Hello, Blogonauts. Greetings from Seville! Our stately hotel lies in the heart of the city's oldest quarter, where cobblestone streets are often so narrow and windy they feel like the end of a twisting funnel. But these skinny streets are brimming with lovely tiled architecture, upscale shops, outdoor cafes, and tapas bars. (I said tapas bars, not topless bars, silly reader.) Tapas are small portions of scrumptious Spanish cuisine. In restaurants or tapas bars...

Modern-day commercial air travel is (at least in turns and frequently in combination) Astounding, Exasperating, Intoxicating, Over-complicated, Uncomfortable, and sometimes Yucky. Nonetheless, it is beyond doubt our most reliable bridge between the mundane and el mundo. As I write these words, I am traversing that metaphoric bridge aboard Iberia Flight 6166 and anticipating a splendid adventure in Spain. (I more comfortable than those circumstances would normal...

Saturday was my last day in Deutschland, and I was faced with a dilemma. On one hand, many folks had encouraged me to take the bus tour to visit Neuschwanstein Castle, the eye-popping Gothic-revival structure built by Mad King Ludwig in the late 19th century. On the other hand, Munich is known to have among the best art galleries in the world. And time being the thief that it is, it was clear that the clock and calendar would rob me of at least one of these. Ev...

Guten Tag, Blogonauts! Or should I say instead, "Bon Appetit!" My title for today's entry is a Dickensian pun, not a whine. Some folks have wondered about my dietary adventures traveling around Germania. I've taken a few photos of my meals, and rather than spread the pics about willy-nilly, I've consolidated the entire lot into this blog post. Let's say that the German diet is a lot like the traditional American diet: heavy on the meat and potatoes. Nonetheles...

Dachau is a lovely town. The S-Bahn train zips folks between Munich and Dachau with hardly a hiccup, dropping you neatly near the center of this bedroom community and suburb of metropolitan Munich. Several buses converge on Dachau's train station to carry commuters back to their respective neighborhoods. But the biggest and most crowded bus sitting in the ring is number 726, marked "Gedenkstätte." “Gedenkstätte” is German for “Memor...