When we decided to spend Veterans Day weekend in Leavenworth, Silvette said she didn’t want to go if it was going to be a rainy weekend. If we were going to cancel our reservation, we had to cancel a week ahead. However, the weather forecast kept changing so we didn’t cancel. Wouldn’t you know it, we woke up Saturday morning to a wet and drizzly day. It was just what Silvette had wanted to avoid. Despite the weather we were…
Continue Reading “A Day Trip from Leavenworth to Sunny Wenatchee”
It was a sunny Sunday afternoon in Lilongwe, Malawi when Bern asked me if I was interested in birds. His daughter had told him about a bird sanctuary nearby so he thought I might like to see it. Since I had taken him to some activities when he was in Washington, I think he felt a need to show me around Malawi. While I am not particularly into birds, I thought this might be a good opportunity to take some…
Seattle is a city practically surrounded by water. To the west is Puget Sound while to the east is Lake Washington. Water activities are an important part of life here. Historically the early pioneers used the waterways for transportation. As a result one of the early decisions was to connect Lake Washington to Puget Sound by digging a canal. When they realized that Lake Washington was higher in elevation than Puget Sound, they knew they needed to built locks for…
Continue Reading “Ballard Locks: Boats, Salmon, Gardens and History”
This post is a few weeks late, but I didn’t want to interrupt my series on our European trip. Now, however, I want to look back at these last four years of blogging. The actual day of my first post of Battered Suitcase was July 29, 2019. My first article was “Why Travel?” which has served as a bit of a guide to my posts over the years. My goal has been to help travelers have information on a variety…
Continue Reading “Celebrating Four Years of My Blog, Battered Suitcase”
Monday was my 72nd birthday. It was also a travel day as we were to take a train to Madrid where we would leave Spain to fly home. However, our train didn’t leave until nearly 3:00 so there was still time in the morning to do a little more exploring of Granada. We headed out towards downtown again. We were headed to the University which we had been near the day before, but it had been closed. I thought we…
Continue Reading “Our European Journey Comes to an End in 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…
Continue Reading “Encountering the Flamenco Culture in Seville, Spain”
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.…
Continue Reading “Traveling South to Explore Unique Faro, 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…
Continue Reading “Cruising the Douro on Easter Sunday in 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…
Continue Reading “The Blue & White Tiles and Red Roofs of Porto, Portugal”
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…
Continue Reading “Wandering the Hills and Riverfront of Porto on Good Friday”
