A deep dive into unusual places around the world
Travel stories and advice
It’s New Year’s Day. We leave Penticton on New Year’s Eve, connect in Vancouver AND Toronto, and finally land in Barcelona the next day, minus one bag. In a haze of jetlag, we submit a lost bag claim, acquire a local SIM card, find our tiny rental car. Then, feeling like we are part of some experiment on the torturous[…]
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Dogs are different here. For that matter, so are cats. Most do seem to belong to someone, or maybe I should say that they have a home, because they don’t seem to be owned in the way our Canadian pets are. You will see the same scruffy mongrel taking the morning sun on the sidewalk in front of the same[…]
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The sea spreads out before me, placid and blue, the wake of a solitary boat reflecting sparkles of sunlight. The very tops of the trees are barely stirring. The level of calm is incredible, considering that up until last night, there’d been strong maestrale winds for over a week, leaving us weary of the continual noise and violence. This rental[…]
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I reached into my pocket for the house keys and realized he was gone. I stopped dead in my tracks, my mind racing back over the past couple of hours. Up one street in the old town centre of Iglesias, a peek into a kitchen store, a tour through a book store, down another street, up and down the aisles[…]
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As we stood atop the high sea cliffs, the air was still crisp and damp. The morning dew made the orange-pink granite of Capo Pecora all the more vivid against the gently undulating, blue-green Mediterranean Sea. In the distance, a lone, stunted tree rose above the undergrowth, permanently bent to 90 degrees by the prevailing winds. The sea air carried[…]
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We left the house early to walk over to the Wednesday market. The sky was blue-blue, but the air was especially crisp and cold, perhaps only 5C. Based on the forecast, we’d been wondering if it would be too hot to climb at southwest-facing Quirra, but that morning it seemed unlikely to be a problem. We could see our breath[…]
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I met an old man strolling outside the imposing church at the heart of Tertenia. I was surprised to see anyone around the church; it was the middle of a weekday afternoon. He said he was there for a funeral, and that he went to funerals because it was a chance to see people from the town and surrounding area.[…]
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Ulysse declared that he needed pizza. On a hard climb the day before, he’d had two fingers in a snug pocket and had not fully extracted them before trying to make a big, powerful reach upwards. I heard the crack from where I belayed 20 m below and then he slumped onto the rope, cradling his right hand. At first,[…]
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“Bravo!” said the woman at the till as she picked up the bag of persimmons that I’d managed to correctly tag with a price. As this grocery store is near our house and very well run, with nice produce and not a lot of any one thing, but almost one of any thing, I’ve visited it quite often. Sardinians expect[…]
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In case you are imagining that while you are shivering through winter, we are lounging on a Mediterranean beach, umbrella drinks in hand, think again. It is January, after all. On average, January is the coldest month in Sardinia (highs of 14C), with the fewest hours of sunshine per day (4), and a mediocre amount of rain. We’ve been able to[…]
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