We took one of those Eyewitness Travel top 10 books on our trip to Barcelona. It has inspired me to come up with a list of my own, in answer to this question: Why do I love Barcelona? #1 It looks like home. Well, in parts, anyway. The marina with the boats tied to the docks, and down by the port where the cruise ships come in, and the cargo ships offload--in all that, I see Long Beach. Walking along the waterfront, with the wooden walkway, towards the aquarium, with the theater and the restaurants, and the palm trees lining [View Full Entry]

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I didn't particularly want to go to Paris this fall, on this trip. I've been to Paris, seen it in fall and in summer and I was craving new locales, countries, venues. But when Dean and I asked the kids what they might want to do while in Europe, the only consistent answers we got were "climb the Eiffel Tower" and "see the Mona Lisa," and so to Paris we went. Travel being travel, our plane was delayed, we got in to Paris in the dark, our cell phone wouldn't work the kids were cranky and we didn't know if [View Full Entry]

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We planned a visit to Lake Como around a bike race. For those who know my husband and youngest son, this makes perfect sense. The Giro di Lombardia, as this race is called, is the last race of the season for pro cyclists. For me, Ari and my friend Jackie, we were happily along for the ride to see Como and relax in the lakeside town of Bellagio, which is often referred to as "the prettiest town in Europe." I know there is plenty of competition for that title, but I do believe Bellagio is in the running. Immaculate Bellagio [View Full Entry]

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We left Croatia for at the beginning of October, and drove north toward Slovenia. Our first stop in Slovenia was The Skocjan Caves. These caves are a Unesco World Heritage Site and boast the world's largest subterranean canyon, replete with a rushing river (seen from hundreds of feet above) and waterfalls, and filled with stalagmites and stalagtites of strange and wonderous shapes and sizes. These caves are beautiful, spectacular, and breathtaking. I hated every moment I was in them. The first section was the worst. A tunnel. I hate tunnels. Knowing that I have terrible claustrop [View Full Entry]

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The Croatian coast is the landscape of my dreams. This, for me, is the most beautiful of type of climate and topography: dry, rocky with lavender and brush and pine along the sea. And such a sea! The Adriatic here displays the most dramatic pallette of marine colors, from turquoise green to indigo blue. The water is clear all the way to the bottom and is teaming with fish, crabs and other sea life. There is nothing more exciting to me than swimming off of white rocks into a deep ocean, as we did these days in Rovinj, traveling by bike [View Full Entry]

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We spent this past weekend in Rome. Rome was not the golden, rosy town I recalled from my honeymoon. It is noisy, dirty, polluted and traffic-infested. It was not lovely or romantic. I was not drifting down streets gently washed by rain, or standing alone in the shaft of light shining through the roof of the Pantheon, or gazing at a lovely sunset as I lounge alongside the Tiber, or standing, practically alone, on the Spanish steps. That was, of course, my honeymoon. Our first day was a bit difficult for the kids in some ways--lots of sightseeing, lots of time [View Full Entry]

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This past week we took a tour of the interior of the Basilica San Marco, that famous building Henry James called, "the strange old church of Saint Mark," or more evocatively in Twain's words, "a vast and warty bug taking a meditative walk." It is true that San Marco surprised me with its Byzantine character, and that it doesn't seem to match the campanile, nor the other buildings around it. No matter how many times you see a picture or a photograph, nothing surprises like the real thing. To whit: my visit, some dozen years ago, to the Sistine Chapel. "He [View Full Entry]

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The difficulty in writing anything about Venice, even just writing for myself, is that it has all been done before. Or as Mary McCarthy put it, "There is nothing to say about Venice that has not been said before (including this sentence)" or something just like that. After reading that (and some Henry James--I recommend The Aspern Papers which I am enjoying immensely), I was rendered temporarily mute on the subject of my impressions and experiences. Someone, somewhere has experienced it, said it, wrote it and everything I have to contribute is beside the point. And what to say, [View Full Entry]

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If you've looked at many photos of Venice, then you have seen these before. The first Sunday of every September is a pageant, a parade, a regatta! The Regata Storica started sometime in the 13th century to celebrate Venice as a maritime superpower (then) and the beauty and unique setting of the city (now). From our perch on the Grand Canal, we were able to see the entire thing. It is quite a spectacle. These first photos were actually taken on the Friday before the Regata, at the blessing of the gondolas, which took place at the lovely Santa Maria Salute [View Full Entry]

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Today--lots of things going on in Venice, but we couldn't tear ourselves away from the living room windows. While a number of people--including Ari, Gabriel and Dean--were sitting in the living room looking over the Grand Canal, police boats pulled up right across the canal and started pulling up something from the water. There was, in Ari's words, a "log type thing, with a furry top" in the canal. The police turned their boats away from us and heaved it out of the water and covered it with a curtain, taking it to land opposite Casa Artom. Numerous fire and [View Full Entry]

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