europe

This assessment of Reading, England won’t be in any way fair for a number of very good reasons. Firstly, because I spent a good part of my stay in the town ensconced in a mid-level business hotel room. Secondly, because the hotel where we stayed was a full 15 minutes outside of Reading, so I didn’t spend much time in the actual town itself. And finally, because our trip took place during the Winter Solstice, when daylight in Britain was more scarce than a straight set of teeth. | Read more »

Ever since I was an art student in college, I'd really only wanted to visit four exotic places: Egypt, Athens, Rome and the Playboy Mansion. Naturally, I was psyched when some friends of ours invited us to go along on their trip to visit relatives in Greece. This was an especially rare opportunity since one of them actually spoke Greek. In hindsight, had we gone to Rome with someone who spoke Italian, we might still be welcome there today. | Read more »

Two weeks before we left for Paris—a trip I didn't relish making after my last trip there—I received an IM from a French guy I know (Arthur something or other) who was vacationing in the City Of Lights. When I inquired as to why he was there, he replied, "I'm preparing them for you." Naturally, I thought he was kidding. As it turns out, he wasn't.  | Read more »

We exchanged 60,000 frequent flyer miles for a midnight red-eye to a random Caribbean island. After inconvenient stops in Dallas, Miami and San Jaun, we arrived 14 hours later in balmy Sint Maarten, Netherlands Antilles (or is it Saint Martin, French West Indies?) for a week of R&R: rum & reclining.  | Read more »

The train left Paris on time with lots of English-speaking passengers. My slowly rage subsided as I slipped into slumber amidst the dulcet tones of the Queen's English being spoken by high-pitched elderly ladies. It was a half-hour or so before we dipped beneath the waves of the English Channel. Twenty minutes later, we resurfaced in the Motherland. The Channel Tunnel (or "Chunnel") was mercifully uneventful; pitch blackness and a weird silence, but otherwise no agonizingly slow drowning for us. Three hours after leaving Frogtown, we pulled into Waterloo Station, a section of London with all the charm of downtown Detroit.  | Read more »

We pulled into Bercy Station, saw the endless line waiting for cabs and dragged our bags to the Metro yet again. The weather in France was nothing like that of Italy. It was overcast and grey, inspiring us to bust out our Moonstone® jackets. This turned out to be a good call because when we got off at our stop, it was pouring rain. Fortunately, we were only two blocks from Rue de Rivoli and our hotel, Hotel French Louvre. The location of the hotel couldn't have been better (although we were a bit too close to the creepiest building in the world, the Hotel de Ville, for my liking).  | Read more »

We almost missed our train to Venice, but fortunately, it was running 10 minutes late. Watching the destination board update itself was like gambling. "Come on, Venezia! Daddy needs an on-time departure!" Learning from our past experience with EuroStar, we upgraded to first-class for this leg (a mere $20 extra), trying to avoid the unwashed masses and get a bit of legroom.  | Read more »