Venice in August is a theme park.  You bus in from the airport.  It drops you at the Palazzo Roma, where every other bus unloads hundreds of tourists per hour.  You wait in line.  You pay too much for a ticket.  You get on the first ride, a ferry that takes you down the grand [...]

I schlepped my backpack, laptop and camera across town, getting properly lost along the way.  The 5 minute walk turned into an hour long hike, as I overshot my destination and searched in the wrong neighborhood.  Finally I climbed four flights of stairs and knocked on the hostel door.  “Hello?  Hostel?”  The woman shook her [...]

Christine is off to Croatia this evening, after landing in Venice last night, so her trusty sidekick (read: husband) is here to fill in by posting a slideshow of her trip to Lisbon. Let’s send her good vibes on her travels, this is the trip that is requiring the most logistical planning, moving from place [...]

If you’ve ever been in my bathroom in my former home in Texas, you’d know that I had a certain framed poster hanging on the wall.  I bought it one night from the Michael’s Art Supply store in Plano Texas.  I didn’t know what it meant, but I thought it was cute, plus it matched [...]

Under the forest canopy the filtered light looks pale green on the path leading to the Castel de Mouro.  As I hiked towards the Moorish ruins, the crowd thinned as they headed to the bus terminal or shops or back into town.  I soon found myself alone, in the hushed silence of the overgrown forest, [...]