Photo credit: Carol Madigan Since Carol likes to find things, and I prefer things to find me, we’ve adapted to each other’s preferences and enjoy a mutually agreeable compatibility on the road. But every road has a bump, and we hit one today. “I had failed to maintain a Nash Equilibrium, and instead achieved  Champagne […]

Photo credit: Carol Madigan    Carol had already outlined what our first full day in Barcelona would consist of. Plaza Catalunya was the premier square of the city, and La Rambla the famous promenade and commercial strip that begins at the plaza and ends at the marina. It was a walking tour, and while Carol looks […]

The 14:54 to Barcelona     Judging by how full our first class carriage was, we were smart to roll the dice and reserve our seats for the TGV to Barcelona back in the states before we were sure we had seats on the plane to Paris and a confirmed hotel there. Even that early, however, the […]

DL232 to CDG    Regular readers of this space (and Catholics may possibly earn a plenary indulgence for doing so) might think we’re still on the road since early March. But this is part two of our Eurail journey that picked up again on Easter Sunday, after an almost three-week hiatus, partly to host a visit […]

The 13:53 Frecciarossa (back) to Venice     Call it hitchhiking at 30,000 feet. Thanks to a perk Delta Airlines extended me after Carolyn’s passing, I am able to fly free on a standby status to wherever Delta flies. And I’m able to add a companion with the same status. Since I hitchhiked in Europe in the […]

   I was sitting quietly at a family dinner recently, when Carol’s older daughter April sat down next to me and said, “I know you don’t like to talk at these things, but I want to hear about your Lisbon plans.”    And so it was on one of our final days in Rome, Carol and I […]

  My first experience with the wine from the Frascati region outside Rome was way back in the 1980s introduced by a work colleague in upstate New York. I remember it as crisp and clean; the colder it was, the cleaner it tasted. Forty years later, Carol and I were in a van being driven to […]

   Photo credit: Carol Madigan Once in awhile, the Travel God (I call mine Claude) inserts themselves (yes, he is a trannie) to point out the narrow mindedness of my travel philosophy. This time it was to show me that all of Rome was not suffocatingly overrun by tourists dutifully checking off their “things to […]

Photo credit: Carol Madigan The 10:26 Frecciarossa to Rome     All roads lead to Rome, and all roads in Rome lead to the Colosseo. There’s little sense in going to Rome and not putting this, the Forum and Circus Maximus on your itinerary. The problem is every American in Bermuda shorts and legs like golf tees […]

Photo credit: Carol Madigan    The abrupt passing of my birthday having exhausted my supply of get-out-of-sightseeing-free cards, the remainder of our stay in Venice would be focused on seeing things. I was fine with this setback for two reasons. One, I could see the joy rise in Carol’s face as she saw the things she […]