This is part of a series called Pan European Sojourn 2023 Leaving Paris, we started the next phase our trip — Eastern and Central Europe. This would be the challenging part — trying to understand and sort out the complex, and often violent history of the Balkans. On its surface, it was difficult for me…
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This is part of a series called Pan European Sojourn 2023 Before meeting friends in Bucharest for the Eastern and Central Europe portions of the trip, we decided to take a little time off in France. We hadn’t been to Paris for nearly 20 years and decided that would be a great place to hole…
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This is part of a series called Pan European Sojourn 2023 Today we arrived in St. Tropez. Unlike Marseille and Nice, St. Tropez is actually in Provence. There has been a settlement here since 68 AD when it was known as Heraclea. Until the 1950s, St. Tropez was a quiet little fishing village. That all…
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This is part of a series called Pan European Sojourn 2023 This morning we arrived in Sète, known as the Venice of Languedoc, France. It was founded by Louis XIV in 1666 to create an exit for the Canal du Midi into the Mediterranean Sea. It rapidly grew and expanded, moving from just an important…
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This is part of a series called Pan European Sojourn 2023 Today we headed east to visit Alicante, which is a port city on Spain’s southeastern Costa Blanca and the capital. Some 800 – 900 years ago, Alicante marked the frontier between the Muslims and Christian, which led to the building a chain of castles…
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This is part of a series called Pan European Sojourn 2023 When we left Barcelona, the rainstorm of the previous day got a boost with massive winds. Luckily, it subsided during the night, and today we visited Palma de Mallorca, one of the Balearic islands within the archipelago of eastern Spain. We learned, however, that…
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This is part of a series called Pan European Sojourn 2023 Well, we are off again! After a couple of big recent trips to immerse ourselves in the power and beauty of raw nature, this trip has no real design per se. Rather than seeing how nature shaped cultures in order to survive, this trip…
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Today we visited Jan Mayen Island, a tiny volcanic island in the North Atlantic that is 600 miles west of Norway and 350 miles north of Iceland. It is a territory of Norway, has no native population, and only has 18 rotational people who run the weather and radio stations. The skyline is dominated by…
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This is part of a series called Nordic Sojourn 2022 Today, we visited Poolepynten, a headland at the eastern coast of the Prins Karls Forland in Spitsbergen, Svalbard. This mile long stretch of beach is part of the Forlandet National Park and is home to a group of walruses that use that area to rest. …
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This is part of a series called Nordic Sojourn 2022 This morning dawned bright and sunny, with a temperature in the mid-40s! We entered the Kongsfjorden and are at Ny London, a mining operation that went bust in the early 20th Century. We are at 78 degrees, 55 minutes. As little as 15 years ago,…
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