An olive branch decorated in cheeses and sweets for Palm Sunday in Positano, Italy. Olive branches on Palm Sunday? I was intrigued by the concept even before I discovered that the branches were to be festooned in small salamis, miniature cheeses, and occasionally a fresh fish....
I couldn’t get over how dense and sprawling Paris was as I stared down from the Eiffel Tower at the maze of buildings packed onto Medieval-sized streets below. It was Baron Haussmann under Napoleon III who widened some of the streets to create today’s grand...
I thought of my friend’s tale of her own visit to Stonehenge on a cold British morning as I shivered in the ticket line myself. She was huddled at the end of a long line in frigid pre-dawn fog when a van load of local...
“New” seems to be a relative term in England and in the case of the New Forest, “new” dates back to 1079 when newly arrived William the Conqueror designated the land as a royal forest for his deer hunts. As a non-Brit, 1079 sounded ancient...
Pineland gave way to rolling dunes, dunes so expansive that the ocean beyond went nearly forgotten. It was low tide and the waves were so far out that there were no crashing sounds to remind me I was seaside. Burrows riddled the hillside and I...
Titchwell, I was told by the pair of local birders I’d met while watching spoonbill courtship (see my previous blog), was THE place to ‘twitch’ (birdwatch) along the Norfolk Coast. Given the parking lot was filled with people carrying binoculars and spotting scopes, it was...
Marsh Harrier in flight. A pile of whipped cream and strawberries sat before me as word rippled through lunch at the lovely Victoria Inn restaurant that a pair of Eurasian spoonbills was courting at one of the neighboring bird blinds. I shoveled my ‘Eton Mess’ into...
Oystercatchers Mud flats stretched before me for what seemed like miles. Waves lapped at one far off edge, but seemed too distant to threaten the clusters of water birds milling about. I pulled my hood tight against the nipping winds and stared at the ground as...
I regretted leaving my camera at the hotel my first day in England. As I wandered Cambridge’s lovely meadows and gardens, songbirds new to me flitted in the bushes. A flock of fuzzy gallinule chicks paddled behind their parents, fresh from their nest in a...