April 30, 2025 Porto has a particular pace. Not slow, but surely not rushed. The server in the cafe comes over to your table when they are ready. As an ex-New Yorker this took some adjusting to. New York spirts. You dart between traffic. You eat on the go. Crowds slow you down. You are… Read more

April 28, 2025 We love Lisbon! Perhaps it is the familiarity – we’ve been here many times – but we also find it beautiful. The city sits on the wide Tagus River, rising from the banks in steep hills. It is a combination of styles, from classical to Moorish. The buildings are covered in colorful… Read more

April 25, 2025 When a city values art not as decoration but as essential that is something special. To build with love, to create with care, to have your life’s work reshape a city’s soul, merging the sacred and the artistic, that is spectacular. Antoni Gaudi was a sickly child. He had rhematic fever, instead… Read more

April 22, 2025 On our last visit to Gibraltar on December 10, 2024, I wrote in my blog that Gibraltar was not worth a special visit. I saw it primarily as a refueling stop between Northern Africa and Southern Europe. I think I feel into the trap like tourists that come to the United States… Read more

April 21, 2025 On our trips to Casablanca, (most recently read blog 11/22/2024), this Muslim country and especially the city of Casablanca has always been much more welcoming than other Muslim countries/cities we have visited most notably Alexandria and Cairo, Egypt and Tunis, Tunisia. I wanted to try and figure out why that was the… Read more

April 19, 2025 Arrecife just does not seem like it belongs where it is. On my second visit to this city, I am even more impressed with its beauty. The landscape here seems like a legend. Steam arrives from the earth like a warning. You can actually roast a chicken by dropping it into a… Read more

April 16, 2025 We have been to the African continent many times now and my reaction is always the same: What can I do to make this a better place? Don’t we all like to think of ourselves as travelers who would rise to the challenge: “To explore strange new worlds, to seek out new… Read more

April 20, 2025 In People of the Lie, Psychiatrist M. Scott Peck, M.D., wrote evil people suffer from an extreme form of “self-protectiveness…Their “goodness” is all on the level of pretense. It is a lie…this is why they are “people of the lie.” They lie not to deceive others but to deceive themselves regarding their… Read more

April 15, 2025 (The sound of the cracking of a whip) “Your name is Toby. You are going to learn to say it. Let me hear you say it.” “What is your name?” “Kunta.” “Kunta Kinteh.” (The sound of cries as the whip cracks again) “When the Master gives you something you take it. And… Read more

April 13, 2025 Today, we are in the capital city of Cape Verde, Santiago. If you recall, these islands had no population until conquered by the Portuguese in the mid-15th century. This was a central depository for slaves being sent to South America and the United States and that dynamic is still evident in Cape… Read more