"Traveling – it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller" –Ibn Battuta
“Nine leagues from Valencia, on the old road from this city to Zaragoza, and five from Sagunto, where today the corridor connects with the railroad from Valencia to Barcelona to the west and near the famous Idubeda, there is a beautiful almost circular plain one and two leagues in diameter, surrounded by picturesque and even…
“Whoever wants to live in Central Europe must never sober up.” Writer Bohumil Hrabal “Beer is a sign of national identity, a medium of camaraderie, a gift from heaven and a character from a story.” Craig Cravens The slim spires of Gothic architecture are the dominant feature of the Prague‘s centuries-old skyline, the city known as…
“Anything can happen if we want to, if we just pull together, and we’ll be laughing on the Ghetto’s ruins”. Lyrics of a Karl Svenk’s cabaret song. “Beasts of burden, we shouldered bundled of what pieces of past we were allowed to keep as we joined the river of fear, a current of shuffling feet,…
“You will fall in love with the city itself. There is nothing left over in your heart for anyone else” – Peggy Guggenheim “Memory’s images, once they are fixed in words, are erased,” Marco Polo said. “Perhaps I am afraid of losing Venice all at one, if I speak of it. Or perhaps, speaking of…
“When I went to Venice, my dream became my life.” – Marcel Proust “Venice opens her arms to all whom others shun. She lifts up all whom others abase. She welcomes those whom others persecute. She cheers the mourner in his grief and defends the disposed and the destitute with charity and love. And so…
The Alps we already knew, and the Pyrenees, but this was finer than anything we had ever seen or even imagined in our wildest dreams! This was the Caucasus….How I wish I had brought my copy of Aeschylus! Alexandre Dumas père (1858) “It is a magical place, Georgia,” wrote John Steinbeck during a visit in…
The countries of the South Caucasus have always been the “lands in-between”. In between the Black and Caspian seas, Europe and Asia, Russia and the Middle East, Christianity and Islam and, more recently, democracy and dictatorship. Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia and the territories around them have the mixed blessing of being at the crossing-place of…
Istanbul – the only city that lies on both continents – is a place of wonder, curiosity, immense cultural tensity, history, architecture, food and human density. It is a place to be visited by everyone at least once in their lifetime, and it won’t leave you adamant or unbiased. It is a megapolis that, to some extent, carries on…
I chose Malta as my wedding venue! Yes, I chose the entire island where early Christian catacombs and Byzantine walls, Muslim streets and Norman towers, megalithic temples and Knights’ forts defined the world history for thousands of years. When D. and I started to plan our wedding, we considered a few options, however, it didn’t take…
Click here for Part I of “Athens, Greece. July 2014” August 2, 2014 D and I were back to Athens to celebrate Stacy and Antonis’ wedding at Island Art and Taste – a beautiful wedding venue on a cliff in Varkiza area of Athens. The wedding wasn’t till evening, but after 2 weeks on the…