Europe
You can expect to see scenery like this if you follow Auto Europe’s new Road Trips in Norway itinerary planner. Photo from Visit Norway.
Several years ago, my son, Grael, and I set out on a driving expedition from Paris to Spain. We had no planned itinerary — just followed our whims for a week — in our Auto Europe rental car, which I had reserved online here in the U.S..
We spent an enjoyable overnight in Toulouse, France, motored through the ravishing Pyrenees mountains between France and Spain, continued through the small mountainous nation of Andorra into northern Spain, drove south to Barcelona for a few days, then west to Basque country, and, when it started to rain there, headed north and ended up in Brittany in northwest France, where we ate crepes and walked by the seaside before returning to Paris via Mont St.… Continue reading
The Garden of Earthly Delights, a famous Bosch triptych in Madrid’s Prado Museum
Way back in 1971, shortly after graduating from college, I developed an obsession for the paintings of the 15th-century Flemish master Hieronymus Bosch, whose phantasmagorical — sometimes grotesque — artworks appealed to my psychedelic sensibilities of that era.
I spent days in libraries hand-copying notes from dusty tomes about the artist, sought out all of his works in American museums, and eventually embarked on a three-month pilgrimage to Europe determined to set eyes on every Bosch painting on the Continent.
On my target list were 31 museums and churches containing 58 works of art, scattered across a dozen countries and 26 cities and towns from Copenhagen to Vienna to Lisbon.
My resources were limited: a Eurailpass, a copy of Europe on $5 a Day when it was still called that, and a budget to match.
Detail… Continue reading
Repositioning cruises can be some of the best bargains at sea. Photo by Clark Norton
Note to readers: Today’s post is an updated version of a previous post on increasingly popular repositioning cruises, which generally represent excellent value and will sail this spring, largely in March and April:
Every spring, a number of ocean-going cruise ships leave the warmer areas of the world — say, the Caribbean, South America, or Hawaii — to travel to other regions (such as Europe, Canada, or Alaska), to take advantage of the more seasonable weather in the latter spots.
In the fall, usually around October or November, the vessels reverse this pattern, traveling from the cooler climes to warmer waters.
These are called repositioning cruises (repo cruises for short), and they tend to be longer — sometimes quite a bit longer — than typical cruises.
The cruise lines don’t want to run… Continue reading
Nuremberg’s Atmospheric Youth Hostel. Photo by Catharine Norton.
When my wife and I were in Nuremberg, Germany, this past September, we stayed for four nights in a lodging that was adjoined to the Imperial Castle that sits on the highest point in the city.
It was a short stroll to the castle entrance and all the other landmarks of the old city, which has been beautifully restored after its destruction in World War II.
It was five-to-ten minute downhill walk to the Hauptmarkt, or Market Square. The Albrecht Durer Haus — where Germany’s most celebrated painter lived — is even closer. The main train station is about a mile away.
We had a sparkling clean room with a view, a private bathroom, and a gigantic German buffet breakfast — wonderful breads, cheeses, meats, fruit, yogurts, eggs, juices and coffee (including espresso drinks) — that was included in the rates.… Continue reading
Tuvalu will become a center for Climate Change Tourism. Photo from Timeless Tuvalu
Peering into my crystal ball for 2016 — which due to budgetary concerns is more like fiberglass this year — I foresee the following top ten developments in the ever-changing, sometimes wacky world of travel:
Try to pare this down to wallet size, please.
- A 747 will be diverted from Omaha to New Orleans overnight because passengers in seats A and B get into a spat over who can claim the middle armrest. Oddly, none of the hundreds of passengers aboard complain as they gobble down their jambalaya and beignets.
- Spurred by the success of a tour agency named “Toodle-oo Tuvalu” and a boutique hotel called “Sinking Along With the Breeze,” Climate Change Tourism will be huge, in which ghoulish travelers will journey to low-lying Pacific atolls soon to be inundated… Continue reading
Yangtze River, China: Sunrise over the Three Gorges. Photo by Dennis Cox/WorldViews
I spent much of the fall of 2015 taking river cruises, in China and Europe. China’s Yangtze and Europe’s Danube, Rhine, Moselle, and Main rivers were all on the itineraries.
I’ve already blogged about the Yangtze cruise here and will write about the two European river cruises as time goes along (one was for a magazine, so I’ll have to wait for that article to appear in the spring of 2016 before writing about it here, but my Danube cruise accounts will appear in this space shortly).
I was already sold on river cruising before taking the last three — two of my past favorites were the Nile in Egypt and the Mississippi from Memphis to New Orleans — but with every new river cruise I take, the more I like them.
As much as… Continue reading
You’ll cycle past castles and vineyards on the Castles and Wine tour offered by Tripsite. Photo from Portugal Bike Tours.
Many baby boomers have bucket lists — some of which include extraordinary bicycle trips through Europe (I know I do).
A company I’ve come across called Tripsite.com makes it easy to check off what they call your “Bike-It” list — which sounds preferable to “bucket list” anyway — with bike trips in more than 30 European countries as well as several in Asia and other parts of the world (including the U.S. and Canada).
And when I say easy, I mean easy.
You can search by type of tour (guided, self-guided, E-bikes — those are the bikes that give you an electric power boost when needed — and whether or not boat trips are included along with the biking portions).
You can also search by country, month… Continue reading
Dublin’s Temple Bar area. Photo b y Nico Kalser on Flickr.
Since some friends of mine are headed to Dublin, Ireland, soon, this seemed like a good time to extol the virtues of one of my favorite cities.
If course, it helps if you like Guinness stout — but there’s more to Dublin than Ireland’s national drink (no offense to Irish whiskey).
Still, any top seven list of things to do in Dublin has to start with sampling some Guinness. You can get a well-poured pint in any pub in the city, but you can get a great orientation to both Guinness and Dublin’s literary heritage by joining the:
* Dublin Literary Pub Crawl. This is a fun 2 1/2-hour evening event that combines literary storytelling by two talented actors with the chance to sip a Guinness (or other drink) at four different pubs. It starts at the Duke… Continue reading
Bike tours are cheaper in Europe this year if purchased in dollars.
A stronger U.S. dollar and falling euro values this year mean one very good thing for U.S. travelers headed over the Atlantic: the dollar will now go a lot farther in Europe than in any time in the past several years.
The current exchange rate is just about .93 euros to $1 U.S. — meaning Americans only have to fork over $1.07 to get one euro in exchange. That’s a big drop from the $1.30 or so per euro of recent years.
One U.S.-based company, BikeToursDirect, which represents European-based bike touring companies, points out that paying for your European bike tours in dollars can save you substantial amounts of money this year.
At the current exchange rate, BikeToursDirect (which I have previously written about here) now offers more than 200 tours under $1,000 and… Continue reading
The Mykonos waterfront.
Every once in a while I come across a press release so — shall we say, “unusual” — that I have to share it with my readers.
This is one sent by a Mr. John Karaglanis, who introduces himself as “the new General Manager of Hippie Chic Hotel for the 2015 season…We are pleased to present you Hippie Chic Hotel, a new concept in Mykonos.”
This immediately raises the question — what exactly is the concept behind “Hippie Chic Hotel”? Is it a chic commune, a fashionable “Hog Farm”-type operation transplanted to one of the trendiest and most expensive Greek islands? Maybe a chic backpackers’ hostel?
I ask because as a baby boomer, I can’t help but be struck by the name “Hippie Chic Hotel.”
Back in the day, circa the late 1960s, hippies were cool, groovy, with it, but oftentimes… Continue reading
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