By Nancy Wigston The view from our windows at Penang’s Eastern & Oriental Hotel stretches across the pale blue Strait of Malacca all the way to the horizon. It’s early morning and still tolerably cool. Yellow-beaked mynah birds squawk, coconut palms whisper in the gentle breeze and waves break rhythmically below the longest hotel sea…
By Rich Grant America is going through a period of uncertainty in 2025, but one thing is clear. Exactly 250 years ago, in March and April 1775, two individuals uttered sentences that changed world history. They were not presidents or generals. One was a preacher, the other a silversmith. But as we approach the 250th…
By David DeVoss It was a beautiful autumn day in 1887 when Mac McGillivray and his young fiancée Sarah climbed into a freight wagon loaded with gold ingots and left the California mining town of Bodie, headed to Bridgeport 18 miles away. The county seat had an elegant hotel, built only ten years before called…
By Sharon McDonnell The Polish city of Krakow is full of marvels, from its gorgeously preserved Old Town with Europe’s biggest medieval market square and a castle where the Kings of Poland lived for centuries, to the factory of Schindler’s List fame. But Poland’s second-biggest city also houses priceless art treasures by Leonardo da Vinci…
Travelers to the Baltic city of Tallinn immediately notice that Estonia is one of Ukraine’s staunchest allies. Perhaps that’s because until 1991 it, too, was occupied by Russians. To find out what life behind the Iron Curtain was like join a Soviet Flashback tour to visit an old hotel specifically built for guest surveillance and a recreated KGB command center.
By Mary Bergin Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus, but the original St. Nicholas was very different from what we know today. His home was on the Mediterranean Sea, not the North Pole. More pious than jolly. Wearing a cleric’s miter hat, not a festive stocking cap. For much of the world, St. Nicholas…
Romania conjures mysterious and sinister images of Count Dracula and the Transylvanian forests. The foreboding Bran Castle high in the Carpathian Mountains certainly looks like the location of Irish writer Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Stoker’s story of vampires rising from their coffins is an invented tale. But in autumn when twilight comes early it’s easy to imagine ghostly spirits of the undead lurking in the shadows.
Yet the Bucharest I saw was a bustling metropolis with museums and traffic jams, wide boulevards and cobblestone streets, good restaurants and late-night clubs. And a handful of lakes and gardens.
By Rich Grant People have been knocking back beers together for 6,000 years. The planet’s oldest known recipe comes from Mesopotamia in today’s Southern Iraq. It provides directions on how to turn old bread crusts into a thick, dark, warm beverage that, upon consumption, makes you feel exceptionally good. There have always been taverns…
Tennessee has two products that are famous around the world – country music from Nashville and Jack Daniel’s Whiskey from the tiny town of Lynchburg about 80 miles south of Nashville and 25 miles north of the Alabama state line. The story of how country music blossomed in Nashville is well documented, but the origin story of Jack Daniel’s Whiskey has been one that few people even thought about – until recently.
By Richard Varr I’m crawling on my hands and knees in the cramped and low-ceiling belly of the HMB Endeavour to reach the so-called Great Cabin at the ship’s stern. Imagine calling the 18th century brigantine home for just over three years with one of the few creature comforts being drop-down hammocks swaying at the…