Seaside Towns in Istria: Rovinj and Pula

When Istria markets itself as the New Tuscany, in some ways it’s exaggerating (e.g., the food and wine, on which I’ll post next, is disappointing), and in other ways, it’s selling itself short. As an example of the latter, Istria has not only the picturesque hill towns described in my last post, but also it [...]

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Hill Towns in Istria: Mrgani, Motovun, Groznjan

After having spent eight days exploring Istria, the peninsula in the northern part of Croatia that markets itself as “the new Tuscany.” Visually, I’ve decided that many Istrian towns lived up to the description. Hill towns glowed gold in a warm, spring sun, and all the ones we visited were crowned by weathered stone buildings, [...]

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Ljubljana: Lovely and Lively, even on Easter Sunday

We arrived in Ljubljana last night with few expectations, figuring only that we would be hard pressed to find any open restaurants or stores today, which is Easter Sunday. But it turns out that Ljubljana has such a lively, gracious cafe culture that not even Easter Sunday prevents crowds of friends and family from gathering [...]

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Abercrombie & Fitch: American retail in London

Good Friday is a public holiday in the UK, which means I had the day off from work. Jon and I are leaving for a ten-day vacation tomorrow (Slovenia and Croatia with our friends from college), but the weather was so sunny and inviting today, we started our holiday in town by picnicking in Hyde [...]

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Windsor Castle – Yo to the Queen

Finally, after living in the UK for about 570 days, we ventured outside of London to see Windsor Castle, Queen Elizabeth II‘s weekend getaway. Because I’m a train fan, there were only two options for reaching Windsor: a 1-hour direct train ride from Waterloo or a 1-hour ride from Paddington with a transfer at Slough [...]

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