When the cold, dark London winter drags on for too long and the city begins to despair that the warmth and sun of spring will never come, many people head for the airport and hop a flight to someplace far from the dreary English shores. I, on the other hand, spent last weekend somewhere even colder, darker and snowier than London - Moscow! Perhaps not the most popular choice for a winter weekend getaway, but Red Square under a blanket of fresh snow was beautiful and the Russians know how to ward off even the most frightening temperatures with a combination [View Full Entry]

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In loving memory of my father, Alan Joyce, a linguist, historian, and fearless world traveler. The following are exerpts from emails he wrote and photos he took during his fifth and final Camino to Santiago de Compostela in Spain last spring. How to spend Good Friday in Oviedo ‏22 March 2008 Dear Friends and Family, I promised I'd write something about what these flinty Northerners do for Holy Week. They'd make good New Englanders, actually -- restrained and polite, but with very good hearts. I started the second half of yesterday with a siesta, t [View Full Entry]

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La Ville-Lumiere When I first moved to London I thought I would take the Eurostar to Paris all the time. Two years later, I finally made it! I was so excited about the weekend that I was worried I was building the city up too much in my mind. I was afraid that the reality of Paris would never live up to the romance and beauty of the city I've been reliving in my memory for the last three years. Of course Paris proved me wrong. My friends and I spent most of the weekend in the Marais. A week after [View Full Entry]

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"Ich bin ein Berliner" Well, not really, but I did live there from 18 months to 5 years old. My family moved away in 1984 soon after my sister was born and then watched on TV with amazement and joy along with the rest of the world as the Wall came down in '89. Last weekend I both returned to this city and saw it for the first time. Berlin has changed so much in the last decade that I might not have recognized it even if I had been old enough when I lived there to really remember it. The [View Full Entry]

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A Hike in the Scottish Highlands Last weekend I went to the Scottish Highlands to hike across the Five Sisters of Kintail. The trip was organized as a charity fundraiser by one of my co-workers and so on Friday afternoon 22 of us flew up to Inverness and then drove two hours to Kintail. Kintail is not really a town, as such, but there is a charming bed and breakfast there on the picturesque shores of Lake Duich and it provided the perfect starting point for our hike the next day. On Saturday morning we got up very early and enjoyed [View Full Entry]

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Contis-plage Last weekend I went to the wedding of two friends (Congrats Lucy and Peter!) in Les Landes, France. It was my first trip to Les Landes on the south western coast of France, between Bordeaux and Biarritz. It is a beautiful area. As we drove south from Bordeaux the vineyards gave way to pine forests and finally we made it to Contis-plage and the sea. The wedding itself was in a beautiful old church in a little town about 10 kilometers from Contis-plage. The ceremony was all in French but the groom (who is Australian) said "oui" in all the [View Full Entry]

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Munich - Add friends, beer and voila! A great birthday weekend. Step 1: Invite all your friends Two of my friends in London and I all have birthdays within a month of each other so we decided to combine forces and plan a weekend trip to Munich in mid-August to celebrate. We picked the city, the hotel, and some flights and then were so thrilled when 16 of our friends agreed to join us. We had a fantastic, if not entirely cultural, weekend that involved afternoon shenanigans at the Hofbrauhaus, late night bar crawls, dancing, and enjoying a little sunshine in [View Full Entry]

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Санкт Петерсбург I took two days off work to spend a long weekend in St. Petersburg, Russia. It is the northernmost big city in the world and during the weeks around the summer solstice its residents celebrate the White Nights when there is almost perpetual sunlight. We were there a couple of weeks too late and so only had about 20 hours of daylight per day (still not too shabby) but the "Stars of the White Nights" arts festival was still going on and the summer weather - sunny and about 75 [View Full Entry]

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For an American kid, summer means vacation, the beach, the 4th of July, baseball, hot dogs... and this summer I went back to the U.S. for two weeks to enjoy all that a good old fashioned U.S. summer vacation has to offer... Washington, D.C. I started in D.C. to see my parents, sister, cousin Evy, dear law school friends Scott, Laura and Sharon, work friends from my time at the Department of Defense and others. The pound sterling is so strong against the dollar at the moment I also made numerous shopping trips to Pentagon City and Tyson's Corner malls. [View Full Entry]

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For the second May bank holiday weekend I went north to beautiful Stockholm - during the summer the sun never goes down for long and temperatures are warm and pleasant. I had been to Stockholm once before during the summer of 2006 and had such fond memories of that weekend that I couldn't wait to go back. Luckily the opportunity arose in the form of a football (soccer) tournament hosted by my law firm. The London office sent a bunch of teams and we had a great time. The tournament started at 8 a.m. on Saturday morning (which was a bit [View Full Entry]

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