If you are addicted to The Fashion Show, if you devour the fall fashion issue of Vogue, if you have an account with Bag, Borrow or Steal (a website where a monthly fee allows you to “borrow” designer handbags and jewelry), if you and your friends have arguments over the…

One of the nicest things about the world’s greatest art galleries is that they tend to be in the world’s greatest cities – which is incredibly convenient. Once you’ve walked through kilometres of galleries and squinted at countless treasures until your arty-farty quotient is exhausted, you can soak up the…

Can children go on a river cruise? It depends. CroisiEurope is the only river cruise line to allow children under the age of three without exceptions. Emerald, Riviera and Scenic require that kids be 12 or older. And one company bans kids altogether. While, as a father, I completely understand…

Anyone who tells you money can’t buy happiness is wrong.   What they mean to say is possessions can’t buy you happiness.  Money, on the other hand, can buy you plane tickets and visas and bottles of foreign wine to be uncorked while gazing out over a perfect beachside sunset.  Money…

The charming little village of Grindelwald offers a close-up view of life in the Alps.   We were invited on a tour to visit a dairy farm to experience how cheese was made.  I am a city gal and have never visited a farm before.  Most everyone has seen pictures of…

If you’ve ever used a Kodak Retina folding camera or a Rolleiflex twin-reflex, you’ve been obsessed with photography for a long time. Retinas were to Eastman Kodak what Cadillac was to General Motors. For 55 years, from 1934 to 1969, these German-made 35mm folding bellows cameras were at the top…

Initially constructed in 1145 and later reconstructed over a span of 26 years following a fire in 1194, Chartres Cathedral stands as a pinnacle of French Gothic artistry. Situated in the Centre-Val-de-Loire region, Notre-Dame de Chartres Cathedral represents one of the most genuine and comprehensive specimens of early 13th-century religious…

Basilica di San Lorenzo in Florence, Italy has long been known as the official church of the powerful Medici family. A discovery in 1975, however, shed new light on the church’s history and its connection to one of the greatest artists of the Renaissance, Michelangelo Buonarroti. A small, unassuming room…

Approximately 180 miles east of Puerto Rico lies the island of Saint Martin. This small, 50-square-mile island is divided between two nations: the French Republic in the north and the Kingdom of the Netherlands in the south. The French part, known as the Collectivity of Saint Martin, is an overseas…

Chiricahua National Monument spans over 12,000 acres and is home to a vast array of towering rock spires, precariously balanced boulders, and intricate hoodoos. Located approximately 120 miles southeast of Tucson, Arizona, near the town of Willcox, the monument sits at the intersection of the Chiricahua Mountains, Sulphur Springs Valley,…

There isn’t a single wisp of smoke curling out of the top of Mount Vesuvius as we walk up its stony brown slopes. A few birds are twittering in the bushes, but we leave we them behind as the path rises above fertile ground. It’s silent, except for the scrunch…

Situated in southwestern Iceland, just 49 km northeast of the capital Reykjavík, Þingvellir (Thingvellir) National Park is a place of immense historical, cultural, and geological significance. The park covers 24,000 hectares, with 9,270 hectares constituting a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The powerful geological forces that have shaped this remote site…