Cleveland Over Costa Rica – 2021 Vacation Choice

Doesn’t this title beg the backstory? So we originally planned to volunteer in Costa Rica to help keep sea turtle eggs and hatchlings safe, but a nameless and shameless third-party ticketing agency changed our flights after we’d booked everything, and their new date options sucked. We’ll go next year instead, and my wallet will still……

Vacationing in the Time of Corona

Because vacations cut into work life so much, I’ve not had the time to post about our last three trips: Florida, California, and North Carolina. I must forgo my compulsion to update this blog chronologically and skip them (for now), or I’ll never post again. Micro Vacations In this time of Corona, there are no……

After a Vacation, You Really Need One

A Grand Journey – Arizona and Utah Vacation January 13 to 21, 2018 The stars aligned such that my daughter Kamala’s gymnastics meet across the country was at the same time as my son Freeman’s college break, which meant we were able to make it an excuse for a family vacation to a place we……

Ending the Epic

As a vacation is coming to a close, I start wanting to get home. I need a vacation from vacation to savor what I’ve experienced against the backdrop of the prosaic, and frankly, to rest. Ten to fourteen days tends to be about the right amount of time to be away, though the same coincidental……

Continent Hopping and the Requisite Rug

You should book your vacation for the same time as mine because the weather gods look out for me. They came through for our second full day in Istanbul for our boat ride up the Bosphorus Strait. Trip Advisor sages were infallible as usual advising that the public ferry was the way to go: inexpensive with perfect……

You CAN Go Back to Constantinople

That call to prayer at the Blue Mosque I’d found so fascinating the previous evening was less so at 4:45 am the following morning. My family slept through it, as I learned to after that. This morning’s call hailed from the mosque next door. There would appear to be a mosque on every other corner……

Au Revoir Paris, Merhaba Istanbul

The anticipation of visiting Istanbul was the only thing that made ending our vacation in Paris bearable. Istanbul is foremost a unique location, with the city split by the Bosphorus Strait that runs between Europe and Asia, the only city that straddles two continents. The Bosphorus connects the Mediterranean to the Black Sea/Russia so is an important route. Istanbul……

Getting Yin to the Yang

Last day in Paris. We were museumed out. So much to see is a problem—you can’t appreciate the yang when there’s no yin. Yin in this case being space, a chance to slow down and reflect. But we didn’t let that stop us—who knew when we’d get another chance? Off to the Musee D’Orsay, where we went for……

France’s Other Louis

It was Monday July 4th and we had to scrap our original loose plan of visiting Monet’s gardens in Giverny. We couldn’t make the very early departure needed because we had to work with the apartment agency to get our washing machine door handle fixed. Some vacation choices are as mundane as that. Michael was keen to……

A Waterful Day!

Sunday was Versailles day: a grand tour of the palace and grounds just south of Paris, which Louis XIV used fully half of France’s GDP to make. There’s no place like home, at least not his home some 300 years ago. The excess doesn’t seem as outlandish today, when there are over 1,000 billionaires, some of……