Architecture-focused travel
Helsinki, Finland, is considered by many to be the “gateway to the East,” dividing Scandinavia from Eastern Europe. Indeed, it spent time as both as part of the Kingdom of Sweden and as part of …
Few people are aware that Budapest is actually two cities, Buda and Pest, situated along the banks of the Danube River. Most visitors stay in Pest – it's got more to offer in terms of …
I spent this past June traveling Tanzania. While in Dar es Salaam, I met a Tanzanian artist named Amen Ntangu. He is self-employed as a batik printmaker. I had the opportunity to interview him and …
Leipzig, in what was East Germany, was one of Europe’s most important music centers. I knew Felix Mendelssohn Barthody and Johann Sebastian Bach lived here. As it turns out, Clara and Robert Schumann, Richard Wagner, …
In the mountainous interior of Greece near Meteora, gigantic granite outcroppings, most of them topped with Christian monasteries, point skyward like fingers tipped in prayer. They are a stone’s throw from the pass of Thermopylae, …
Urbino, a former center of culture during the Renaissance, has largely been forgotten by tourists due to its location in the Marche region of Italy. But, despite having far fewer visitors than its more glamorous …
An old friend and his fiancee were flying into Los Angeles from Texas in July, on their way up to Santa Barbara. They were staying one night in L.A., and asked me to join them …
“Tonight we will see living national treasures!” our guide, Bao Chui, announced dramatically while poking his chopsticks around our noodle lunch in Beijing. To the uninitiated, the Beijing Opera can be either a dazzling visual …
May 22 is the bicentennial of the birth of German composer Richard Wagner. Although born 1813 in Leipzig, the operatic genius has a strong connection to Switzerland. Wagner – then Royal Saxon Court Conductor – …
Thirty miles up I-15 from San Diego, in Escondido, you’ll find Queen Califia’s Magical Circle. This is the unnatural habitat of wild animals that escaped from the imagination of Niki de Saint Phalle. She’s the …
Louisiana’s Great River Road is actually two historic corridors reaching seventy miles from New Orleans to beyond Baton Rouge on either side of the Mississippi. First Spanish, then French, and finally Creole landowners built their …