Whatever Carol feels might be demonstrated as my wizardry when it comes to flying standby (and maybe that switch from Rome to Venice via our Eurail Pass to nab a couple of first class seats home might qualify), most assuredly went out the window when I stepped into the shower in our Dublin hotel […]

   Carol and I leave for Ireland this week. She continues to nudge Rick Steves’s guidebook Ireland my way, and I keep nudging it back. I’m not being an idiot, at least not in this case. I’m also not being a snob just because I’ve been to Ireland once. That was more than 50 years ago, and about […]

   If you’ve read these travel blogs of the past few weeks, and have gained nothing in terms of useful information, tips, perspective or growth at any level, then I’ve accomplished precisely what I set out to do.    I like the going.  Once there, I like the staying. A good accommodation – comfy couch, sizable fridge filled […]

   We had just settled into perfect seats in a nearly empty carriage when they came aboard and slid into seats just behind us. Until then, it had seemed like our last train ride in Europe would be a good one: seats in the direction of train and a quiet ride all the way into Sintra. […]

Photo credit: Carol Madigan    The bad news about Cascais is that it’s a beach resort. The good news about it was that if this was to be our last day in Lisbon, it meant we wouldn’t be daytripping to Sintra, which by all accounts was steep and overrun by selfie-crazed tourists (present company included) […]

Photo Credit: Carol Madigan    If you travel like me (relax, almost no one does) then arriving somewhere simply means you’re ready to go somewhere else. No city seems to capture the essence of “somewhere else” quite like Lisbon, where somewhere else is only a 30 or 40-minute ferry or local train ride away. Barcelona (Figueres), […]

   The cab ride from our hotel to the apartment seemed to leave the thriving Lisbon behind for a chock a block residential sterility. But a fully stocked grocery store was just around the corner, as was a metro station. We were not to be isolated after all, and my first trip to the grocery yielded […]

The 12:00 to Badajoz  The 14:09 to Extremadura  The 17:27 to Lisbon     Rick Blaine had an easier time getting on the last plane to Lisbon out of Casablanca than it would seem Carol and I had in getting there from Seville. Say goodbye to the train-is-the-destination guiding principle for this trip. From here on in […]

Photo credit: Carol Madigan    I think these ridiculously narrow, old city Seville sidewalks are how tightrope walkers train. Yet our’s led directly to a barber shop. No, I’m not belaboring a cliché.  Carol had been “advocating” a haircut since we landed in Europe. But I was crafty enough to put it off by offering, “we’re […]

Photo credit: Carol Madigan    Since the Spanish social evening doesn’t begin until a typical (senior) American one ends, Carol and I were going to have to pace ourselves (read: take a nap) in order to be ready to attend our first professional European soccer game, which didn’t kick off (is that what they call the […]