Although dawn comes too early, I am still excited to stick my head up from below deck and see what the world offers today. I feel the sun’s warmth and admire the soft pink sky. The marina at Kos is waking up. People shuffle about, pelicans are making a mess and skinny meowing cats are […]
Sailing into Patmos, a quintessentially Greek island in the Dodecanese, a layer of stress easily melts away and we have not a care in the world. We tie up at the marina, and get ready to explore. It is September 11, 2001. My friends and I rent scrappy little mopeds and head out of town […]
Every 20 feet heavily accented invitations are called out to me as I walk past each shop on the cobblestone pedestrian streets of Kusadasi, a small town on the western coast of Turkey. “Lady in blue jacket, come in here. We have the nicest ceramics,” calls one man. Several others offer “free Wi-Fi for you”. […]
Thick sour cigarette smoke welcomed me at the Istanbul Ataturk Airport and it was umm….not welcome. Trying to escape the fumes, I ducked behind one offending smoker and instead met an invisible wall of bus and taxi exhaust. After traveling for nearly 24 hours, I simply wanted a fresh salad, a hot shower and a […]
Once upon a time there was city in Germany called Berlin, and it had been divided into two sections, East Berlin and West Berlin, thanks to the Soviets not wanting the East Germans to escape into a free and prosperous Western society. A 12’ tall concrete wall had been erected around West Berlin, effectively closing […]
Моско́вский метрополите́н – Moskovsky metropoliten – Moscow Metro I cannot read Cyrillic. Nor can my sister who was traveling with me. But we still stood in the underground Moscow Metro station with a color coded transit map in hand, and thought that if at least we couldn’t read, we could at least decipher the red, blue […]