The islands of Rhodes and Malta have two things in common—their history with the medieval Knights Hospitallers and their huge feral and domestic cat populations. You’ll find hundreds of cats wandering all over the towns, religious monuments, and ancient fortresses of both communities.
The mother of all Bastille Day parades stretches on the morning of July 14 from the Arc de Triomphe down the Champs-Élysées and up Rue Royale to the Place de la Madeleine on the Right Bank of Paris. For one day each year, the ultra-civilized French put down […]
Most people wouldn’t associate the term “Indian Summer” with southern California, but that’s what we came back to this time. None of the natural splendor of a New England Autumn, but an unusual elevation of temperatures along with a lazy breeze that reminded us of Tanglewood in the […]
The word “ghetto” might have been the name of a pair of foul-smelling foundries located in the outer reaches of Cannaregio, a key Sestiere, or district, of Venice. When the Doge Leonardo Loredan and the Serenissima exiled their 700 Jews there on 29 March, 1516, the moniker stuck. From […]
You would have thought you were on a movie set. We followed a dowdy, middle-aged couple all the way down to the Library of Celsius in the Ephesus ruins, as the husband juggled his over-sized camera and barked staging and posing directions, while the wife shoved her airspace […]
As the King of the gods, Zeus controlled the thunderbolts and could do just about anything he wanted. But on the subject of his compulsive womanizing, he ran in terror from his wife Hera. After one particular tryst with the brainiac Mitas, he grew so concerned that he naturally swallowed her (don’t […]
Mention the Pietà, and most people think of Michelangelo’s delicate 1499 masterpiece in Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome. The Virgin Mary holds the crucified Jesus in an embrace that is equal parts sadness, beauty, and piety. But there are dozens of Pietàs across Europe, all evoking similar emotions. […]
My favorite lame travel joke used to be: “If it’s Tuesday, this must be Belgium.” On the current voyage, the new one is: “If you’ve seen one Acropolis, you’ve seen ’em all.” Except… The Greek word technically refers to the summit of a hill, with or without a […]
Something about the lone Adonis on this precipice atop the Temple of Zeus on the Athenian Acropolis seriously intrigued me—to the point that I took 20 shots in uncooperative lighting to get the photo. There was no visible means of access to his perch, which only added to […]
Our friend Rick Botts has a favorite joke: “Don’t be a sheep and follow the herd.” [The joke being that sheep flock and cows herd, so if you’re a sheep following the herd, you are by definition a chronic non-conformist.] He told us this after I confessed to […]
A Boy’s Life #2: Like many an English schoolboy, I had a fascination with the Ordo Fratrum Hospitalis Sancti Ioannis Hierosolymitani, or The Order of Knights of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem. The Knights Hospitallers, like their rivals, The Knights Templars, defined chivalry in the Middle […]
