Fortress-Hopping

It’s hard to believe that it’s been a year and a half since Colleen and I previously visited Croatia’s gorgeous Dalmatian coast. This time we rented a car, and so we have much more flexibility and opportunities. We’re staying in Tisno again (about halfway between Zadar and Split, if you know Croatia), but during this […]

Bless Bless

The Icelandic language retains more of a relationship to Old Norse than do other Scandinavian languages, such as Norwegian. Modern Icelanders can even read the old medieval sagas without too much trouble. Their language hasn’t evolved as much as other Scandinavian languages which were influenced by other European languages, such as French. And even today, […]

Lisboa

Lisbon is not my favorite Portuguese city. Certainly there are some cool attractions and interesting history and beautiful viewpoints. But I much preferred Porto and Sintra, and now that I’ve been in Portugal for over 1.5 weeks, I’m mostly seeing the same Portuguese things again like azulejos, pastel de nata, cod, canned fish, port wines, […]

The Best Country to Visit?

Happy Halloween! 🎃 Conde Nast Traveler readers voted Portugal the best country in the world to visit for the second year in a row. I can see why – it’s got a lot going for it. What’s even more interesting to me is to see that the rest of the top five countries are all […]

Kuna to Euro

On the 1st of January, 2023 (in less than three months as of this writing), Croatia will become the 20th member of the Eurozone, a collection of countries in Europe using the euro currency. A fixed conversion rate was set at 1 € = 7.53450 kuna. Since our previous Croatian visit in April, businesses have […]

Zagreb, Are You Tired of Seeing Me?

This is my fifth arrival into Zagreb, Croatia. I came back again because I love it here. I don’t know exactly why. I met a Californian outside a ruin pub back in Budapest, and his wife had passed, and so he had been traveling solo up from Georgia (the country) and Turkey. He had been […]

Thermal Baths

Budapest is a city worth staying in for more than one week, and I now wish I had sacrificed some Bratislava time for Budapest, but maybe I’ll need to come back one day, hopefully with someone else! What an interesting and different place! I think this is also an indication to me that I need […]

Chakrakow

I had forgotten until just now, but there’s supposed to be one of Earth’s main life energy sources here in Krakow: Adherents to the Hindu concept of chakra believe that a powerful energy field connects all living things. Some believe that, mirroring the seven chakra points on the body (from head to groin), there are […]

Disco Polo

Here’s another Major Meander installment of a series on Google Maps translations of establishment reviews from foreign languages. Here, the source is a set of Google Maps reviews (translated from Polish) for a convenience store in Wrocław. Bonus Notes Donuts and pretzels are both very popular here in Wrocław. There’s a nearby pretzel shop that […]