(Above, clockwise from top: Admiring a huge and ancient tree; distance markers scrawled on a bench; the official markers, noting correct direction and kilometers left before Santiago; Taking a break in a farmer’s outbuilding. The sign hanging, above, invites pilgrims to rest as long as they keep the area clean and tidy.) This may be […]

[Read more →]

Tomorrow morning, the three of us begin our walk on the Camino de Santiago — the best-known of the Christian pilgrimage trails to Santiago de Compostela, a cathedral city in northwestern Spain. At the moment, we are in a bustling little town named Sarria, 110 kilometers (68 miles) east of Santiago. Sarria is the handiest […]

[Read more →]

I can attest to the obvious: A day and a half in Madrid is not nearly enough to get any nuanced sense of Spain’s capital city. We could have done better. I never have arrived at one of the world’s great cities having done so little preparation. Not much studying of maps or prominent sights, […]

[Read more →]

Perhaps the only significant contribution, over the past decade, to making long flights in coach class endurable has been the seat-back screen and the in-flight entertainment package. I know of no long-haul flight which does not have those little square screens right in front of the faces of passengers … and they go far in […]

[Read more →]

Summer smog? That’s nothing. Risk of the Big One earthquake? No matter. Thousands of arriving foreign tourists exposed to the chaos of the Tom Bradley Terminal at Los Angeles International Airport? That’s a daily killer to La-La Land’s reputation. Take, for example, a Monday afternoon in mid-January.

[Read more →]

Paris has just about everything … but when it comes to the, OK, less-than-highbrow concept of the sports bar … well, they don’t do it often and often don’t to it well. All these years later, we finally seem to have found a competent sports bar that is a sports bar in a way that […]

[Read more →]

I had been in Paris barely 10 minutes today when I had my pocket picked. Arrived from the south of the country on the fast train into Gare de Lyon, made my way downstairs to the Metro’s 1 line, got into a jammed car just as the doors were about to close … and then […]

[Read more →]

We saw an odd road sign the other day at one of the entrances entering a nearby town. “! Chausee Glissant Vendange”. An exclamation point on any sign in France means “attention”! or “watch out”! And the three-word message below the exclamation?

[Read more →]

Amsterdam may have as many interesting sights per square mile as any city on earth. From 50-some museums, to the canals, the architecture, the flower market, the zoo … something interesting is just a few minutes walk away. The most famous of the museums is the Rijksmuseum, which houses Rembrandt‘s The Night Watch, among hundreds […]

[Read more →]

One of the upsides to being based in Europe … is how close so much of Europe is to the casual traveler. In the United States, a 90-minute flight from Los Angeles would not be sufficient to get to Portland, Oregon. In Europe, a 90-minute flight from the south of France, a few miles from […]

[Read more →]