When you were little, did you ever draw a picture of a castle? If you were like me, the castle in your picture was square, with a tower in each corner, crenellations along the walls and…
My most recent posts! |
Eating Europe’s Jordaan Food Tour: A review
Rows of pretty small houses and shopping streets lined with a mixture of hip and quirky stores, along with a smattering of “coffee shops” leaking the reek of marijuana out onto the sidewalk: this used to…
Menkemaborg in Uithuizen: Dressed to impress
Groningen has three nearby manor houses or “stately homes” that are open to the public and furnished to allow visitors to learn about local history. I’ve written about one of them before: Fraeylemaborg, which I only…
Boat Bike Tours: A review of “Hansa Highlights”
One of the first people I met on my recent week-long trip with Boat Bike Tours was a retired Canadian man named Peter, who told me right off the bat that this was his third tour…
Gammelstad church town UNESCO site in Sweden
Back in the 17th century, not long after the Reformation turned Sweden Protestant, a new law required church attendance, depending on one’s distance from the church. People up in the cold north of Sweden, despite living…
Things to do in Rovaniemi in the summer
What do you think of when you hear the word “Lapland”? Reindeer, cold, snow, huskies pulling dogsleds? All of that is true, of course, though in reality the dogsleds are mostly for tourists these days; locals…
ExpressVPN review, by a digital immigrant
Before you read my ExpressVPN review, you should know that I am a digital immigrant. What I mean by that is that I didn’t grow up with computers like digital natives; the only computers I knew…
10 Reasons People Get Addicted to Travel
“Travel is like love, mostly because it’s a heightened state of awareness, in which we are mindful, receptive, undimmed by familiarity and ready to be transformed. That is why the best trips, like the best love…
Hurtigruten review: A breathtaking Norway coastal cruise
I wanted to take a cruise. My husband steadfastly refused to consider a cruise, but he wanted to see Scandinavia. Our compromise: a Hurtigruten cruise up the coast of Norway. Disclosure: I received a media rate…