If crowds of tourists snapping a phone-pic of the Mona Lisa send you screaming for the exits, you are my kind of tourist. I had the good fortune to see the Mona Lisa in the 1970s. She wasn’t even behind plexiglass. My friend and I walked right up to her, admired Leonardo’s brushstrokes, concluded that …
When we planned this trip, Dianne was keen to visit Ronda and the white villages of Andalusia. They are both beautiful, but I stayed in the area for 8 days just over a year ago, so I decided to spend the extra days in Seville instead. I’ve been here for 7 nights, which has given …
Just before coming to Spain, I was at party talking to a woman named Linda about my upcoming trip. When she heard we were coming to Cordoba, she put her hand on her heart. “Oh, we loved Cordoba,” she told me. Linda’s husband died a few years ago. I assumed that he was the other …
I came to Granada for the Alhambra. I didn’t know much about it, except that my parents visited several years ago and my mother raved about its beauty. Mom is usually more interested in food and handicrafts than she is in buildings, so I thought it must be spectacular. On our first day in Granada, …
Julian and I try to find slow ways to travel even when we’re visiting touristy places. One of the ways we slow travel down is literally, by walking. Last year we walked from one “white village” to another in Andalusia, Spain. I loved both the walking and the white villages, but I felt that I …
After two young women, Maren Ueland and Louisa Vesterager Jespersen, were murdered a couple of weeks ago, one could patently say, “No, women travellers are not safe in Morocco.” But earlier in December Grace Millane was murdered while travelling alone in New Zealand. None of us would conclude on that basis that New Zealand is …
The last time I wrote, I was in the High Atlas Mountains, battling what I thought was a minor stomach bug. Travellers to Morocco are supposed to avoid the water – which is relatively easy – and any food that you haven’t peeled yourself – which is virtually impossible. Much of the food is fresh, …
This morning I met a young woman named Claudia. She was checking out of our hotel, and I was preparing to sit in the lounge for the day, drinking mint tea while I battle a stomach bug. Claudia reminded me why I travel. She grew up in Switzerland in the 1990s. I grew up in …
Every trip has its highlights. Sometimes the highlight is exactly what was expected. Sometimes it’s the unexpected —even the dreaded —that produces the most delight. So it was with our first experience of a personal guide. Normally, we would avoid having a guide like the plague. We prefer to set our own pace and discover …
Marrakech is at its best early in the morning and at sunset. The blocky red buildings glow against the half-light in the sky. The palm trees and open boulevards give the city a graceful colonial feel. In the heat of the day, Marrakech is a cacophony of noise, smell and sweaty humanity. A bewildering array …
When we think of rural England, we are thinking of the Cotswolds; when we think of the Cotswolds, we are thinking of Blockley. The Cotswolds is an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (ANOB) located about a two-hour drive west of London. It’s a walker’s paradise, renowned for its honey-coloured stone villages tucked into dells between …
I stand, eyes filling with tears, surrounded by every item of travel clothing I own. I have nothing to wear. Seriously. We are weeks away from a trip to Morocco and I don’t know what I’m going to wear. One of the first things I did after booking this trip was to google “travel clothing …
My Oxford dictionary defines ‘hubris’ as ‘overweening pride leading to nemesis.’ Nemesis was the Greek goddess of retributive justice. Remember that at the beginning of the Highland Way, I was having trouble with my boots? The discomfort was in my instep. I dealt with it by wearing thinner than normal socks and keeping my boot …
The boys’ search for more Munros took us to Fort William, home of Scotland’s tallest mountain, Ben Nevis. I had rented a house for three nights to give us plenty of opportunity for a good climbing day. This was the unexpected view from our bedroom window. Yes, that’s Ben Nevis! The Neptune Staircase is in …
To prepare for walking the West Highland Way, I went to the gym four or five times a week, beginning last fall. Sometimes I got on the machines and lifted free weights, following a program given to me by one of the trainers, Sara. Sometimes I attended 75-minute circuit classes. They can be brutal, especially …
The West Highland Way is my first long distance path. In Spain we walked every second day for about 15 km; in Scotland I’m walking 5 days of varying length followed by a recovery day then another 4 days. The distances don’t seem bad — no more than 22 km on the longest day — …
We’re in Scotland again — a little under a year since our last visit. (Sorry to disappoint Julian’s cousin Jan who, after our trip to Spain, was hoping we were working our way through the countries in alphabetical order). This time Scotland is Niall’s choice. We wanted to take him somewhere to celebrate the finish …
For years, we have been dedicated users of Trip Advisor (TA). Before TA, booking a hotel online was a crap shoot. I remember a particularly memorable “lodge” in Scotland. It reeked of cigarette smoke and stale beer and there weren’t any other guests, but we’d already paid for the first night so we were on …
Several years ago, we stayed in Rome at a small hotel that was run by a German named Carl. Carl was married to an Italian woman. In an early conversation, he gently warned us that we should be very careful about respecting Italians’ food culture because they are offended by tourists’ ignorance of it. For …
We decided to try something different on this trip. We wanted to get away from other tourists as much as possible. And we wanted to see what life is like for people who live outside cities – which are all beginning to look and feel alike. To be honest, our reasons for choosing Spain were …