TRAVEL

It was a breezy and chilly, but not a “dark and stormy,” night before I awoke to be greeted by a clear and bright view of Mt. Vesuvius framed in…

An essay about feeling better (or worse) in a 24-hour news cycle. Don’t take two aspirin and get a good night’s sleep; stay up and take something stronger—TV. I was…

One of the more endearing images I have of a recent visit to Beijing is of a university student peddling down a street on a dilapidated Mao-era Tianjin “Silver Pigeon.”…

Bitch! That’s what I mumbled under my breath, straining not to let it out in an anger relieving shout. But I knew better; I was in a strange foreign airport, and…

Chickenhawks Abroad When traveling these days the next best thing to not rushing into the street in Sadr City and yelling “Mohammed was a gay alcoholic with a Jewish grandmother,”…

Americans are only recently having to get accustomed to being spied upon by their own government.   In other countries having one’s government’s eyes on you or into your affairs…

I had to get a new passport this year.   The old one, with the extra pages, filled with stamps and visas that signify many wonderful memories was due to…

The map that that showed the location of his house was one I had copied from a book was little more than a sketch itself; the map I bought in…

Over nearly 30 years of escorting various groups of Americans to thirty or so foreign countries I have had some unusual requests.   Most of them I have been able…

It didn’t seems to matter much to George Bush, or to American’s in general, that the president’s insistence on giving China’s president Mr. Hu Jintao a “luncheon” rather than a…