Ostia is about a half hour train ride away from the center of Rome, back in the direction of the airport and the coast. In fact Ostia was the port for Rome in ancient times, until it fell out of favor. Slowly the city became covered with silt …
Hiding behind the ancient dirty exteriors of the buildings of the old city of Rome are beautiful palaces, with works of art as beautiful as those in the Vatican Museum. We Romans know how to live! So says Nino, our guide for our day at the Vatican. He …
We began our outing to Rome with a walkabout starting at our hotel. The hotel, Smeraldo, was very conveniently located just two blocks from Piazza Fiori, and from there a quick walk to Piazza Navona and then the Pantheon. The group shot above was taken in front of the Pantheon …
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All of our students arrived safely by 11:00 last night. We got them up early this morning for a bit of sightseeing and wandering around Valletta. We all did The Malta Experience, which gave us an amazing overview of the history of this island dating back to 4000 BC …
more ...A confession: I like my creature comforts. I like my nice modern home with in-floor heating and its “open concept” design. I like my big screen TV. I like my big kitchen with my fancy range, large refrigerator. I like things that are new and clean. I think that is …
more ...After a short morning flight from Siem Reap, we arrived in Bangkok, for what seems a bit more like an extended layover than an actual stop on our trip. We leave for Malta in a few hours at 1:05 a.m. For our last night of our Asian adventure …
more ...Today was another one of those days that was thought-provoking, uplifting, and inspiring. This morning we had a new guide, who took us to his own village and showed us his own house. That experience will be a part of a post that has been brewing for a week or …
more ..."Those stairs are too steep," said our guid Sina. Those stairs must be climbed I said to myself. We were only about an hour into our afternoon of bike riding when we came across this out of the way temple. The staircases are at about a 60-70 degree angle to …
more ...Wake up call, 4:30 a.m. Oh-dark-thirty as some would say. After a full day of travel yesterday, from Halong Bay, and a crazy arrival process in Siem Reap, we started our first full day in Cambodia plenty early. Our guide and driver met us at reception at 5 …
more ...Note: I wrote the first part of this post as a draft, while in Cambodia, and then forgot to "un-draft" it. So I just realized four months later that it has not been finished or published. I will finish and publish it now.
Some of my earliest memories are of …
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