Category: Europe
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Paris . . . for book lovers
A man plays a discordant but beautiful tune on a piano in a tiny garret upstairs at Shakespeare and Company. A few steps away, a man in a tiny alcove tentatively pecks out the words of a future bestseller on an ancient Underwood, while in the front room I sit on one of the available…
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Desperately seeking Oscar Wilde
“Where are you Oscar? You scamp,” I muttered to myself as I gazed upon the endless rows of the dead at Cimetière du Père Lachaise. It made me smile. Oscar, I’m sure, would find it funny. Someone he’d never met searching in vain for his lipstick covered tomb. “You know Oscar, I l spent a…
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Newgrange: A Passageway to Ancient Ireland
Cosy is not the word that would normally spring to mind when discussing a prehistoric mound — especially one that contained ancient human remains . . . and some (regrettably) newer ones. But the Neolithic burial site known as Newgrange in the midst of the bucolic Irish countryside feels safe . . . comforting even.…
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Florence: Hercules and Cacus
The light in Florence is unlike any I’ve seen anywhere else. It is so warm this city always seems to have a golden glow. I was too late to get into the Uffizi Gallery on my first day so I bought a ticket for the next day. Back outside, I whiled away my time gazing…
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A Roman in Vienna
Vienna . . . personally, I didn’t like the Austrian capital when I visited in the spring of 2010 and I usually fall in love with everywhere I travel. It was too perfect with its oversized baroque buildings and wide boulevards celebrating a vanished empire that never really accomplished much. One has to wonder really…
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Bohemian Rhapsody: Český Krumlov
The journey to the medieval town of Český Krumlov did not start off well. Our guide failed to show in Prague after a night spent chasing the green fairy leading to a revolt among the new additions to our tiny tour who were threatening to go rogue and take off to Vienna on their own.…
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Versailles: Wandering in the Sun King’s Private Gardens
Versailles. Few names conjure up images of total decadence, beautiful art and aristocratic ego run amok as the Château de Versailles. Located on the outskirts of Paris, France’s kings ruled their country and overseas empire from the sprawling palace from 1682, when Louis XIV (the Sun King) shifted his court here, until the French Revolution…
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Giants of Hungary’s Communist Past
Whenever dictatorships fall, their monuments fall, too. It’s part of the heady celebration of liberation — the need to literally pull down these hated symbols that have for too long cast shadows across city squares and loomed over a country’s citizens. But for history buffs, the destruction of these relics paying tribute to a dead…