"The Tao of Travel: Enlightenments from Lives on the Road" by Paul Theroux (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; $25). Paul Theroux celebrates his decades of wandering the globe in his latest book by collecting the best writing about travel from others, whose work shaped him as both a reader and a traveler. He writes of the…
Voyages end. Our bubble of civility burst in Miami, as Azamara Journey docked after two weeks at sea from Rome. We arrived in Miami, about 600 of us aboard the cruise ship (right, docked in Tenerife) that had become a temporary home. An old friend once described traveling in luxury as being a part-time millionaire.…
Aside from some turbulence in the Mediterranean the first night out of Rome – the TV on my cabin wall swiveled back and forth for hours – we faced gently rolling seas and chilly air on our way toward the Atlantic at Gibraltar. We made port stops at the walled city of Cartagena, Spain, and at…
I have moved from a small, quiet luxury vessel, plying the mostly placid seas of the Dalmatian Coast. Now, I am sitting among 3,000-plus passengers on a giant ship making a crossing in the November winds of the Mediterranean between Spain and Africa. What a contrast. My previous ship, the Seabourn Odyssey, carrying about 400 passengers,…
In Athens, as I attempted to leave town, I managed to flag down a taxi driver who knew no English. I mean, no English. He didn’t even know the English words for Greek cities. Never heard of Piraeus, which is the port for Athens. For all I know, he had never heard the English word Athens, either.…
Among the occasional advantages of advancing age are the opportunities to return to special places, destinations with meanings from the past. I suspect that I look to see what has changed, and usually I have changed the most. In my first visit to Athens and the Acropolis, images from books, study, and expectations came alive for my…
Never give up the opportunity for a extra day in Paris. My work/play tour schedule ended on a Saturday afternoon, with no need to be in Frankfurt, Germany, before Monday. So, I grabbed an October Sunday in Paris for myself. No plans, no schedule. Rain would mean museums. Sun would dictate a long walk. On…
I began my week with halibut and cod, but now I am on a salmon run. Salmon for dinner three nights in a row is reason enough to travel to the Northwest. My first salmon meal was a filet pan fried, fresh and juicy with veggies and rice, and a glass of local pinot gris, at…
It seems I was the only person in the world who had never been to Powell’s City of Books in Portland, Oregon. Fixed that. Rummaged around Powell’s downtown store – as big as a city block — for more than hour. Got a bit lost in the maze of sections and floors that once held a parking garage.…