Late in June, we took a train to Porto for a few days. It had rained the day before, and clouds still filled the sky over the fields outside of Lisbon. It takes 2 1/2…

Sintra Forty minutes by train from Lisbon is Sintra, a picturesque village and one-time royal retreat. Embedded in forested hills, it is beset with palaces and great villas (below). Overlooking all is the thousand year…

With Marrakech just an hour and a half flight from Lisbon, we took a long weekend and visited Morocco. Like so many cities with long histories, Marrakech is a lot of new wrapped around a…

Lisbon is a city of hills, seven by legend but eight in fact. Over the years, a variety of measures have been taken in an attempt to take the climb out of hill climbing. Like…

Our route from Buenos Aires took us out through São Paulo, Brazil, so we stayed a couple of nights, both to break up the flights and to see a bit of the city. At 20M…

Argentine cuisine is rooted in the country’s indigenous, Spanish, and Italian heritage, with a definite emphasis on meat. Above is a picado platter, one of our self-catered dinners. In the markets, we could buy Matambre,…

Toward the end of April, we took a day trip by ferry to Colonia del Sacramento, Oriental Republic of Uruguay. Usually called simply Colonia and Uruguay. Here we leave Buenos Aires to cross the silty…

In the high desert, along the eastern slopes of the Andes, Mendoza has become one of the great wine regions of the world. The name of both province and Argentinas’s third largest city, Mendoza town…