Recently, memories of France often appear unbidden, at unpredictable moments. They arrive as palpable, vibrant images, frozen in place, just an instant. Their startling vividness often triggers thoughts about the time and space around them. In France it is easy to find fresh, local, delicious, inexpensive food. Traveling by bike, it is easy to eat …more

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Let’s get it straight from the get-go: I am NOT writing about the Dominican Republic, a Spanish-speaking island that forms part of Hispaniola with Haiti. Never been there. I hear that it’s lovely, though. Dominica (pronounced Do-min-EE-ka), my adopted home, is a tiny rainforest island that is located in the eastern Caribbean between the French …more

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Think of Morocco and you may think of the mosques and minarets, towering over souks where seasoned hagglers promise carpets that fly and lamps complete with genies. Or perhaps you imagine the sweeping Sahara, traversed by camels led by nomadic tribesmen. For an increasing number of European tourists, expats and retirees, however, Morocco means fast, …more

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Let’s just imagine for a minute that you are among a large number of folks whose retirement planning didn’t go as well as you’d hoped. Perhaps your 401K under-performed or your pension fund collapsed or was raided. Maybe your home equity vanished when the economy tanked and you had some hefty medical bills that punched …more

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Well, its that time of the year again, and after all the goodwill has evaporated, the tinsel packed away for another year, the new diet started and you have considered suicide after receiving your credit card statement, you may be planning a holiday to get over it all. How about a holiday in the sun? …more

Roughly equidistant from Prague and Vienna, Brno is on the rail line between both and a city very worthy of visiting in its own right. Brno is the Czech Republic’s second largest city and capital of the country’s South Moravia region. While both Prague and Vienna are lovely cities, they are capitals and magnets for …more

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Palau is a small group of islands located roughly at the South-East of the Philippines I had never heard of before. But when I came here for my honeymoon seven years ago, I fell madly in love with it, with its intense green set out against the intense blue of both sea and sky. I …more

I wouldn’t be surprised if you hadn’t heard of Abruzzo. I certainly hardly knew of its existence before one particularly torrid, sticky Roman summer. Fed up of staying indoors all day to escape the heat and the frayed nerves of the Romans, my boyfriend and I were looking for an escape route. We dreamed of …more