Joe Benning Photography

Travel & Photo Blog

  •   Reston, VA

Plantations in Rural Louisiana

Our initial stops in Louisiana included two plantation houses and grounds. The first was the Houmas House, named after the Houmas Indian tribe. The second was the Oak Alley plantation, named to reflect the magnificent collection of oak trees that form a canopy leading up to the entrance to the house. The plantation houses were […]

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The Big Easy

So we traveled to New Orleans—on Thanksgiving day no less, to begin a Mississippi Rover cruise with Viking. Despite all the news reports of horror shows at airports, we had a very smooth flight. We got to the hotel early and our room was ready. That’s tough to beat. We got to the Big Easy […]

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Ginkgo Grove 2023

The state of Virginia maintains an arboretum, complete with an experimental farm (The Blandy Experimental Farm) that is managed by the University of Virginia.  There students and ecologists maintain the farm and conduct experiments using a wide range of trees and plants.  Blandy’s Ginkgo Grove is one of the largest public Ginkgo groves in America, […]

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Living in Tuscany

We are finally back after spending most of September in Tuscany, Italy. We had actually planned to get to Florence from Aix-en-Provence by train but a rock slide in the Alps covered the train tracks leading from France to Italy, so that plan got shelved. In the end we managed to fly to Florence from […]

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Living in Provence

We recently spent 3 weeks living in Provence in a trip sponsored by the Smithsonian. Among other things we took a French language immersion course, a cuisine course and a course in French art and culture. After 3 weeksm=, we headed off to Florence, Italy. For more photos from. Provence, please follow the link below. […]

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Museum of the Shenandoah Valley

The Museum of the Shenandoah Valley (MSV) Friday, June 30, 2023 Back in the USA for almost a full month, we paid a visit with friends to the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley (MSV) in Winchester, Virginia.  By car, the Museum complex is about 1 hour and 15 minutes from Reston Town Center, but it […]

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End of the Line: Barcelona & Girona

3 Glorious Days in Barcelona & Girona When we sailed into Barcelona on May 30 we were ready for a planned 3 day stop with a side trip to Girona.  Except for what we needed for the next few days, our luggage was on its way back to the States.   We checked into a […]

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Back on the European Mainland

Back to Mainland Europe June 1, 2023 Granada, Spain We arrived in the Spanish province of Granada on the European mainland on May 28, 2023. Now I know how Columbus must have felt after he landed in the New World and finally got a halfway decent WIFI signal. Well, that might be a slight exaggeration, […]

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Last Day in Africa

Rock the Casbah Agadir, Morocco  May 29, 2023 We sailed into Morocco on Thursday, the 26th of May, for our last day on the African continent. Overall we found the people living in Africa to be extraordinarily friendly and welcoming. They constantly waved hello and seemed eager to tell us about their countries. But the […]

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