The sun has just dropped below the horizon along the Danube, and we enjoy the melancholy blue light of dusk.  We’ve had some lovely evenings here , but last night was particularly nice.  There are no particularly quaint church steeples to photograph at this instant,…

I reflect on images I see at the Birkenau Death Camp site near Auschwitz

Our tour of Portugal and Spain included a good deal of windshield time and today we were settled in for the 417 Kilometer (260 mile) drive from Granada to Madrid along the A-4 / E-5 Autovia del Sur.  The long hours of cross-country travel across…

The Barbary Macaques of Gibralter The opportunities for blog titles here were endless, but the one above seemed to fit best.  The Barbary Macaques in Gibraltar are the only wild monkey population in the European continent.  A fun fact is that monkeys usually have tails and apes have none,…

 Reflections on driving in Italy    “Here I go down that wrong road again     Goin’ back where I’ve already been     Even though I know where it will end     Here I go down that wrong road again”    – John Hartford, Wrong Road…

After another very great Gate1 Travel fly-drive deal for Italy, Marcy and I find ourselves back in Montecatini Terme – a town about 25 miles west of Florence.  We are very travel-weary but I think we have gotten used to the rhythm of how it feels to do…