#30. Norway.
A Lost Journal This post is about Norway, but it begins in Egypt. As with most of what I write here, it started as a stream of thought, spilling from my mind into a notebook. Dangerous. I felt inspired; it all came together somewhere between Amsterdam and Cairo, only for that notebook to vanish on […]
Portugal: Porto, Madeira and Overtourism
https://youtu.be/3KkNEvkCkJI A Growing Problem Anyone following international news these days may be acquainted with the wave of backlash in many European places in the face of overtourism. It’s a phenomenon that as a destination marketer in my prior life I was always baffled by. How could you have too many tourists? They bring money, boost […]
On Being Lost
I can remember it as though it were yesterday: that fallen down tree; the ditch to my right made muddy from the recent rain; my bike off in the distance that I had dropped after I realized that I could ride it no further into the woods. I remember sitting down on that tree as […]
#29. Turkey
https://youtu.be/XkK0OGbWB8A The Journey Begins That damn clock. The happy chiming cut the silence of the night at three past midnight. I have no love for the thing, but for this day to work it was a necessity. I quickly got ready and I met the driver outside, on my way to SAW airport, the “second” […]
#28. United Arab Emirates
https://youtu.be/STP525pSnpQ Striking Out I didn’t know what to expect on my first trip overseas. Outside of trips to the East Coast or to Florida to visit my grandma, the prospect of getting on a plane and flying to the other side of the ocean was… well… foreign to me. I recall the excitement and the […]
#27: Luxembourg. The Fortress.
The Enigma A country like Luxembourg, to an American at least, is at once perplexing. Such a small slice of land, sandwiched between two world powers which have often played the lead role in major events of world history. Luxembourg often has seemed merely collateral damage in the bigger stories we read in the history […]
The One Where We Went on a Christmas Road Trip
https://youtu.be/xZ-DPCJACYs In the winter, the people of the Netherlands for good reason generally seem to seek someplace warmer. Our neighbors went to the Canary Islands. The French Riviera is popular. Some even fly all the way to the Caribbean and pass the days laying on a beautiful sandy beach in America. So naturally, when our […]
A Winter Day in Amsterdam
A Winter Long Past I can still remember it: that Christmas morning in 2000 when my stepdad, Ken, bought me a bike. I insisted on riding it all around the freshly fallen snow of Leebrook Drive in Cincinnati. Sliding on the small hills of the empty streets, all of the sane kids still warm in […]
Going Off-Script in London
https://youtu.be/x2Z7bVPjX-s?si=fbuRzETeEnpWUM5r Getting There The short walk from Trafalgar Square down to Big Ben was fraught with many tears, comments that walking was not an acceptable form of transportation, and demands that an Uber must be called immediately under the threat of a meltdown which was already partially underway. This walk, a mere few blocks, was […]
Part VI – Acquafondata
https://youtu.be/IO9DZCKf-bc Preface: The small municipality of Acquafondata lay high in the mountains at the nexus of the Winter Line and the Gustav Line, the fortified Axis defensive lines where Generalfeldmarschall Albert Kesselring’s Army Group C made their stand against the US 5th Army as it pushed towards Rome. This tiny handful of less than a […]
