When we finally arrived, we began our trip to Portugal with a Road Scholar led cruise on the Douro River. The cruise was truly magnificent, as was the Road Scholar guide, Lucia Gomez. We got lucky with the weather which was extravagantly good, and the scenery which was stunningly beautiful along the riverbank. In our […]
Read More »Well, we are back after a 1 month trip to Portugal that included a cruise on the Douro River and a 3-week stay in Lisbon. Actually, we almost didn’t make it. One of our connecting flights was from Frankfurt airport in Germany and the ever helpful pilots union of Lufthansa announced one day before we […]
Read More »To mark the beginning of the new year we took a short trip to Colonial Williamsburg. It was just fabulous. We stayed in a wonderful hotel, the Williamsburg Inn. The luxury hotel is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. It was originally built in 1937 by John D Rockefeller as part of an […]
Read More »Well, here we are in Devon, England at the Mill Inn. We had to cancel the first part of our plan which was a Road Scholar trip to Wales. Mary Anne managed to salvage the second part—a visit to see our friends Sally and Michael Oxlade. We have now begun a trip with them through […]
Read More »Our ship anchored today in the Mediterranean and we came ashore at Villefranche, France. We took a drive through Nice and neighboring towns, on our way to the village of Saint Paul de Vence. On our drive we passed the Hotel Negresco, where we stayed for vacation about 40 years ago. Today is the 80th […]
Read More »Our ship stopped in Livorno, Italy and many passengers opted to head into Florence or other areas of Tuscany—we decided to take a walking tour of Pisa. Pisa is another medieval walled town, which today houses approximately 90,000 residents, and an additional 50,000 students at the three universities in Pisa. The town has huge […]
Read More »Today was very special—we went to see the summer palace for Popes—Castelo Gandolfo. Opened to visitors in 2016, it has served as the summer palace for Popes since the Seventeenth Century. Castelo Gandolfo is about 28 kilometers outside of Rome. Pope Francis never spent a single night there, which is probably why it was opened […]
Read More »Rome is a bit busy these days, so when our ship docked at the port, we decided to go to a nearby medieval town, Tarquinia. The town dates back to the ninth century BC, and sits on top of a very steep hill overlooking the Tyrrhenian sea. The town is enclosed by medieval walls and […]
Read More »When our ship docked in Naples, we had the opportunity to visit the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Pompeii was instantly buried beneath 30 feet of volcanic ash and cinder when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D. People living in the city perished instantly when the volcanic ash poured down on the city. We had […]
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