My blog has migrated to a new host and is being painstakingly reconstructed here. Please bear with me as I iron out wrinkles, hammer out the dents, and apply enough spit and duct tape to hold it all together.— Karen
After 20 years in Ohio, following an early-to-bed, organic-vegetables-fresh-from-our-garden kind of lifestyle, adapting to Seville’s uproarious social scene was a bit of a shock. The Sevillanos consider it their God-given birthright – practically an obligation – to enjoy themselves. Even a simple tapeo (sampling of the city’s tapas bars) can run until the small hours…
I’m not saying I’m jealous, but back in August, when Rich first bought his iPad, he was holding it in his lap all day, taking it to bed every night and occasionally getting into spats with it when it exhibited annoying behavior. But I didn’t get seriously worried until he started buying it gifts. “Look…
Two years ago, out of the blue, Rich announced that he wanted to become a consulting detective. I think he was kidding, but ever since then, he’s spent countless hours taking online courses in foiling pickpockets, following people, picking locks, and spotting micro-expressions and evasive techniques that reveal people are lying. Nowadays it’s nearly impossible…
During our 20 years in Cleveland, houseguests were such a rarity (I can’t imagine why) that Rich and I spent days preparing the house, weeks planning ways to entertain them and months afterwards writing to apologize yet again for the dog chewing up their favorite pair of blue jeans. Each visit was a seismic event…
The Wisconsin parents. Photo courtesy of Reddit / IMUGR / Facebook As a teenager, I could not have imagined many fates more excruciating than having my mom and dad post embarrassing pictures of themselves where my friends could see them. Apparently this has occurred to some of today’s harassed parents, who have resorted to using…
Photo by Hotelstvedi In last week’s post, I wrote about grisly stays in flophouses and soulless chains, but for annoyance and discomfort, it’s hard to beat the night I spent in Newark Airport. Our flight from Spain had arrived late, somewhere around midnight, long after our connecting flight had departed. In our naiveté, Rich and…
I have nothing against five star hotels – a little creamy elegance and fawning service never hurt anybody – but given a choice, I’ll always go for small, quaint and unusual. Give me a converted windmill, rice barge, convent or olive farm any day over a cookie-cutter corporate chain. There’s so much more to talk…
In last week’s post I wrote, “Age alone does not make you irrelevant.” Apparently the U.S. Transportation Safety Administration doesn’t agree. In January, it declared that travelers older than 75 no longer have to take off their shoes to pass through airport security. In its infinite wisdom, our government has decided that after our 74th…
Lately, in Seville, I’ve noticed a lot of people wandering the streets in pajamas. Well, not all that many, really, just three in as many weeks, which I suppose is a pretty small percentage of the city’s 703,000 residents. I went up to one particularly befuddled octogenarian and asked if he needed help. He looked…
There are rare, sublime moments when city planners bring together the perfect combination of vaulting ambition, wasteful spending and designed-by-committee bad taste to produce an architectural landmark so stunningly wrong that it will give everybody something to gossip about for generations. In Seville, ours can be found in the Plaza de la Encarnación . Photo…
CELEBRATING GOOD NEIGHBORS These days I’m writing about Good Neighbors, exploring how the people around me are working to help each other get through these challenging times. My weekly posts appear on Tuesday or Wednesday, depending on my travel and research schedule.
THIS BLOG IS A PROMOTION-FREE ZONE. As my regular readers know, I never get free or discounted goods or services for mentioning anything on this blog (or anywhere else). I only write about things I find interesting and/or useful.
