Fairies are said to calm the horses living at the Irish Stud, so ethereal sprites are welcome though seldom seen using their fairie doors. By Liz Campbell Why do we travel? To stand awestruck at nature’s vibrant sculpting of rock and sand in the Grand Canyon or Rainbow Mountain? Or delight in human landscapes like…
A wave of terror washed over me as I squinted through the windshield and drove a Trabant in Berlin, Germany. There were other cars on the street around me, and hordes of pedestrians crowded the sidewalks. This was no time to be faint-hearted! My damp hands clutched the steering wheel with a death grip as…
By: Susan McKee Yerevan is disconcerting. At first glance, Armenia’s largest city looks like any European capital – bustling streets, tall buildings, lots of shopping and an atmosphere of purposeful hustle. When I first arrived, I walked outside my hotel and looked around at Republic Square. Beside me was a chic sidewalk café filled with…
Not your average Mardi Gras. Malta’s pre-Lenten Carnival emphasizes history and culture over skin and pulchritude. But revelers dressed as Queen Victoria and her court have a grand time nonetheless. By Liz Campbell The music is upbeat; the busy streets are overflowing with garishly costumed revelers. Nearby, a giant Sean Connery is playing the bagpipes,…
Baden-Baden, the idyllic spa town at the foot of Germany’s Black Forest, draws spa-goers to its thermal waters and wine enthusiasts to its nearby vineyards. Walkers stroll the flower-dotted paths and hikers can trek up hills or attempt to summit the 2,191-ft Merkur Mountain.
The Romans discovered the thermal waters 2,000 years ago, as
By Jacqueline Swartz Returning to Athens after more than a dozen years seemed like an emotional Odyssey. Would it still be the city I knew so well? Would I be able to appreciate the creative unpredictable, even when it turned infuriating? Would the people I knew from years of writing dispatches for Canada’s leading publications…
Things to Love About the Luberon By Jacqueline Swartz My first encounter with a Luberon local is in downtown Cavaillon, the town that serves as the hub of the Luberon. Settling in with my coffee at a bakery café called Maison Auzet, I am introduced to a robust, white-haired man. Gerard Auzet is a retired…
By David DeVoss After being forced to flee the chaos of Lebanon to the island of Cyprus late last month, an American woman on her first vacation to the Mediterranean was asked what she thought about her involuntary place of refuge. “I think Cyprus is heaven,” she said unequivocally. “I should have come here in…
It was a foggy June day in the year 793 A.D. when several longboats with dragon’s-head prows silently appeared out of the fog bound for the Lindisfarne monastery off the Northumbria coast. Howling like wolves, the Vikings methodically set about the business of slaughter. Some monks were killed midway through their prayers. Others were felled trying to defend their hand-lettered vellum books. Those who failed to die quickly suffered “the blood eagle,” a terminal torture in which a man’s lungs were ripped from his chest and allowed to flap like crimson wings until the screams subsided. And then, just as quickly as they had come, the Vikings disappeared into the cold gray mist of the North Sea, taking with them golden chalices, silk tapestries and intricately carved triptychs while leaving behind a legacy of fear. For the next 300 years, nobles and clergy alike ended their nightly prayers with the whispered supplication: A furore Normannorum libra nos, Domine – “From the fury of the Northmen deliver us, Oh Lord.”