As I drove from Toronto to Milton in the Halton Hills, it occurred to me that this was the first time since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic that I was actually going somewhere out of town. Covid-19 had upended all my travel plans, large and small, virtually confining my wife and I to our […]
After a lengthy absence, I was back in Tel Aviv, the lively and sophisticated seaside city on the Mediterranean that is so synonymous with Israel. Jerusalem is Israel’s spiritual and political capital, a flashpoint in the seemingly endless struggle between Zionism and Palestinian nationalism, but Tel Aviv is its temporal and secular heart and soul. […]
Petra was on my mind. This fantastical archaeological site in southwest Jordan, set amid a remote, desolate and brooding sandstone mountain range 900 meters above sea level, had captured my imagination. I had read about Petra in history books, watched documentaries about it, and seen tantalizing glimpses of it in Steven Spielberg’s adventure movie, Indiana Jones […]
The glory that was ancient Greece and Rome reveals itself in the ruins of Jerash, the largest Greco-Roman archeological site in Jordan. Forty eight kilometres north of Amman, Jordan’s capital, Jerash was founded as a Greek city by Alexander the Great in the fourth century BC and was conquered by the Romans in 63 BC. […]
As you savor a full-bodied cup of espresso coffee in your home or in a cafe, spare a thought for El Salvador. Ranked 11th among 55 coffee-producing nations and accounting for two percent of world production, El Salvador — the smallest republic in Central America — is synonymous with that crop. First cultivated in El Salvador […]
Fed up with Toronto’s bitterly cold winter this year, I was more than ready for a warm-weather vacation down south. Nicaragua beckoned, but I passed because it was torn by political instability yet again. Having already been to Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica and Panama, I pivoted toward El Salvador, the smallest, most densely populated and […]
Lugano is an anomaly — a Mediterranean enclave inside nordic Switzerland. In this enchanting corner of the country, known as Ticino, a visitor can often count on sunny weather and expect to see palm trees, semi-tropical vegetation and the pastel hues of southern Europe. Predominantly Italian in ambience, this pleasant city is set on the […]
Laced with a maze of canals, the French city of Colmar might be mistaken for Venice. Yet Colmar is unmistakably Gallic, although many of its historic buildings are inspired by Germanic architecture. Esthetically impressive, old Colmar is a living museum of exquisite half-timbered medieval and early Renaissance houses hugging narrow cobblestone byways. The third largest […]
It’s the highest mountain peak in Switzerland accessible by train. At 3,454 metres above sea level, Jungfraujoch, commonly referred to as the Top of Europe, towers majestically over the alpine village of Grindelwald in the Bernese Alps. Peaks of this dizzying height normally can only be reached by expert climbers. But Jungfraujoch can be accessed […]
Few cities in France have been roiled by as much upheaval. Strasbourg, the cosmopolitan capital of Alsace, has always been in the eye of a storm. Founded by the Romans as a military camp, it was a free imperial city during the Holy Roman Empire. Ceded to France in 1681, it fell into Germany’s hands during […]