be boarding an airline that will be out of existence in the near future. Because if the company is in financial peril, doesn’t it begin cutting corners on maintenance? This thought came to me in the shower the other day: How many airlines have I flown that no […]

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No, not the Uefa Champions League. You thought I was going to go there, right? Not the Asian Champions League … not anyone’s champions league. My favorite annual soccer competition is … the Europa League! And here is why:

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I am trying to figure this out. Have I always hated to fly? Or do I hate it incrementally more, year by year, day by day? Other questions I am pondering:

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We hit Barcelona like a bunch of college kids on spring break. Like Russian sailors on shore leave. Had we enough time, we all would have gotten tattoos and probably ended up in jail. (OK, it was more like “seasoned travelers … very seasoned travelers … straggle back into downtown Barcelona the night before the […]

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Our last day in Nizas, this little town in the rollings hills of the Herault. It isn’t paradise, but it’s somewhere in the vicinity. Or so it seems to a couple of visitors from the desert. The color green everywhere, The Grape (above) cultivated all around us, astonishingly good meals at unknown restaurants (like the […]

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Actually, we might have titled this the problem in Languedoc. Le Vent. The wind. This is one of those places in the world where you should never make a decision about buying (or even renting) a home until you go through a day or three of wind howling from (mostly) the west. I am reminded […]

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Nizas is unique to its residents, no doubt, but to the North American visitor, via the UAE, it has a certain charming sameness as do hundreds (thousands?) of other little towns in the Languedoc. Let’s take a walk around, starting at the village church.

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We packed up things in Barcelona after what seemed like six eventful days, rented a couple of cars, and made the three-hour trip to Languedoc, in France. The north of Spain and the south of France have much in common, linguistically, culturally, historically. But they seem very different to me. Let me count the ways.

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In my lifetime, suggesting that Barcelona could compete with Paris as 1) a place to visit and 2) a place to live, would have been ridiculous. Talking 1960, 1970 … In 2012, it no longer is a ridiculous notion. From the perspective of sitting in a lovely restored apartment in Barcelona, after another beautiful day […]

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