In celebration of Robert Burns Day in Scotland, we share our favorite pints, places, and provisions from the fair city of Edinburgh. Now, what did we miss?What’s the essence of Edinburgh? I probably need to return to answer that in earnest. But if you visit Edinburgh for a couple of days, here are a handful of things you could see, eat, drink and otherwise … [Read more...]
Europe Travel Articles and Photos
An Ode to Haggis
This is a story about making peace with a squishy edible ball of sheep innards, and a song I rewrote to help me through the process.I have a confession to make. I was afraid of haggis, almost deathly so. You could say I harbored an irrational fear of the stuff. Yes, haggis. … [Read more...]
Scotland’s Eilean Donan Castle
If dreams really do come true, you could say that the Scottish Highland castle of Eilean Donan is proof.Aye, the story -- it goes something like this. … [Read more...]
The Scottish Highlands: Tell Me a Story
Never let the facts get in the way of a good story. -- Mark Twain said it. Scottish storytellers live it.This is a story...about story. Or rather, the importance of stories to the Scottish Highlands.“There was an unwritten rule in the Scottish Highlands,” Chris, our driver and guide, explained. “If someone came to your house seeking shelter and food, you … [Read more...]
Inside Edinburgh Castle, Scotland
In a typical European medieval town, its castle lay at its heart. In Edinburgh, however, its castle is its head -- the head of a fish, to be more precise. The Royal Mile, the main thoroughfare of Edinburgh that spills from the castle forms a sort of spine of the fish to which many closes (alleys) are connected.And although Edinburgh has evolved over the … [Read more...]
Edinburgh Hogmanay: Fire, Culture and Community Usher in the New Year
Celebrations in the shadow of the Winter Solstice. They help us abide darkness and emerge from the shortest day of the year so that we may carry ourselves through deepening cold and, oddly enough, lengthening days until spring returns a few months later.In this context, the measure of a place coming forth from this seasonal inflection might in fact be its … [Read more...]
Happy Holidays and Celebrating the New Year at Hogmanay
As Christmas and the new year approaches, we'd like to wish you and yours a very happy holidays from what was a snowy Berlin (damn you, warm front!).Before we go offline for the next couple of days, we have a couple of announcements for you: our upcoming New Year's celebrations at Hogmanay in Edinburgh and a giveaway featuring some of our travel photos. … [Read more...]
Amsterdam: For the Love of Street Art, Instagram Style
Amsterdam. Romantic canals, medieval trading houses, coffee shops leaking smoke and offering contact highs. A red-light district with voluptuous -- or maybe voluminous -- women seated in oddly-lit windows, looking bored and listless and occasionally interested. Bicycles. Tulips. Van Gogh. Art museums.But street art? … [Read more...]
Vienna Travel: A Beginner’s Guide
This is the beginning of a multi-part series we’re calling “lost destinations” in which we highlight activities and destinations that we’ve experienced previously but haven’t written about extensively or enough apparently, for they surface often in conversation and in questions emailed to us by readers.Our first taste of Vienna came in late December 1998. We’d … [Read more...]
Terraced Vineyards of the Douro Valley, Portugal
Up until our recent travels into the heart of port wine country, and despite countless glasses of the stuff under my belt, I was still tempted to consider port as a heavy drink that was quaffed by older British men with a cigar after a pot roast dinner.Then we traveled deep into the Douro Valley in northern Portugal, the epicenter of port wine. And there, things … [Read more...]