Thanks for joining me on the journey.
I’m an American travel writer dividing my time between Seville, Spain and California. I travel the world seeking intriguing people, quirky places, and outrageously delicious comfort food so I can have the fun of writing about them here. — Karen McCann
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Learning a Second Language at Age 77
A few days ago Rich bellowed “Karen!” with an urgency I haven’t heard since that time the pine tree in our front yard caught on fire. I raced down the hall to find him holding up a small, irregular piece of cardboard. It was the missing piece from a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle, which we’d recently…
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In a Medical Emergency Abroad, Where Do You Go?
How is 2025 treating you so far? I ask because my year’s off to an extremely dubious start. Minutes before midnight on New Year’s Eve, I opened a can of the traditional 12 lucky grapes that MUST be eaten as the clock chimes … and found 11 grapes. Hard not to read that as an…
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There’s No Place Like This for the Holidays
What holiday songs do you find teeth-grindingly irritating? Is there one that makes you want to clap your hands over your ears and run screaming out of the department store? The public-spirited editors of USA Today compiled a list of the worst of the worst, the top ten most horrible yuletide carols of all time.…
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Let Them Eat Cake: Brilliant News About Dark Chocolate
“Chocolate is the first luxury,” says actress Mariska Hargitay. “It has so many things wrapped up in it: deliciousness in the moment, childhood memories, and that grin-inducing feeling of getting a reward for being good.” And now you can add another: reducing your chances of getting diabetes. Yes, you read that right. A massive 30-year…
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Is Remote Working More Fun Overseas?
Commuting to an office five days a week; I still shudder when I remember how many hours of my youth were spent crammed into subway trains and buses, navigating crowded transit hubs, and hurtling along freeways, pedal to the metal in the 8:40 Grand Prix, trying to comb my hair and put on lipstick using…
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Buying a Rural Fixer-Upper: Heaven or Hell?
“Grab your toothbrush,” said Rich. “We’re getting out of town.” Reeling from weeks of harrowing headlines, Rich and I realized we needed some serious attitude adjustment to pull together the tattered shreds of our mental equilibrium. It didn’t take us long to choose the geographic solution favored by so many great minds from Marco…
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In an International Emergency, Who Ya Gonna Call?
“You’re the first Americans I’ve ever met,” a Spanish friend confided one night at my dinner table. I was so gobsmacked almost dropped the bowl of cranberry sauce I was handing her. The occasion was a Thanksgiving meal Rich and I had prepared for the members of my Seville art class. I’d learned my new…
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Five Things We’ve Learned About Moving Abroad
Do you ever have days when your tech devices gang up on you, taking fiendish delight in frustrating your efforts to perform the simplest task? I’ll take that as a yes. When that happened to me Friday, along with the teeth-grinding exasperation came the nagging feeling of familiarity. What did this convoluted, time-devouring, mind-numbing quagmire…
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Let’s Give Them Something to Talk About
It’s not easy for anyone, let alone a foreigner, to cause a sensation at Seville’s Feria de Abril (April Fair). The whole event is already wildly over the top, with half a million women dressed in gaudy, ruffled gowns, beribboned horses and carriages weaving through the crowd, and everyone dancing day and night all…
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Where in the World Can You Really Relax?
“Nothing is permanent in this wicked world — not even our troubles.” — Charlie Chaplin “I always feel younger here in Seville,” Rich said at breakfast Friday morning. My husband looked remarkably chipper for a man who had been out till all hours watching live cabaret in an old warehouse on one of the city’s…
TRAVEL with CURIOSITY
These days I’m cultivating curiosity, which science says will keeps my brain agile. I figure spending more time on the road and indulging my natural nosiness about the world will be good therapy and a cheerful counterpoint to today’s headlines. And I will never run out of quirky stuff to write about.
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