Welcome!

Not Just Another Travel Blog

The thrill of experiencing new places in faraway locales has been my passion since I was a kid.  Well, I hope to bring some new perspectives, entertainment, education, and fun to this site as well as a few sidebars that aren't strictly in the realm of travel.

Outside of trips to visit family in Florida (I'm from Massachusetts), my first real exotic travel experience was a tour of Europe with my parents in 1968 when I was 11.  We sailed from New York on the S.S. France, then the longest ocean liner in the world, and visited England, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Italy, Switzerland, France, and Luxembourg.

The France in New York

Wilderswil, Switzerland

I was excited by that trip initially because we were sailing over, and I had been fascinated by ocean liners ever since I was 4 when my sister was  reading Walter Lord's A Night to Remember (about the sinking of the Titanic), and I had thumbed through the pictures and saw a drawing of the sinking.  However, that trip opened my eyes to a whole new world of different attitudes, cultures, customs, history, and landscapes.  I was determined to return, and I did in 1972 when I spent the summer in Reims, France with my uncle's wartime friends.  There I lived as a Frenchman and did more biking than I had ever done in my life!

Fast forward to 1988 and my wife and I started our own travel  tradition and sailed to Europe on board the Queen Elizabeth 2 and visited England, Switzerland, and the same friends in France

.

The QE2 in Boston

From there, we have been cruising and crossing fairly regularly (even more so now that we're retired!).

So, what can  you expect to see?  I'll report on current and past travels, and since we cruise a lot (almost exclusively on Cunard), I'll provide tours of the ships.  In addition, I'll try to provide some background and history on the places we go.  I'll probably include some tangential topics:  for example, we visited Vienna recently, and I'm building a card model of St. Stephan's Cathedral, so I'll post progress on that.  You can expect to hear music related to performers we've seen on trips (or maybe something that just strikes my fancy apropos of nothing!).  Or, if you are so inclined, I'll take requests on other topics and see if I can oblige.

I hope this will be fun, informative, and interactive.

Sit back, read, and enjoy the ride!  Thanks for visiting!