Waiting in Moscow for a few days before beginning a rail trip across Siberia, we were pleasantly surprised to see the old city in such fine shape. We had not been here for 25 years…
Yekaterinburg began in 1723 with a dam made of Ural larch, one never replaced till this day. It was a planned city, named in honor of Queen Catherine I, and organized as a factory town…
In brief: The Trans-Siberian railway offers little drama, but takes you into a special world. Our Trans-siberian cabin Our home for four days and nights, crossing Russia from Moscow into snowy Siberia, was a very…
Except for one day during our visit in Spring 2018, Granada was as sodden and chilly as the rest of western Europe. Yet, on this first trip together to the south of Spain, we were…
In brief: We were thoroughly smitten with Portugal and its two major cities on our first visit ever. Here is what we saw and what we observed. How could we have missed out on Portugal…
We took a recommendation and went to the Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, a private collection by an developer of oil fields in Iraq early in the 20th century. Chinese screen, Gulbenkian Assyrian panel, Gulbenkian As befits…
Kosovo is newly emerging as a country, the latest from the former Yugoslavia to be independent - barely so with the ongoing help of NATO and the US since the 1990s. There’s a lot of…
Mountains are in the name of the country, as Crna Gora, or black mountain, from the Venetian title, monte negro. They dominate the landscape, from the very edge of the sea to the innumerable limestone…
In our post about Albanian history (click here to read), we noted all the cross-currents of culture affecting the country – from its Illyrian origins, through Greek and Roman control, the influence of Byzantine and…
So many people we meet, interested in going to Albania, are both curious and somewhat fearful about it. They imagine a third world country or extreme deprivation or some such horror because of Albania’s 40…