Destinations

Encountering the Flamenco Culture in Seville, Spain

Wednesday morning arrived, and we prepared to leave Faro for Seville, Spain, home of flamenco dancing. One street over from our hotel was a bus stop for Seville. However, there was no easy way to get there so we ended up dragging our suitcases around on the cobblestone sidewalks again. Fortunately we had checked out the location earlier as the bus stop doesn’t even have a sign there. The people standing around with suitcases were a big clue that we…

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Traveling South to Explore Unique Faro, Portugal

When we started talking about taking this European trip, my plan was to go east from Porto to the town of Salamanca, Spain. However, when it came time to schedule our trip, I realized that would be tricky. Instead I discovered that from Porto we could take a train all the way south through Portugal to the town of Faro. Faro was not a town on my radar. In fact I’m not sure I had ever heard of it before.…

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Cruising the Douro on Easter Sunday in Porto, Portugal

Easter Sunday dawned with a slight haze over the city of Porto. While we had plans to see more of Porto including a trip on the Douro River, first we would attend an Easter service. We had decided that instead of going to one of the many older churches down in the historic district of Porto, we would instead attend the service at the local church. It was a few blocks away from our hotel. We arrived a few minutes…

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The Blue & White Tiles and Red Roofs of Porto, Portugal

On our second full day in Porto, Portugal we would see even more of the beautiful blue and white tiles of Portugal, but first we needed to do something more mundane, laundry. One of the issues of a long travel journey is figuring out how to do laundry. Since we were traveling for three weeks, washing our clothes from time to time was important. In Brussels the hotel had laundry on site, even on our floor so we did laundry…

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Wandering the Hills and Riverfront of Porto on Good Friday

Our first full morning dawned in the Portuguese city of Porto. Port is north of Lisbon at the mouth of the Douro River. It is the ancestral home of my wife whose roots go back to Porto on her father’s side. It is an old city and also hilly. Over the next few days we would be doing a lot of walking up and down those hills. Porto also has many churches. Sometimes it seems that the churches are right…

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From Paris’s Louvre to the Streets of Porto, Portugal

With only a few days in Paris and a wedding taking up a lot of time, we certainly couldn’t see everything Paris has to offer. However, besides the Eiffel Tower, the one other must see location is the Louvre. We headed there Wednesday morning. The Louvre is one of those places one could spend hours, even days going through. Filled with a variety of art from different eras, locations, and styles, it is an art lover’s dream location. We didn’t…

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Destination Wedding Celebration in Paris

We went to Europe to celebrate the wedding ceremony of my son Aaron and his fiance Michelle in Paris. Destination weddings have become quite popular these days so let me take some time to explain a little about how having a wedding in Paris worked. I didn’t have much to do in terms of planning the wedding. However, I heard about it so I can provide some insight. First of all a couple cannot get legally married in Paris unless…

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Touring St. Chappel and Other Famous Paris Sites

After struggling through three days of cold and rain in Belgium, it was a relief to wake up on Monday morning and see it was not raining. In fact there was actually some spots of blue sky. It was a great day to travel by train to Paris and see some sights including St. Chappel and the Arc de Triomphe. The train to Paris leaves from the Midi train station in Brussels. We didn’t want to miss the train so…

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Returning to Bruges, Belgium on a Cold Day

Last year my daughter Andrea and I visited Bruges as part of our trip to see the tulips in The Netherlands. We had a fun and interesting time in this old city. This year as my wife and I were deciding where to visit in Europe, I felt like it would be good to take Silvette to Bruges as it had been such an interesting place to see. Originally I had thought we would go Friday, but the rain was…

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Exploring Antwerp Despite the Drizzle and Wind

I wish I could say that we awoke to our second day in Belgium to sunshine and warm spring weather, but I can’t. It was another cold, windy day with occasional rain showers and near constant drizzle. Nevertheless, we had planned to spend the day in Antwerp so we set off to do just that. Our first challenge was buying train tickets. With some help we were able to do that, but then we needed to know where to find…

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