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[Update: since I wrote this back in 2016, several of these dive bars have gone out of existence, including the venerable Bodega Virgen de los Reyes. I don’t know where Henry is sipping his morning sherry these days. But these guidelines for spotting a Sevillano dive bar still hold true, and may help you discover…

“We saw the oddest woman on the train,” my cousin said, when he and his wife arrived in Seville some years ago. “She was tiny with frizzy white hair. Everyone pointed and whispered when she walked by.” “Did she look like this?” I said, picking up a nearby magazine and showing him the cover. “Good…

​“Barcelona hotels have gotten ridiculously expensive,” said Rich, thumbing through his hotel-finding app as we planned the final night of our three-month railway journey. “But I have one that’s near the train station and quite reasonable.” Hmmm. Convenient and cheap? What were the odds? “Can I take a look?” I asked suspiciously. I was still…

“Forget that one,” I said. “It looks charming, the food smells great, and the liquor is top-shelf. Obviously we can’t go there.” We were walking through Trieste, Italy, passing one adorable trattoria after another. Rich gazed longingly at the cozy interiors and clusters of sidewalk tables loaded with fresh pasta, succulent pork, fried fish, and…

​If I say Zagreb, what’s the first response that comes to your mind? Huh? Gesundheit! A place to zip through en route to Croatia’s island-studded coast ​My answer? None of the above. In the past few years, Croatia’s capital has transformed itself into one of the most delightful cities in Europe — and one that’s…

“Where is everybody?” Rich asked, staring around, mystified. We were wandering through the silent, nearly deserted Hungarian city of Pécs. Allegedly it held a population of 146,000, but at the moment it was doing a pretty good imitation of a ghost town; nothing was moving except for a few scattered pedestrians and a dog rolling…

Midnight had come and gone but our bus had not. So there Rich and I sat, in the dimly lit bus station of Lublin, Poland, wondering if our Ukrainian adventure was over before it even began. All through Poland we’d seen ads for glamorous new buses going directly to Lviv, Ukraine instead of following the…

“When the Rolling Stones played here in 1967, there was a small problem about the fee,” said Lucas, with the air of a man setting you up for a delicious punchline. We were in downtown Warsaw, standing in front of Poland’s tallest building, the 1955 art deco high-rise originally known as the Joseph Stalin Palace…

​“There is no way I’m going into the Devil’s Museum until I have coffee,” I said to Rich. “Keep your eyes peeled for someplace — anyplace — that’s open.” This was not looking likely. We were in Kaunas, Lithuania, which we’d chosen as a stopover on our roundabout way to Warsaw. The direct rail route…

​According to local legend, the Miracle Tile of Vilnius, Lithuania has the power to make wishes come true. Some say you have to stand on it, twirl around three times, jump in the air, and clap your hands to get your wish. Others suggest this tradition was started mainly to provide the locals with a…