Category: 2022 Friends and Family Tour
- 24 – Jun
- 22 – Jun
- 02 – Jun
- 17 – May
- 17 – May
- 16 – May
- 11 – May
- 09 – May
- 08 – May
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THE LEGEND OF THE ULM SPARROW
24 June 2022My friend, Karl-Heinz Linke, has a reputation for exaggerating the truth when he tells stories. He’s the kind of guy who is always pulling your leg, so to speak. So, when he told Padma and me about the legend of the Ulm Sparrow, we assumed it was another one of his yarns. Karl-Heinz insisted it […] -
MY COUSIN WOLFGANG OF HERXHEIM
22 June 2022Can ‘home’ be a place where you’ve never lived? And a place you only learned about late in life? I discovered Herxheim only 20 years ago but when Padma and I travelled there in mid-June it felt like going home. Herxheim is the ancestral home of my father’s father’s family. My great-grandfather, Jacob Adam, was […] -
THE JEAN AND EARL OF AMERY
2 June 2022I get stumped when asked ‘where are you from?’ or ‘where’s home?’ Australia has been my physical home for 27 years but when it comes to home of the heart I’d have to point to a little city in north-western Wisconsin. I only lived in Amery for seven years from 1969 to 1976 but they […] -
RAIN, RIVER AND A PINT IN DUBLIN
17 May 2022In mid-May 2022 Padma and I met up in Dublin with my sister Jenni and her husband Russ for a couple of days of steady wandering. We set out along the River Liffey on our first evening, crossing between the north and south quays as the light faded. Dublin is a city that reveals itself […] -
A PEACOCK, A BRAMEL AND A WINDY RIDGE
17 May 2022For a number of years, Padma and I have been hearing about a home on a hill in County Cork of southwestern Ireland. Despite numerous invitations from its owners, our friends John Peacock and Paula Bramel, we could never make the trip. But now we finally got a chance to visit our friends and learn […] -
A CATALAN FRIENDSHIP
16 May 2022The Pyrenees, that long mountain range extending east to west and creating the border between France and Spain, have captivated me for years. As a university student I read Laurie Lee’s As I Walked Out One Summer Morning, which became one of my favourite travel books. At the end Lee secretly crosses the Pyrenees and […] -
OUR LITTLE CLIO
11 May 2022Fifty years or so ago, the French government wanted to encourage tourism by offering long-term car leases to tourists. The Government offered an incentive scheme to the French car companies – Renault, Citroën and Peugeot – to offer the leases. Padma and I are travelling for two months so we took advantage of the program. […] -
AN APPARITION IN LOURDES
9 May 2022In 1858, 14-year-old Bernadette Soubirous and her sister and friend were out collecting firewood outside the village of Lourdes in the French Pyrenees. They wandered into a grotto where they claim a “a tiny maiden” wearing a flowing white robe spoke to them. The tiny maiden appeared 18 times that year in the area and […] -
THE LASHERMES OF VACQUIÈRES
8 May 2022The second principal destination of our Northern Hemisphere Friends and Family tour was Vacquières, a village of no more than 600 people just north of Montpelier, France. Two long-time residents are our friends from our Syrian Football Night Dinners, Philippe and Catherine Lashermes. Philippe and Catherine left Syria in 1992 and after a short stint […]
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A PITSTOP IN MONACO AND A FATAL HAIRPIN TURN
We could have driven through Monaco in 15 minutes, but Padma and I decided to park the car and explore the city-state. At 2.1 square kilometres Monaco is the second smallest sovereign state after Vatican City. We drove through the heart of the city, and I found a patch of very good bitumen which beckoned
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MEANDERING ALONG THE RIVIERA
I don’t have the patience to read travel guides and figure out what to see and where to go. Padma and I just drive and discover along the way. There are countless cute and picturesque seaside villages along the Riviera. How do you choose where to stay? I let booking.com do it for me. I
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THE WORLD’S MOST PHOTOGRAPHED LAUNDRY
Padma and I were loving Italy too much so we drove a short distance from Florence and spent an afternoon exploring Cinque Terre, a string of five seaside villages on the Italian Riviera. We had dinner in Manarola and hurried to catch the sun setting from the Vista Panoramica di Manarola. We weren’t alone. The
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ONE ON ONE WITH DAVID
Padma, Nahed, Peter and I were lying under a soothing Tuscan sun after a hearty lunch in the Piazza del Compo in Sienna, Italy. Having our heads to the ground gave us an impressive view of the Torre del Mangia. The plan was to go and see Michelangelo’s David later in the afternoon in Florence
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