Menu

Tulum tour is 10-stop shopping for Mexican souvenirs

This temple was the center of Tulum's social and execution network from 1200-1500 AD.

Tulum isn’t what I expected. A couple years ago I went to Ek-Balam, a former seat of the Mayan kingdom north of here. That featured everything from living quarters to warehouses to an acropolis. Even though Ek-Balam’s influence faded later during the empire, I got a feel for what the complexity of a major Mayan city. At Tulum, the first thing we saw as we pulled into a parking lot was a souvenir emporium the size of Wal-Mart. Is there a country that has more souvenirs than Mexico? This place makes Rome look like a fishing village in Greenland. Mexico seems to have as many different brands of tequila as dirty T-shirt messages.
(To read more, click here)

More

Playa del Carmen timeshare spiel is definitely no day at the beach

Would you buy a timeshare from this man? Actually, Alvaro was nicer than most but didn't land the sale.

I’m a veteran of these things. I’ve spent a weekend in Steamboat Springs for $75. I had a condo in Cabo for $50 a night. I know how to say no, a word too many people can’t say to strangers. Timeshare salesmen aren’t strangers to me. After an hour or so, they become annoying, cloying vultures who would lie to their first-born child if it ravaged their savings account for one of their properties.

Some are worse than others. I remember one clown with Marriott who asked everyone in the room where’s the one place they’ve always wanted to spend a week. It don’t matter, he said. They had a property there. When they got to me, I said, “How are your resorts in North Korea?”
(To read more, click here.)

More

Playa del Carmen’s six-star resort scene puts the “high” in high maintenance

The Grand Mayan Resort sports "The Largest Swimming Pool in Latin America."

The Grand Luxxe redefines opulence. The grand villa where I’m quartered has every luxury you can imagine without violating some federal obscenity laws. It’s 2,500 square feet with three huge bedrooms. Mine has a king-size bed covered with enough pillows to house flood evacuees. An above-ground eggshell-white Jacuzzi tub separates the room from a bathroom that has a shower with two different shower heads. Next to the bathtub is a little stand with a carefully rolled towel tied by a decorative bow. Small bottles of bath salt, bathing gel and bubble bath are placed equal distance around the towel. Who knew feng shui extended to toiletries?
(To read more, click here.)

More

Capri is the prettiest island in Europe but bring your banker and … do you like crowds?

Capri, 27 miles off the coast of Naples, is 4 x 1.8 miles and gets 10,000 visitors a day in summer.

I don’t like buying hype. It’s like lobster. It’s good but never quite lives up to its billing. But believe me on this.
Capri is the prettiest island in Europe. I’ve been to so many: Santorini. Ischia. Mykonos. Sicily. Sardinia. All through the Kvarner Islands in Croatia. Nothing is like Capri’s towering cliffs that descend through olive and pine trees into a sea so clear and clean I could drink it. But I’d get sick. It’s too warm. I languidly floated in a Tyrrhenian Sea that’s the blue of an Italian summer sky. I looked down through the depths at an ocean bottom that seemed five feet away instead of 20.
Every turn up the mountainous little isle produced a view more spectacular than the last. Little rocky coves with sunbathers basking next to the sea. Ancient villas sticking out over cliffs with views clear to Naples 26 miles away. Expensive yachts lining a bustling port with tony shops and outdoor cafes.
(To read more, click here.)

More

Rome dining: “World’s Smallest Restaurant” is also world’s most romantic restaurant

At Solo Per Due (Only For Two), couples hand pick their meals and their music in a 19th century home.

The atmosphere of Solo Per Due is like something out of a game show, where contestants see if they can keep from mauling each other before they finish their salad. Solo Per Due is Italian for “Only For Two.” It gets its name from how many people it serves a night. That’s right, two. That’s it. They have one table. That’s it. The couple hand picks their dishes made from ingredients found in the surrounding countryside. They hand pick the music. They call the tuxedoed waiter with a silver bell. The pink 19th century home is lined with artwork and Roman busts. A fireplace is in the corner. It’s a place only a poet like Horace could describe which he probably has. He lived in the remains of an ancient villa on these grounds in the 1st century B.C.
(To read more, click here.)

More

Tuscany Cinghiale festival a great way to pig out on Italian history

Clockwise from upper left: cinghiale cacciatore, cinghiale sausage, cinghiale with polenta.

Wild boar. Huge, beefy, black pigs with curved horns, a demonic reputation and a demeanor to match. Tuscany is lousy with cinghiale. You can see them in forests, in national parks, even outside some rural hotels. No wonder the cinghiale is Italy’s national wildlife symbol. Hanging around Roman men and women for the last eight months, I thought it would be the peacock. However, a peacock feast probably wouldn’t draw much of a crowd. Capalbio’s Sagro del Cinghiale sure does. For the last 49 years, Capalbio has had a five-day cinghiale festival every September.
(To read more, click here.)

More

Traveling to Bratislava: Getting in touch with my inner Marxist

Josef Stalin is a popular figure in Bratislava's KGB bar, which redefines the word "retro."

Bratislava is a capital of a country that prides itself on its rural reputation. Slovaks don’t want to be called country bumpkins, but they don’t want to be called city people, either. It’s like they identify more with a backpack than a briefcase. “There’s a rivalry between Bratislava and the rest of the country. They see Bratislava as a big city which is quite funny since it is quite small.” Those words came from a real bright 24-year-old Bratislava native who’s sharing my train compartment to Prague with me. He’s dressed all in black, from his black-rimmed glasses to his monk-like haircut to his black beard. His button-down short-sleeve black shirt makes him look like a priest in training. But he’s totally astute about life in post-communist Bratislava.
“I love Bratislava,” he said. “It’s not as big as Budapest or Prague but if you find the right people it is a wonderful place to live.”
(To read more, click here,)

More

Retired in Rome Journal: In Eastern Europe, discussion about communism is only a bunk bed away.

Hincove pleso, at 6,422 feet, comes after a three-hour climb straight up and is on the Polish border.

I will say I was once a closet Marxist. My University of Oregon’s entire sociology department was Marxist. I took Sociology of Education, Sociology of Sport, Sociology of Sport. I found myself walking around campus wearing a black trench coat and a Cossack hat. My education leaned heavily toward a need for more even distribution. The core of evil in society is the discrepancy of wealth, of the bourgeoisie taking advantage of the proletariat. Karl Marx, whose childhood home in Trier, West Germany, I toured in 1978, was a genius. Everyone pulls for the state and the state pulls for everyone. The working class gets equal pay and the state takes care of the rest: housing, food, education.

Then I graduated. I went behind the Iron Curtain and realized something: My sociology professors had never been east of Hartford, Conn.
(To read more, click here.)

More

Retired in Rome Journal: You’re never alone when you hike solo across 11 miles of High Tatras

Popradske pleso from atop 1.2-mile-high Sedlo pod Ostrvou and where I'd spend the night after an eight-hour hike covering 11 miles.

I just finished an eight-hour hike that had my mouth blabbing adjectives at the top of my lungs from high atop Eastern Europe. Yes, eight hours. This was what TravelSlovakia labeled an “easy” hike. Tell that to my thighs. They feel like lead barrels. My shoulders are sagging from carrying a pack up and down a 11-mile ridge. My jogging suit, shorts and T-shirt are drying in this hut’s heated drying room after a torrential downpour that shepherded me down a 1.2-mile mountain. The trail zigzagged down to this gorgeous, crystal-clear lake at the foot of towering rock walls of the same relative grade as elevator shafts.
(To read more, click here.)

More

Retired in Rome Journal: Views from atop Eastern Europe hard to beat in Slovakia

Me high atop Lomnicky stit (8,643 feet). The little blue dot below is the lake next to Zelenom chata I stayed at the night before.

The Himalayas, the Andes, Mt. Kilimanjaro, the Alps, the Rockies. Where they rank in terms of sheer raw physical beauty has bounced around in my mind for years. The Himalayas are the most awesome, an entire stretch of 20,000–29,000-foot mountains across the horizon. Kilimanjaro, mountaineers say, has the best view. The Matterhorn in Switzerland could be the prettiest single mountain, the Andes are pockmarked with volcanoes and the snow on the Rockies make them look like a series of giant ice cream sundaes. But now I have to add one to the mix. Like a Big Sky Conference football team that upsets Oregon, the High Tatras today earned a place in my lifetime mountain rankings. I can’t remember a view that stopped me in my tracks since I saw the sunrise over Africa from atop Kilimanjaro in 1992.
(To read more, click here.)

More

Retired in Rome Journal: Four-day trek starts slow but ends on a very major high

Zelenom pleso ("lake" in Slovak) is what greeted me at the end of my first day's hike, a five-hour uphill slog.

I’m sitting in a big A-frame hut in the middle of the High Tatras and trying to decide what’s the better view: The one to my left through two big picture windows of window boxes filled with pink and white flowers, with a green lake in the background and a craggy mountain climbing to the sky. Snow is on its higher crevices and a series of waterfalls cascade down the rock. Then again, over my right shoulder is a series of picnic benches surrounded by purple wildflowers and the expanse of the thick green forest stretching into the valley I left far below this morning.
(To read more, click here.)

More

Retired in Rome Journal: Opening day of football season — Roman style

Curva Sud's vicious fans were unusually well behaved for A.S. Roma's season opener Saturday night.

so much of what I’ve experienced in this leadup to A.S. Roma’s season reminds me of my 23 years in Denver. Just like before the Broncos season, the city of Rome is buzzing as if the whole town is about to give birth for the first time. New additions coming off A.S. Roma’s highest point total in history have breathless columnists predicting its fourth Serie A (Italian national league) in its 86-year history. Old men in my caffe are talking soccer every morning. I’m overhearing soccer conversations in the gym. A.S. Roma’s red and yellow colors are flying more, whether they’re flags from apartment buildings or jerseys off store shelves. I’m forming bonds with complete strangers just by pulling out my A.S. Roma keychain.
(To read more, click here.)

More
«‹ 44 45 46 47›»