Costa Rica is a rugged land of mountains, volcanos and protected jungles teeming with exotic flora and fauna, with coastlines on the Caribbean and Pacific, and the thought of being immersed in such an environment was intriguing. Yet, there were rough roads ahead.

After Harry, Mary, and their daughters Sierra and Liz moved to Lexington, Kentucky, we began promising to visit. Just after Halloween proved to be a good time to finally go.

I grew up around salt marshes, and the smell alone evokes vivid memories, with a soundtrack from 1969. We made a long overdue visit to North-East Florida to the home of Rich and Patti whose home is situated along the Nassau River and its labyrinth of salt marshes.

In 2023, we made three trips to visit several longtime friends. This post is from the first of those trips. Our Long-time cycling friends Steve and Debi invited us to try out their newly acquired condo in Keystone, Colorado. It’s mostly photographs, enjoy.

Our Slow Nomads path has taken us to so many places over the years where we have seen so many remarkable things. And yet, we have found that for us, the memories of the people that we’ve met can often outweigh those of the destination itself.

The Loire Valley has more than 300 châteaux, from formidable medieval fortresses to extravagant Renaissance estates, and all are individual masterpieces of architecture. And thanks to our Danish friends, we were able to finally able to get out on a tour of wicker, fairy tales, and a truly fantastic château, or should I say its gardens.

Being sick is no fun, no matter where you are; but when you are on holiday, it’s an insult as well. The respiratory virus that attached itself to us during the early days of our third week in Tours, France was intent on making our lives miserable. It succeeded ...

The 13th-century Saint-Julien abbey dominated the view from our apartment and having such an ancient element of France’s cultural heritage in our “backyard” seemed surreal. But the truth is that the mastery required to create so many of France’s important cultural elements was not simply due to chance.

Langeais is a picturesque little Loire village that has been protected/dominated since 994 by whoever was in power. The Château de Langeais we see today, was rebuilt in the 15th Century into tone of the best-known examples of late medieval architecture, including a moat and drawbridge, lavish defenses, and turrets.