That Sounds Fishy

Seafood is very popular in Portugal, unsurprisingly given its long coastline. For historical reasons from 500 years ago and a connection to Newfoundland in Canada, the Portuguese love cod, which they have to import. Grocery stores sell huge salted and dried codfish fillets called Bacalhau, which are rehydrated before preparation for eating. Apparently these could […]

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 […]

Azulejos

Azulejos are the tiles which decorate many structures around Portugal, including on and in dozens of buildings in Porto. Some examples are shown below. They help brighten up this otherwise grey granite-heavy city. While there are plenty of majestic buildings in Porto, many structures are worn down and look as if they are from a […]

Porto, Portugal

First I should say that Porto is a very different place than all those eastern and central European cities I visited earlier on this trip! Architecture, people, climate, and more are all notably different, as would be expected. It feels quite unique and very old. It’s been raining off and on continuously since I’ve been […]

Koreans Love Zagreb

When visiting Zagreb in the past year, Colleen and I saw very few Asian tourists, but on this trip there are clearly many more. Our tour guide says that they are mostly Koreans! The reason is that there have been very popular Korean TV shows filmed in Zagreb, and as such there is a direct […]

Neanderthals

On Saturday I rented a car and drove up north of Zagreb to explore a bit. First I visited an excellent and thorough museum about a large Neanderthal find (the largest Neanderthal bone collection in the world), then after a drive through some beautiful autumnal countryside scenery in the mountains, I explored an old hilltop […]

Uncommonplace

One of the aspects of Zagreb I enjoy is that it is so quirky, especially for being in Croatia, known for being a fairly conservative and traditional place. It’s as if most Croatian artists move to Zagreb (they probably do). The following brochure is an example of the kind of surprising things you can find […]

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 […]