Here is reputed to be the culinary center of Croatia. Its wines, while surely adequate, are not up to the standards of the southern regions around Hvar and Dubrovnik, but its cuisine is superb. While I was there, the truffle season was at its peak. Sniffed out by trained dogs, these tasty fungi, […]
Unless you studied a map of this small but eventful country, up close and in large scale, you would not know that it has a coastline, but it does. Just 15 miles long, it cuts a small slice out of Croatia’s southern Dalmatian coast. The border crossing there is perfunctory, though, so for the tourist […]
With a population of less than 700,000 and a land area slightly smaller than Connecticut, this is the least consequential of the Balkans countries, yet it is also undoubtedly the most scenic, a miniature impecunious version of Austria. “Wild Beauty” is the national tourism slogan, and that it surely has. […]
In few places is the power of Hollywood to impress images into our minds more apparent than here, and nowhere are those images so false. I had seen the movie enough times to have a clear picture of the place, its low, white stucco structures, dusty streets and a sleek nightclub called Rick’s Café, and […]
A seaside resort city, Agadir has colorfully landscaped boulevards, a fine beachfront promenade and a modern marina/condo/ retail complex where we were pleased to dock. There is little of the tumbledown squalor so evident in Casablanca. Here, too, the severe strictures of Islamic life are nowhere to be seen. Casinos, Western style nightclubs, bars, beach resorts and brothels abound, all repugnant to the imams but delightful to their flocks. […]
Leaving Marrakech, I traveled up and through the high passes of the High Atlas Mountains, their pinnacles dappled in snow, on my way to the unpronounceable town of Ouarzazate. The entire drive was another scenic wonderland of remote villages, ancient strategically sited kasbahs, flocks of sheep and goats grazing in the most precarious places and […]
Following an uneventful voyage of 380 nautical miles from Agadir, Morocco to Tenerife in the Canary Islands, I flew to Johannesburg, South Africa to meet up with Kitty and Grant coming from Florida and spend what turned out to be an unexpectedly enjoyable three weeks there. […]
With a population of nearly ten million and at 85 percent the highest literacy rate in the Caribbean, the DR has much to recommend it, but proximity to a felicitous neighboring country is not among its best features. It occupies the eastern two-thirds of the island of Hispaniola and is verdant, fecund and comparatively safe for human habitation. […]
This note is written from an anchorage on the rugged, sparsely populated coast of Labrador on our way to the Northwest Passage. As we move into position on the upper west coast of Greenland and onward through the Passage, I’ll send updates of our progress and describe the sights we come across that may interest you. […]