Category Travel
A Walk Along Juno Beach
It’s peaceful on Juno Beach on a sunny July afternoon. A few tourists, a few locals getting some sun; if I had been thinking I would have taken off my shoes and socks and dipped my toes in the English Channel, just so I could say I had done that. We arrived in Normandy after […]
Answering The Call
The wall is full of plaques, almost as if there is not a spare inch of space left. St. George’s Memorial Church is an English speaking Anglican establishment in Flemish Iepers (that’s Ypres to us Canadians). The church, built after the First World War for those Anglophones working in the area, was funded entirely by […]
The Friendly Skies
I didn’t have the guts to check the box. Discretion in this case was the better part of valour, as you will see as you read this. My wife, Vivian, is the world traveler. I’m the guy who likes to stay at home and sleep in the same bed every night. Usually when she wants […]
Ghost Walk
I don’t believe in ghosts, but I do enjoy a good ghost story. Ghost stories and tales of haunted houses speak to what we are as humans, revealing our fears of death and the unknown and allowing us to confront them on one level or another. We like to be scared, a little bit anyway. […]
Peasant Village
One of the semi-regular vacation destinations of my childhood was traveling with my family to visit Upper Canada Village, a recreated 19th century town saved from the flooding caused during the construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway in the 1950s. It was an easy day trip from where we lived and was educational, something my […]
Crucifixes Everywhere
Vivian’s aunt is a retired schoolteacher. She makes certain that any visit we make to her in Lippstadt, Germany, has an educational component. There are no options, we will learn something. Or else. Since we always go along with her suggestions, I have no idea what the “or else” would be. That educational component is […]
How Do You Spell Overrated? Manneken Pis!
A pilgrimage to see the Manneken Pis is a requirement for anyone visiting Brussels. The small statue is only 61 cm tall (two feet if you use Imperial measurements) and probably the most photographed object in all of Belgium. Tourists flock to see it. In two trips to Brussels I have yet to figure out […]
Rest In Peace
In thirty years of marriage I have visited my wife’s ancestral hometown of Lippstadt, Germany, four times. That means I have visited the local cemetery four times. There are family graves there going back to the 18th century, maybe older for all I know. It is a ritual that cannot be missed, though usually it […]
Sunday Morning in Bucharest
It is an island of English in a sea of Romanian and was completely unexpected. I was raised in a family where the expectation was that everyone would attend church on Sunday, a tradition I have kept up long after having shed parental control. My children see that as a bit legalistic, but I have […]
The Lions of Trafalgar – Some Thoughts on Aging
In some ways our visit to London this summer was a write-off. It was the last day before our flight home, and I had planned to take in a few sights, it having been a long time since I did more than change planes in London. However, we were tired and the effort involved in […]
random thoughts from lorne 
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