About 2,000 years ago, in 79 AD, Mount Vesuvius (near Naples) had a huge eruption, over 100,000 times stronger than the atom bombs dropped on Japan. Several communities were destroyed including Pompei and Herculaneum. Because we enjoyed our day so much in Pompeii in 2011, we decided to visit today. Herculaneum […]
Today we are in Trapani, in the northwest corner of Sicily, the largest island in the Mediterranean, and Italy’s southernmost region. It has the lovely European medieval Old Town charm that we have become used to lately. Narrow streets and old buildings are the norm. Given that it is a […]
Today we visited yet another lovely place, Kotor Montenegro. Just cruising in via the bay off the Adriatic coast was a beautiful sight by itself. In the 6th century the Byzantine emperor Justinian I reconstructed the fortress. The old fortified medieval town is characterized by winding streets and squares. Like all of […]
Zadar is the oldest continuously inhabited city in Croatia. It is one of the most popular Croatian tourist destinations and referred to as “Croatia’s new capital of cool” by The Guardian. The Land Gate, built 1543, was once the main entrance to Zadar. Generally, it is another interesting old town to […]
Trieste, pop. 200,000, is in the far northeast section of Italy next door to Slovenia and Croatia. It looks and feels more Austrian than Italian. That can be explained since it was part of the Hapsburg Empire from 1382 to 1918. It was their most important seaport then. The […]
Corfu, Greece Corfu is a Greek Island in the Ionian Sea . Like so many others in this part of the world, it is fun to walk around the charming town. Even the old houses are interesting. […]
Monemvasia, the “Gibraltar of the East”, was founded by the Byzantines in the sixth century. The steep sheer rock made for excellant protection. The entrance to the upper town is through a fortified gate about a mile from the bottom. There are no vehicles inside here; just narrow cobblestone streets […]
Behind Santorini, Mykonos is the most popular island in Greece. It is so charming. All the buildings are clean and white. The exception are the churches. They have red roofs. It is loaded with high end shops and great restaurants. The narrow cobblestone streets purposely wind around to confuse strangers. […]
Thessaloniki is the second largest city in Greece with population exceeding 1,000,000 in the metropolitan area. Many Jews migrated to Thessaloniki following their expulsion from Spain in 1494. They thrived in Ottoman Greece. Jewish population reached 72,000 in the 20th century. 54,000 were sent to extermination camps where they were […]
Istanbul, one of the world’s great cities, is in both Asia and Europe. Having been here several times, we only revisited a couple places this time. The Istanbul Grand Bazaar is one of the oldest shopping malls in the world. The Ottomans took it over in 1453 and covered the […]