23 Saturday Jan 2016
Playa Conchal
This part of Costa Rica – the northern Pacific Coast – is a paradise of beaches and not much else. (This is why you’ve read nothing uplifting about our visits to ancient Mayan ruins.) Yesterday we visited Playa Conchal (Beach of Shells), recommended for having the clearest blue water around.
11 Monday Jan 2016
Posted in Accommodations, Travel
When we started planning our Costa Rica trip, I filled out one of those online quizzes from the tourist bureau about what I wanted to do and see. Rain forest? Sounds hot and humid. Cloud forest? I live in Portland; don’t need no cloud forest. Ziplining? No. Fishing? Um, no. Volcanoes? Not really. Jungle trip to see crocodiles, poisonous frogs, howling monkeys, boa constrictors and crocodiles? Absolutely NOT. I cannot stand anything even vaguely reptilian.
I was able to check Beach and Lunch, but there was no little square for Shopping. I abandoned the quiz and just Googled “Best Beaches in Costa Rica” and found one that had a cute town attached. That was Tamarindo.
21 Wednesday Oct 2015
Posted in Accommodations, Gallery
The back yard in Uglich
In the small town of Uglich on the Volga, which has its medieval charm and also its unpainted tumbledown shacks, we visited Olga in the new house she built after retirement. It was a largish but simple two story white brick house. In the back was the vegetable and flower garden that every Russian householder wants and treasures,
Viking Cruise Lines arranges for its passengers to visit with real locals. This was our home visit.
13 Tuesday Oct 2015
Posted in Travel
Lenin’s corpse in perpetual repose. He’s freshened up every now and then, but his is probably not the afterlife he had in mind.
I kept wondering why the buses from the boat went to the Kremlin over and over again. After all, Moscow is an enormous city. But the Kremlin, which is the old walled city where Moscow was born in the Tenth Century, is not the gray place of newsreels. My childish mind likes color and clever design, and that I found aplenty.
08 Thursday Oct 2015
Posted in Accommodations
The Moscow Radisson
In our last episode, we were tossed out of gate C30 in Copenhagen because our visas would not be valid until the next day, therefore, we could not yet travel to Russia. “The Russians are very strict about this,” the Danish gate woman said. Of course our generation was brought up to be terrified of Russians, so we sure didn’t want to push it. Besides that, we were dog tired. I was secretly wishing for a real nap.
14 Tuesday Jul 2015
Posted in Accommodations
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Last week we escaped to the unique Oregon Coast town of Seaside for a few days.
19 Friday Jun 2015
Posted in Accommodations
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The balcony today
Tom wrote in his last post about our difficult move to Expat Basecamp, the heart attack he suffered because of it, and his need to chill, which he did for about seven minutes.
12 Thursday Mar 2015
The first fort at the village of Montrésor, just south of the Loire, was built by the celebrated Folque Nerri, a count of Anjou who was famous for being both violent and pious, and a great architect too. Apparently, he made four pilgrimages to atone for his sins, and then went out and slaughtered another five thousand soldiers. If your history goes far back enough, I guess you can be anything you want.
23 Monday Feb 2015
We have very little on our calendar, but the Saffron Fair (Foire de Safran) in nearby Preuilly-sur-Claise was an absolute must. I love making paella, and saffron is required. I always thought the spice was Spanish, due to the paella thing, but it turns out it flourishes in all kinds of places, including the rich agricultural ground around our French neighborhood. Every day I learn more about how ignorant I am.
15 Sunday Feb 2015
da Vinci self portrait
Time was when French kings adopted Italian artists like puppies. François I adopted Leonardo da Vinci because François wanted Italy and kept failing to win it, but its bling was nonetheless irresistible. At the king’s invitation, da Vinci traveled from Milan to the city of Amboise via donkey in 1516, carrying the Mona Lisa in his saddlebag, and stayed there until his death in 1519.
The Expat Almanac 