Greetings from Málaga, Spain, where we didn’t spend the day. I’m sure Málaga, a city of more than half a million Andalusians, is a lovely...

Our journey down the Mediterranean coast of Spain continued today with a visit to Cartagena, a city of 219,000, and a major base for the...

Greetings from Spain’s third largest city and most important seaport. With a population of 800,000, and two million in the greater urban...

Greetings from a city so overrun with tourists that the natives have taken to squirting them with water pistols. I’m certainly not a fan...

Today is a ship day for me, so I thought this might be a good opportunity to pass along some tips on things to pack for those of you who...

Greetings from the French Riviera. Today we’re anchored off the glamorous city of Cannes, home of the Cannes Film Festival and playground...

Happy Fourth of July, America! While you’re enjoying the parades, fireworks, and concerts, we’re docked instead in Corsica, the French...

After two long, hot, tiring, but incredibly enriching days exploring Rome, Florence and Pisa, today was mercifully far less taxing,...

Greetings from Carrara, Italy. Maybe you haven’t heard of Carrara. I certainly hadn’t, but it’s the most convenient port for excursions...

Rome, the Eternal City. Getting there from the cruise terminal in Civitavecchia doesn’t take an eternity, but it is a long drive....

Greetings from the caldera of what may be the world’s most dangerous supervolcano. We all know about Yellowstone, but did you know that...

Greetings from Sicily, where you can buy a Godfather mug with a handle shaped like a pistol in tourist gift shops. Today we were in...

After a restful day at sea yesterday, today found us docked in Malta, the world’s tenth smallest nation by area. Between Malta’s two...

Forget everything I’ve ever said about excursions that have taken us over narrow, winding, cliffside roads on this cruise. They were...

Another day, another walled city. Greetings from the Queen of the Adriatic, as Dubrovnik likes to be called. To say that this city’s...

Greetings from Split, our second stop on the Croatian coast. Split is Croatia’s second largest city, with a population of 160,000,...

Another hot, sunny day, and we can relate to the heat wave affecting much of the US. Today was the first of three days in Croatia, which...

Today’s tour brought us to Ljubljana (pronounced Loob-yonna), the capital of Slovenia, which is inland and required a bus ride from...

Greetings from Trieste, a city like no other in Italy, as locals will be quick to tell you. Trieste is unique because until 1918, at the...

Greetings from the world’s oldest continuous republic. That’s right, with documents dating back to 1600 the Republic of San Marino lays...