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Iceland in February

After a steaming shower, I exited the changing room and looked out onto the vast, geyser-fed Blue Lagoon. It was dotted with swim-up bars, heads peaking out of steam, and glowing blue light. I got a push from the wind to ease into the hot water and join Geoff, my husband, for a soak. The water scalded me as I first sank down but was quickly rewarded by the calming heat. We glanced up through the clouds and...

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Hiking back from the top of the glacier, with another blizzard off to our right.

The wind was storming through town, blowing the still falling snow into piles that were quickly redistributed by the next gust. Dark outside at 9 a.m., we walked like we were on a tight-wire across the ice-covered parking lot to scrape off the rental car. As we pulled out of the hotel, the lane markers on the highway were doing their best to le...

The Secret Lagoon, along the Golden Circle, was the first outdoor public pool in Iceland. It is fed by a geyser with the water entering the pool just below boiling.

Icelanders are quirky; their sense of humor subtle. They brag that the only crime in Iceland is the occasional bar brawl and wife beating. The Festival of Lights opened with an avant-guard film that progressed through close-ups of skin, living cells, and a pig's nos...

When last I wrote, I was hoping to find focus as a writer in a week of walking the Northern Route of the Camino de Santiago.

The Camino logo and location of the Cantabrian Mountains in northern Spain, courtesy Wikipedia.

No one day stands out. They were all 8-10 hours of trekking through mountains that looked and felt like the Swiss Alps. We hiked the Cantabrian Mountain Range for 5.5 days, 76 miles in total. We went up and down...

No, we are not sick of traveling. No, we are not sick of each other. No, we aren't anxious to get home. We are afraid of going back.

Travel is about exuberance. A day you planned to do nothing more than go to a different part of Istanbul for lunch turns into a Turkish feast so good you can barely contain your excitement. We sat in an outdoor cafe, with men smoking hookahs across from us. Afterward, Geoff got a haircut including...

Some days when you travel around the world you have to do the hard work of actually traveling. That's right, we don't spend all of our time lounging around Turkish gulet, drinking double gin & tonics starting at 11 am. Today we had to leave paradise, the Mare Norstrom, and travel to a new location, Pamukkale.

Our Turkish Gulet, the Mare Norstrom, all 132 ft of her. More boat photos in later blog.

To get to Panukkale we needed a...

There are three more compelling, reasons to visit Turkey.

Worldwide, they have the best toilets we have ever seen. Maybe they will catch on in the US. The Turkish toilet is a perfectly engineered design that combines a bidet and a toilet.

Reason two: Turkish baths. They use a pillowcase to produce these enormous amounts of wonderful, oily, good smelling bubbles. They scrub you down with them on a marble slab in a white marble-do...

Americans you should visit Turkey for two reasons:

First, you can stay in a cave- hotel. There were 211 cave-hotels in Cappadocia and it is a lot of fun. We stayed in a rock pinnacle with our room being the highest room in the village. I know that's bragging but traveling is all about the oldest, biggest, longest, or first something. The photos below show the interior of our room on the left and the views from our patio on the...

“Children are the Victims of Adult’s Vices” created by Mihail Chemiakin. This was his gift to the City of Moscow. It is meant to encourage the fight against global evil.

Warning. You can skip this blog if you are looking for my usual humor and whit.

The Russian man started it. I was looking at this sculpture so powerful, I still feel it will change my life. He was in his mid 60’s, shook his head as he walked by and said, “It’s n...

Like usual before we get to the clever insights and dirt on Putin, you get a little geography lesson. This post will also include the last 1200 years of Moscow history downsized for Americans. It’s very exciting to have all of this local history coming to together in one place. As background, Geoff is Russian, on both sides of his family. I am half Polish. We came to Moscow from Kazan after being in Mongolia. We will be headin...