I am aboard a boat cruising along the Greek coastline toward the delta of the Acheron River on the Ionian Coast of Greece. A brisk wind has blown up and the captain navigates through the choppy water sailing precariously close to the rocky shoreline. All along the coast great jagged rocks loom out of the …
When Hippocrates sat under the plane tree in Kos’s town square, expounding his theories of healing, I wonder if he knew that many millennia later he would be known as ‘the father of modern medicine’ and people would still flock to Kos to stand under that old tree where the fabled physician once sat to teach. …
As the train whizzes along the Rhine River from Mainz to Koblenz, I can’t help but feel as if I’m journeying into an idyllic fairy-tale land. The train passes romantic little towns with a medieval feel, and idyllic villages perched on the steep hillsides tiered with vineyards and orchards. Atop the hills I spot the …
Back in the 1700’s and 1800’s when the city of London’s streets were often runnels of filth and the air thick with noxious fumes from coal fires, Hampstead Heath became a haven for the wealthy. For those with health ailments it was a place of refuge because of the fresh country air and medicinal water …
My introduction to Greek wines was during my first visit to Santorini, Greece some thirty years ago. I fell in love with Lava wine, from the Koutsoyannopoulos’ Volcan Wineries, on the island. Perhaps I was attracted first by the appealing label: a copy of a Minoan fresco with a fisherman holding bundles of his catch. …
It was an interest in pirates and seafarers that took me on a circuitous route through the Peloponnese (a large peninsula in southern Greece) to visit two of the Venetian fortresses that once guarded the seaways of the Mediterranean: Koroni and her sister city, Methoni. When pirates were pillaging Greece’s coastal settlements and during …
The poet, William Wordsworth, first visited the Wye Valley of Wales as a young man of 23, in 1793. He returned five years later in the summer of 1798 and after several days walking, wrote his poem Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey. He said that “No poem of mine was composed under circumstances more …
As the car drives up the steep hillside and I glimpse the rounded turrets of a castle through the trees, I feel as if I’m entering a fairy-tale world. I wonder if Walt Disney used this setting as a model for his films. But the knights and handsome princes who lived here were not those …
A visit to Anne Hathaway’s cottage near Stratford-upon-Avon is a delightful way to spend an afternoon. In the spacious drawing room of Anne Hathaway’s Cottage is a large, carved, wooden chair. It’s known as the ‘courting chair’ because it is said this is where the young William Shakespeare sat while visiting and courting his future bride, Anne. …
Plan Your Visit to Mainz, Germany I was fortunate to visit a friend who lives in Mainz so he acted as my tour guide as we explored this architecturally rich and scenic city; from the Baroque Gautor Gate built in 1670 that was once part of the city walls, to the Copper Mountain Terrace, an …