Writing this blog on the return flight from Spain to the US, my challenge in writing is to choose which aspects of the trip to highlight. There are more stories than I have the time or space to relate at length. Thus, my brief listing of some interesting facts about Portugal: 1. Portuguese is the[…]
Europe
Christmas Eve in Portugal Sometimes small personal interactions with local residents can color a whole experience of a visit to a foreign country. This happened to me today. My friend Bill and I took the morning excursion from the Viking River Cruise boat to a town in the Douro Valley called Lamego. It’s an[…]
Once again as I arrive in Europe, I’m overwhelmed with the long rich awareness of history and the rich culture. This is the first time I’ve visited Portugal. Susan and I are traveling with our friends and regular travel companions, Bill and Linn, from Georgia. This Viking River Cruise will also take us into Spain[…]
I’ve visited Stockholm, Sweden, over a dozen times during the last forty years, for weeks or months at a time, I’m once again reminded of why it is one of my favorite cities in the world, and indeed, why I love Sweden in general. My beloved home country often seems less democratic and dysfunctional by[…]
How much of Istanbul can one see in a short two-day visit? Actually, quite a bit, when logging over 20,000 steps/day on my FitBit. When we first planned our Viking River Cruise, I told our friends Bill and Linn, who were traveling with us, that we would be so close to Istanbul while visiting the[…]
Our recent Viking River Cruise was a quick visit to five countries in six days, including Bulgaria, Serbia, and Croatia, as well as the embarkation and disembarkation cities, Bucharest, Romania, and Budapest, Hungary. In each port, we would load onto buses and be shown the city or the countryside. Such a compressed trip can turn[…]
In this post, based on what I learned during our Viking River Cruise from Bucharest to Budapest, I will attempt something very difficult: to explain the history of the Balkan countries in a short essay. This journey up the Danube River has been an amazing history lesson. I’ve learned that the Balkan situation is even[…]
When I took Latin in high school, I learned the acronym FRIPS for the five Romance languages, derived from Latin: French, Romanian, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish. So here we are in Romania, and I can recognize half the written words. I didn’t know much about Romania before. In my five days here, I have learned[…]