Watching the recent Olympics in Tokyo reminded me that when Kathy and I lived in Portland, OR, we often visited the Portland Japanese Garden. The garden covers twelve acres in Portland's Washington Park and includes eight separate garden styles, an…
As you would expect to find in many large old European cities, Munich has palaces. The Residenz, on the edge of Old Town in central Munich, is the former royal palace of the Wittelsbach monarchs of Bavaria. It was not…
Sitting only 30 miles from the Alps, Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria. It's Germany's third-largest city behind Berlin and Hamburg. Many consider it to be one of the most livable cities in Europe. Arriving at…
We caught a train in Munich and headed south to Füssen, a small German town in the Bavarian Alps about a mile from the Austrian border. Though we had already visited castles on the Rhine River, we were on our…
We got up early to take a walk before breakfast. The streets were quiet and only a few other people roamed the town. Yesterday's tourists had either gone back to the cities or were still asleep. The sunlight peeking over…
Catching the morning train out of Bacharach, we left the Rhine River behind. Its upstream path continued south to its birthplace in Switzerland; our path swung to the southeast. In Germany (other European countries, too, I suspect) you can get…
(After a holiday hiatus, this post continues from Walls and Wine.) Following a nice breakfast in Bacharach, we took a short train ride to St. Goar for a day trip. This is another quaint town with half-timbered buildings along the…
Winter can be cold and dark and make you long for longer days. But it can also be a magical time of year when snowflakes dance through the air and icicles become exclamation points for the season. Recently, our landscape…
