In the 1670s, Louis XIV built the Palace of Versailles on the site of his father’s hunting lodge. Louis was fed up with the scheming nobility and relocated the entire French court from Paris to a remote location where he could monitor them more closely. Versailles was designed to show off Louis’s absolute power as […]
UNESCO
How to Spend One Day in Barcelona
When you travel as much as I do, things are bound to go wrong. Lost luggage, food poisoning, and rental car damage are just a few speed bumps I’ve encountered around the world. Cancelled flights and missed connections are standard for everyone these days. But what happens when your final destination is, in the words […]
Discovering Vilnius: Lithuania’s Dynamic Capital
If I asked you to find Vilnius on a map, could you? Before moving to Latvia, I certainly wouldn’t have been able to. I recently explained three times to a friend – who’s French, mind you – that Vilnius is the capital of Lithuania and I still don’t think she fully knows where I went […]
Why You Should Visit the Chateau de Fontainebleau
Before planning my week-long trip to Paris, I was only generally aware of the Chateau de Fontainebleau. It wasn’t an included stop on either of the two group tours of France I took as a teenager – we went to Versailles both times instead. But with the UNESCO-listed palace located a mere 56 kilometers from Paris, […]
72 Hours in Brussels, Belgium
A winter trip to Brussels wasn’t in my original Europe travel plan. Having previously spent a few days in the Belgian capital in 2007, I wanted to focus on other new-to-me destinations, preferably farther south. But search as I might, flights to Barcelona just didn’t match up with my travel dates. So I took a […]