travel Archives - Page 2 of 3

Photos from a day in Old Dubrovnik

Here are some of my photos of the exquisite medieval-era city of Old Dubrovnik taken during a voyage on Viking Star in November 2015. You might recognize some of these images as the setting for various scenes in HBO’s “Game of Thrones” — typically the ones where bloody battles take place. But there’s so much more to Old Dubrovnik: The friendly townspeople who live beneath classic orange-clad clay rooftops. The Mediterranean cuisine. The elegant bell towers and timeless architecture, such as the medieval walls that were built and fortified between the 13th and 18th centuries.

The Erechtheion or Erechtheum. an ancient Greek temple on the north side of the Acropolis of Athens dedicated to Athena and Poseidon

Photos of Athens & Santorini, Greece

Here’s a photo gallery of my recent trip to Greece aboard Viking Star. We spent a full day in Athens — a 20-minute taxi ride from the port of Piraeus — and an afternoon on Santorini, traveling from the port of Fira to the picture-perfect village of Oia on the north of the island.

Photos of Istanbul & Ephesus, Turkey

If you can possibly get to Istanbul, go! While many of the locals we met on our Viking cruise in November 2015 had the hard gruffness that characterizes many Middle Eastern countries, others were delighted at meeting Americans and sharing stories about their magnificent culture.

Photos of Machu Picchu & Cusco

Here are some of my favorite Photos from my October 2014 trip to Machu Picchu and Cusco, Peru, in November 2014. I was flown in to speak to a conference of Latin American journalists and decided to spend two days at the end of the trip to Cusco — only a 70-minute flight from Lima.

Magdelena, a venture capitalist, during the Bitspiration conference.

Photos of Krakow & a startup conference

I‘m just back from Poland, where I gave a talk on The Social Startup to the Bitspiration startup conference in Krakow. This was my first trip to Poland, so naturally I did some sightseeing in Krakow. And I spent a day traveling in the Polish countryside to Spie, where my grandfather came from.

Looking for relatives in Poland

JD Lasica visited Spie, Poland, in search of his roots and the ancestral Lasica homestead.

Guatemala: Central America’s best-kept secret

Travels through the heart of Guatemala, from Lake Atitlan to the Mayan highlands TIKAL NATIONAL PARK, Guatemala — Edgar is getting on my nerves. I am hiking through the lush rainforest of northern Guatemala with a friend, Colleen, and our guide, Edgar Diaz. Noise and movement follow our every step, for the tall hardwood trees are filled with howler monkeys, macaws and clamoring urracas, whose nickname, the alarm bird of the jungle, fits all too well. We pass by a ceiba, a tree sacred to the ancient Maya; hundreds of inch-long spikes jut from its slender trunk like a giant thorned rose. I ask about the jaguars and pumas, said to prowl deep in the shadows, but Edgar wants to

Cruising the Greek islands

A honeymoon cruise through Santorini, Crete and Naxos, with an itinerary culled from the Internet This article — one of the earliest pieces on using the Internet for travel recommendations — appeared in the Miami Herald, Philadelphia Inquirer, Pittsburgh Post Gazette and Torrance (Calif.) Daily Breeze in 1998 and the San Francisco Examiner (entire Travel cover), Chicago Tribune, Newsday, New Orleans Times Picayune, Buffalo News and the Rocky Mountain News in 1997. CRETE, Greece — Xerxes had led us astray. Xerxes, the nom de Net of a wired wayfarer on the Internet, had advised my wife and me by e-mail to bypass the resorts on Crete’s northern coast and head straight for the island’s hilly heartland. “To capture the real

Fiji: Serenity in the South Seas

Blue lagoons, rain forests, coral reefs, friendly locals — Fiji is pretty close to paradise CASTAWAY ISLAND, FIJI — The foot-long flying fish came straight at us, backflipping through the jade lagoon. Surely, we thought, it would turn. But no — at the last moment the fish launched itself, hurtling past my shoulder, arcing over our small motorboat and landing on the other side in a perfect electric-green splash. My friend Joyce and I looked at each other, wide-eyed. It was another Fiji moment.

A getaway to bucolic Chacala, Mexico

Discovering nature and community in a small seaside Mexican village This article appeared in the Chicago Tribune in 1998 and the Philadelphia Inquirer, San Jose Mercury News, Denver’s Rocky Mountain News and the Seattle Times, all in 1997. CHACALA, Mexico — There is the kind of Mexico vacation where you sunbathe at poolside, sip pina coladas, then hightail it back to the States without having to utter more than an occasional gracias or por favor. Then there is Chacala. Chacala will never be another Acapulco, and that’s just fine with the 200 residents of this sleepy fishing village 60 miles north of Puerto Vallarta. Travelers who have chanced upon it know Chacala (cha-KAH-la) as one of the great undiscovered pleasures