In my post about Arolithos “Traditional Cretan Village”, I described how I reserved my hotel room through Hotwire, and how Hotwire is a bit of a gamble. (Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase through one of these links, I will receive a small commission. This will not affect your price.)…
Or: Both of these statements are true. The fact is that most of us only have limited time when we travel, and, if you’re like me, you want to see as much as possible in that limited time. Open-air museums help us cut corners by letting us see buildings from a wide area assembled in…
Exploring the Nordic Museum in Stockholm reminded me of some of the small-town museums I’ve visited before. Often a seemingly random collection of objects donated by residents or local companies, they offer insight into the area’s culture and history. I enjoy them because their “smallness” is often quite amusing. The Nordic Museum struck me as…
Gripsholm Castle and the towns of Mariefred and Strangnas are lovely places to visit: small-town charm deceptively close to Stockholm.
As part of a blogger familiarization tour in July, I visited a manor house called Sparreholms Slott, in the region called Sörmland, south of Stockholm, Sweden. Dating to the mid-1700s and renovated in the 1820s and again in the 1890s, it looks, inside as well as out, like a slice out of Downton Abbey’s world….
The old center of Stockholm, on the island of Gamla Stan, swarms with tourists—and probably a few locals too—in the months of July and August. Among the sights they visit is a medieval-era church called Storkyrkan. What few seem to know is that Storkyrkan also offers guided tours twice a day up its clock tower,…
In July, I was fortunate to participate in a short blogger trip on the theme of “Stockholm archipelago – close yet a world away.” We stayed on a relatively unknown island called Nässlingen, but also visited two fortresses to learn a bit about Swedish military history. Disclosure: I took part in this military history tour…
Ever notice how people love to hear about failed projects? I call it “epic fail tourism.” The most obvious example is the Titanic, about which there are numerous museums around the world (Belfast, Ireland, where the Titanic was built; Branson, Missouri; Pigeon Forge, Tennessee; Orlando, Florida; Southampton, England, where many victims were from; and many…
What if you could buy your own island? You’re probably picturing a palm-tree-lined beach on a tropical island, right? That’s not what Johan Pedersén wanted. Instead, he bought Nässlingen, one of the 30,000 islands in the Stockholm archipelago in Sweden. I was fortunate enough to be able to visit Nässlingen recently with a group of…
Things I like about Sweden, written on my first trip there, but they still apply!
But is it safe? or… There have been incidents lately. Please be careful! or… Are you sure you want to go there now? These are the sorts of comments I’ve received each time I’ve gone to Israel. The fact is that “incidents” do sometimes happen in Israel. Lately, it’s been a few stabbings on the…
I’ve never seen a hotel quite like Arolithos Traditional Cretan Village before. I only stayed there because I took the gamble that Hotwire offers, and I thought that I’d lost the gamble. I’m still not sure one way or the other. Disclosure: If you click and book a room using a link in this article,…
The town of Rethymnon on the north coast of Crete is a popular destination for visitors who want to venture away from their all-inclusive resorts for a bit of local color. The narrow streets of its old center wind between rows of narrow houses with balconies, often overflowing with flowers. Shops sell everything from made-in-China…
Just a week or so after visiting the Ter Apel cloister, a place of peace and contemplation, I arrived at The Holy Monastery of Arkadi in Crete, a similarly contemplative religious place. Arkadi is Eastern Orthodox, while Ter Apel was Catholic and then Protestant, yet it looked to me as if the monks in both places…
Knossos, the much-visited ruins of a Minoan palace on the Greek island of Crete, is not a UNESCO World Heritage site. However, it is on UNESCO’s tentative list, along with the four other Minoan palace ruins in Crete. Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you click on one of the links and make a…
The village of Ter Apel has been in the news a lot lately. A huge refugee center there is the first home for hundreds of Syrians, Eritreans, Afghans and others seeking safety and a new life in the Netherlands. Ter Apel’s claim to fame, though, if you can call it famous, is a medieval cloister…
Disclosure: The following is a sponsored post; I received payment for writing it and including a link. All opinions, however, are my own! My 17-year-old son, Robert, is not a traveler. That’s not to say that he hasn’t traveled, however; we’ve dragged him along with us on vacations all his life. Rather, he just isn’t…
Frequent travelers often express a certain disdain for places that are “touristy,” meaning crowded with tourists: San Marco’s square in Venice, for example, or the Tower of London, or the Forbidden City in Beijing. Many of us avoid such places, preferring the more off-the-beaten-track destinations. Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. If you click on…
When you think of the Netherlands and gardens and flowers, what comes immediately to mind? I assume your answer is “tulips.” Tulips are cultivated here in huge quantity and they or the bulbs are exported all over the world. Keukenhof and Giethoorn One of the biggest attractions for tourists in the Netherlands is Keukenhof, a tulip…
If you find yourself with some time to kill at Amsterdam Central train station, there’s plenty to do right nearby. Here are some suggestions.
The Sex Museum Amsterdam is much more about pornography than sex, containing a mix of interesting objects and cheesy mannequins.
Disclosure: The following is a sponsored post in that I received a free SIM card with credit from Tellink in return for reviewing it. All opinions are, as always, my own. Those of us who travel frequently, and especially those of us who travel for work or who blog about travel, often struggle with telephone…
After booking your flight and picking the perfect London hotel, the next item on the list is figuring out where and what to eat in this British metropolis.
When I first arrived in the Netherlands back in 1997, one of the first bits of sightseeing I did, besides exploring my new hometown of Groningen itself, was to go on a driving tour of village churches in Groningen province. The idea came from my favorite guidebook: the Michelin green guide to the Netherlands. The…
A Grimm Fairy Tale Once upon a time, a rooster, a dog, a donkey and a cat, realizing they’d outlived their usefulness and under threat of being eaten or killed, set out toward Bremen. Their plan was to make a living as musicians: the Town Musicians of Bremen. On the way, they passed a cottage…
My husband and I recently spent a weekend in Bremen, which is about a two-hour trip from home. We didn’t choose Bremen because of anything in particular except that we wanted a weekend away, and we also felt we needed to be close enough to get home quickly if anything went wrong with the three…
If you visit the center of the German city of Bremen, you can’t possibly miss seeing St Petri Dom, the huge church whose massive, chunky twin spires dominate the central squares. St Petri Dom doesn’t have the beauty or grace of, for example, Notre Dame in Paris. As a matter of fact, my first comment…
While I didn’t do any shopping in Dubai, I did manage a quick walk around the Bastakiya District: also known as Old Dubai. Dubai was originally a small port that made its living from pearl diving, fishing and trade, especially with Iran. Besides the nomadic Bedouins, who lived in tents, the populations who settled here…
Shopping is A. Big. Deal. in Dubai. Whenever I asked people who live there what I should see and do, the answer usually included shopping. (Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. That means that if you click on the link and buy tickets, I will get a small commission.) I am very much NOT a…
On my recent visit to Dubai on Emirates Airline, I was pleased to discover that I’d be flying on a plane I’d only seen from a distance before: the enormous Airbus A380. The A380 The A380 is a behemoth of a plane. Like Boeing’s 747, it just doesn’t look like it should be able to…
A couple of times a week, I commute to my part-time job in Leeuwarden, in Friesland province. Sometimes I drive, but as much as possible, I like to take the train. I start by bicycling to the train station in the center of Groningen, parking the bike and boarding the train. The train trip takes about 35…
About a year ago I wrote a post about Groningen, the small city where I live. I mapped out a route that started at the train station and wound its way through the city, ending at the landmark Martinitoren. The Martinitoren Today, for the first time in several years, I climbed the Martinitoren, and it…
