20 Tuesday Aug 2013
Posted in Travel
Those of you who know me know that, one or seven times a week, I go out to survey the merchandise in retail stores to see what’s new, how it is displayed, and how much it costs. Tom calls this shopping. I call it exploring.
16 Friday Aug 2013
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It’s easy to get envious around Lake Como, where tony tourists wander around buying diamonds, dining on $25 plates of pasta, and then retire to $900 hotel rooms. Many of these hotels are set in old villas built in the 1800s on the shores of the lake, most of which are still inhabited by the likes of Giorgio Armani and Giorgio Clooney, plus various obscure zillionaires. In an effort to get up close and personal with the enviable lifestyles of the rich and famous, yesterday we took the Midlake Boat Tour. For fifteen euros, we could hop on and hop off at six towns in the area.
31 Wednesday Jul 2013
Posted in Accommodations, Travel, Video
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We finalized our arrangements on Theotokopoulou Street back in October, 2012 (and recruited our avatars to make a short video, which is here), and now our stay in Greece is about to end. To complete the circle that our avatars began, we take you back to Theotokopoulou Street, this time in person with Louise as host, to see our neighborhood up close, to try to pronounce “Theotokopoulou,” and to meet some of our friends there:
30 Tuesday Jul 2013
Posted in Travel
Right near our street, outside the medieval wall, there is an agricultural fair (photo above) smack in the middle of the dried-up ancient castle moat. I strolled around the other night to take pictures of souvlaki, linens, handicrafts, shoes, honey, raki, and spinach pies.
26 Friday Jul 2013
A panoramic view of the Palace of Minos at Knossos. Click to enlarge (all photos)
If you’re a hiker, a beach bunny, or an armchair archaeologist there are many must-sees on Crete: trails, sandy beaches, and excavations everywhere. For the rest of us dabblers, one of the must-sees is the Palace of Minos at Knossos (“Knossos” for short), a hilltop ruin near Heraklion that was first inhabited in 7000 B.C.
17 Wednesday Jul 2013
Posted in Travel
In my long life I have seldom thought about the Canary Islands, but when I did, I thought they were:
Turns out they are 54 miles off the coast of North Africa, and they are Spanish. They are named after the Canarii tribe of settlers, also from North Africa. The little birds are named after the islands, but they must have all emigrated to pet shops elsewhere.
03 Wednesday Jul 2013
Posted in Travel
Our friend Vicens displays the T-shirt I gave him a few weeks ago. Vicens is a native Catalan speaker.
I have now spent three months trying to decipher Catalan, and have given up hope. But I’ve learned a few words, and these are my favorites:
18 Tuesday Jun 2013
Posted in Accommodations, Travel
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Sunset over Tossa de Mar (click to enlarge)
Don’t let us bore you. It’s just that Tossa de Mar on the Spanish Costa Brava is this incredibly charming place, so when our daughter Sybil came to visit, we had to take her there. She’s been around Europe a bit, but she’d never seen the Mediterranean, or a Roman ruin.
10 Monday Jun 2013
Posted in Travel
Way back last year, before embarking on this adventure, we did a month-long research project on the feasibility of expathood. We did this in the charming and obscure town of Collioure, France, just north of the Spanish border on the Mediterranean. (Read all about it here.) The goal was to see if we could stand:
03 Monday Jun 2013
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Tossa de Mar as it appeared in the 1940s or 1950s.
Tossa de Mar has been home for somebody since the Neolithic days, continuously populated through the early Iberians to the Romans … and now we’re only up to 100 BC.
So Vila Vella enceinte, the ancient walled city located within Tossa de Mar and the only fortified medieval town still standing on the coast of Catalonia, is a journey back in time – way back (Vila Vella was built in 1200 BC). On the first summery day of the season, we climbed up the hill with our friends Vicens and Jeannette to wander within and on top of the ancient walls.
The Expat Almanac 