The folks at Treetops are fond of saying “Anything is possible here.” That is a statement that begs to be tested. Can you arrange for local Maori elders to greet us on arrival with a ritual welcoming ceremony? Yes! Can you schedule a helicopter to fly us to an offshore volcano? Yes! Could you make […]
We swerve to the left around a herd of cows, not too far because there is a grey horse lumbering just beside us, straining to pull a metal-wheeled cart stacked eight feet high with cow dung patties. No matter that there is just one lane going our direction – the cows, the horse and our […]
To break up a long drive from Agra to Jaipur, we stopped first outside of Agra at Fatehpur Sikri, which was briefly the Mughal capital (long story) and contains an impressive palace complex. Further along, we visited Chand Baori – a step well. Step wells are massive excavated stone cisterns that could store rain water, […]
Here is a true story: when the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan was a prince, he visited a market at the palace grounds. There he spied a beautiful girl, Mumtaz Mahal, who was working at a bangle booth. She was the daughter of one of the court accountants. He was so entranced that he proposed on […]
The classic touring trip to India is called the Golden Triangle, which is exactly what we signed up to do for our first exposure to the country. It all takes place in Northwest India, right around the capital city and then to the immediate south in a desert area called Rajasthan. You fly into New […]
The final stopping point for our Nile boat trip was Luxor – home of multiple ancient Egypt sights including the Valley of the Kings that Gina describes. The last day here we stayed in the city and saw the massive temple of Karnak and the temple of Luxor as well as the Luxor Museum. All […]
Although our hotel was out by the pyramids, we crossed the Nile and plunged into Cairo several times. It is an astonishing city. Cairo has 17 million residents and swells by another 3 million commuters every day. (Some people say the actual numbers are far higher than the official statistics). The commute times to go […]
By far the most interesting pyramid to visit is outside Cairo at Saqqara. Here is the oldest of the pyramids, designed by Imhotep. At the time the pharaohs were buried deep in shafts – not 6 feet under but 600 feet under, the depth representing the importance of the pharaoh. This first pyramid was designed […]
We came to Jordan to see the ruins of ancient civilizations, but we left enthusiastic about the modern country as a destination. This is a fascinating place to visit – a Muslim Arab place where Americans are nonetheless welcomed as a people if not for their foreign policy – and a place where Americans can […]
We walked for about an hour through a dusty gorge in Petra, peering around each bend. Pitted stone walls of crimson and grey towering over us like Manhattan skyscrapers. We were here to see the fabled “Treasury Building” – a jawdropper that was made famous as the resting place for the Holy Grail by the third […]
After six months in Europe, it is time to get back on the road and see more of the world! We move now to the Middle East, starting in Jordan. We arrived at night and at a fairly nice international hotel – where guests enter through an X-ray machine! The next day the touring began […]
When the day finally arrived to leave Paris, we dried our tears and left home four hours early for the train station. We knew there would be some sort of weather delay because heavy snows had already cancelled most of the Eurostar trains from Paris to London the day before. We stumbled out of the […]
This weekend my cousin Zoe came to visit! Zoe is a junior at Brown with strong interests in genetics, medicine and anthropology and she can tell you a lot about old bones and also Narwhals. We were especially happy to see family around the holidays and she was excited to visit Paris for the first […]
The streets of Paris are its heart. Parisian rents are high and apartments are small. Rather than sit inside, Parisians head out to the cafe to see friends. A glass of wine costs $5-7 but it can be nursed for hours. Since this is expected, no waiter will demur. In the true spirit of egalite […]
Have you ever wished you could go back to college… and this time actually study? With a couple of months of free time in Paris and the benefit of hindsight, I wanted to take a class and enjoy being a student again. I signed up for a semester-long course at the Sorbonne called the Cours […]
Our last stop in the Loire Valley was the massive Château Chambord. The building was commissioned in 1519 by a 25-year-old King Francois I. The stated reason was that he loved to hunt and he dreamed of having a hunting lodge so princely that nobles would flock there to hunt in royal style. In French class we learned […]
Here are brief descriptions and photos from other activities in Paris this October: – Playing in the Tuileries. Paris has turned to autumn colors, and the leaves are down in the nearby Tuileries park. One day the factors all aligned and the whole family had a few free hours at mid-day with no tours and no […]
One day when Linda and Hugh were visiting we chanced upon Madame Grevin’s Wax Museum. Grevin was the original master who taught Madame Tussaud – a relative who some say stole the technique and escaped with it to London. Inside there are numerous sculptures, eerily lifelike. Each of us took a photo with someone famous. Stumbling […]
We have now completed six weeks in Paris. Any notion of sitting quietly at cafés has been dispelled by the sheer magnitude and opportunity of arriving at the city, hosting visitors, setting up an apartment and enrolling family members in various activities. This is the absolute best place on our year-long itinerary for friends and […]
Using a US cellphone in foreign countries is prohibitively expensive. For this reason we brought an unlocked GSM cellphone. We planned to buy prepaid SIM cards in each country where we would stay for a long time. We also brought a SIM card from GymSIM that offers discounted international calling around the world, so we could use that for the shorter […]
While Linda and Hugh were visiting us we had a chance to take the tour of the Paris Opera house. This was far more interesting than we had expected. This is the opera house that was the inspiration for Phantom of the Opera. There really is an underground lake, which is a water reservoir in […]
Last night Paris celebrated Nuit Blanche. This is a single night when everyone is encouraged to pull an all-nighter to show support for the arts community. You have deep conversations with friends, visit art installations, party, drink loads of espresso, and generally celebrate the fact that you are young, alive and in Paris. (We decided […]
Today Paris was partially shut due to La Grève – a general strike in the grand French tradition. The strike protests a change that is coming in the French retirement age. France previously offered partial benefits at 60 years old and full benefits at 65. Gven a tough economy in France and the EU, a […]
The mission of Road School is for the kids to learn a solid school year’s worth of academics, yet keep the pencil and paper time down to two hours each day on the road. The strategies for covering all the material in such a short time are to run for at least ten months; and […]
The Waller’s from Natick were in town last week to watch the World Badminton Championships. We were able to see them on several days and to meet Patrick’s parents as well. On the last day Maria and Peter came over, and after tea (of course!) we took the Metro over to the Montmartre section of […]
When we arrived in Paris as an extended family of twelve people of all ages, we had a challenge. The Seattle Wilcoxes wanted a classic whirlwind introduction to the city of Paris, yet both they and the Newton Wilcoxes would be leaving in just a few days. At the same time we wanted to preserve […]
We hopped a flight from London to Bordeaux, rented a caravan of cars, and drove into the countryside of southwestern France. This is Aquitaine, the region controlled by the British during the Hundred Years War, a period of time when related royal families in both Paris and London had a legitimate claim to rule France. […]
This week we met up with the Seattle Wilcoxes and the Newton Wilcoxes for a grand reunion in London. A few highlights: The Athenaeum – a superb, stylish hotel just across the park from Buckginham Palace and walking distance to the West End that loves kids – wow! The focus on children includes a special […]
We are now visiting Wengen, a village perched partway up the slopes of the Swiss Alps, where there are no automobiles. The only ways in are cog-rail, cablecar, or by foot. Why here? My family had visited Wengen when I was 17 years old and it made a lasting impact. Now I wanted my children […]
We are just in Zurich for a day before heading off into the Berner Oberland mountains tomorrow. Zurich is a quaint city and if you can afford to live here, offers an excellent quality of life: a medium-sized city next to a lake with a mountain backdrop, 1200 fountains that spout clean water, two major […]
Gotland has a fascinating geological history. The bedrock of the ancient “Baltica” plate that forms Scandinavia was located close to the equator and covered by ocean. During the Silurian age great coral reefs grew in this area and it was teeming with sealife. Clay washed down from nearby land and shells formed limestone, resulting in […]
We came through Copenhagen for a few days of transition from Turkey to Sweden. The first day was all about sleeping late after a post-midnight arrival. When we found out the hotel ran a great breakfast until 11am, we found ourselves liking Denmark pretty well. The streets were clean, the trains ran on time, most […]
After a 90 minute tarmac flight delay in Munich and an endless wait for baggage handling, we finally made it out of the Copenhagen airport late in the night (so late it was dark even in summer when they get 19 hours of sunlight!). Our bleary eyes could not miss this sign though. It seems […]
We had a whirlwind 24-hour stop in this southwest coastal part of Turkey. We arrived in time for a gourmet dinner at a tiny inn up in the mountains. After the meal we slept in an authentic hillside dwelling while listening to the village goat’s bell as he ambled past our door. We woke, packed and indulged […]
One of the topics in Road School is comparative religion. We wanted to study this because religion has such a great influence on history and culture. Although the book we are using starts with Judaism and Christianity before getting to Islam (and then five more religions), we started with Islam so the kids could have […]
We spent seven days in Istanbul, a city both modern and ancient. Our hotel, the Empress Zoe, was a converted 15th century bathhouse in the heart of old Istanbul which is called Sultanahmet. The hotel was filled with period style objects and the rooms open into a central courtyard where breakfast and WiFi are served, […]
Limited in their expansion by dry climates and mountainous terrain, the Greeks left their homelands to colonize other regions and originated many of today’s port cities in the Mediterranean. However their population was soon dwarfed by larger nations and they have been under foreign rule for much of their history. After resisting the Persians in […]
Olympia is on the west coast of Greece favored by plentiful water and flat land. The rocky east side was so inhospitable that the major cities there such as Athens, Sparta, Corinth, and Argos quickly developed seamanship and trade and exchange of knowledge with the advanced Eastern civilizations. The green western part was quiet farming […]
Driving three hours west into mountain terrain (see pictures at the bottom of post), we arrived at Delfi – the Mecca of Ancient Greece. Here, crouched under limestone cliffs and built over springs and fissures that release psychotropic gases, the Greeks found a land that hissed and quaked. This was significant because going back even […]
Focusing on the sites of Greek antiquity, we visited four locations while in Greece: Athens, Delfi, Olympia, and Nafplio. In Athens we kicked off with a hands-on cooking lesson in the home of our guide Antony and his wife Sam as described in Gina’s post. We then drove down the coast until we reached the […]
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