Day 1 of a 2-week trip featuring a 9 day Silversea cruise, 2 nights in Istanbul and 2 nights in Athens. We booked business class airfare with Silversea since they had a very good business class airfare promotion. Outbound was on KLM, Vancouver to Istanbul via Amsterdam. It was booked with just an hour connecting […]
This fantastic list is courtesy of Avalon River Cruises, one of our preferred river cruise partners. River cruising is the fastest-growing sector in the travel industry and it’s not hard to see why. People love the intimate size (usually around 175 passengers), the inclusions and the leisurely pace. If, like a lot of “big […]
Today we cruised back into the magnificent city of Venice. After an early morning arrival, Darlene and I hopped on the waterbus to head up to Piazza S. Roma where we picked up our Europcar rental. After some short formalities we were on the road to Verona, the city of Romeo and Juliet. The hotel […]
We were advised late yesterday that the ship had some mechanical difficulties and that we would be docking in Rovinj, rather than Pula. Rovinj was one of the most important towns of Istria under Venetian rule. The town is an absolute delight to walk through and during our visit the annual art festival was being […]
Arrived in Sibenik at 0800 and we were off for a walk through the old city. Sibenik is the oldest native Croatian town on the Eastern Adriatic and was first mentioned 1066 AD. Influenced by the Venetians, the Habsburgs, threatened by the Ottomans, occupied by Italy during World War 2, it sustained a heavy attack by […]
Dubrovnik was known as a conduit between the Venetian empire and the Ottomans. They remained neutral through much of the middle ages and prospered as an independent state. It was heavily bombarded by Yugoslav troops in the fall of 1991 through to the spring of 1992. Damages were repaired by funds from UNESCO and the […]