I avoid red-eyes like the plague, but there we were, off for Hong Kong, only hours after my 23-year-old daughter and her second-graders finished the countdown to summer break! Eighteen months ago, we’d traveled to India and Sri Lanka for my WW2 research. Now to continue in China. Around dawn Sunday, approaching the glamorous “new” … Read more
From Voler, Voguez, Voyager Louis Vuiton Exhibit, Grand Palais, Paris Why is it every time I’m getting ready to leave town―even for more Europe by Train!―my home tugs me to stay? The weather is beautiful; the wisteria is in bloom, the roses are providing yummy buds for the “dear” deer, and the spring bulbs are popping. My sweet Daisy … Read more
We say we’ll never forget, but we do. When I look back at my 2012-13 Letters from Asia www.dianarchambers.com/passages.php (written for Sisters in Crime www.sincnorcal.org), I’m grateful for the memories. So I wrote Europe By Train, a dozen posts in all, one per city. Please hop aboard for the entire journey or join me for a … Read more
Do I really have to go to Rome? Already planning how to return to Tuscany, I watch the Mediterranean fall away. Too soon, we reach Orbetello for our final European train journey. Wound down almost to a stop, I don’t quite feel ready for the “big city.” And Rome’s Termini is big…mid-twentieth-century modern set against ancient … Read more
We had come to Europe for my youngest brother’s big birthday bash in Maremma, a remote coastal area of Tuscany. After three weeks of train travel, we are ready to unwind – little knowing how dynamic the week will be! Following my online booking with Italia Rail, I receive only an unfamiliar PNR code, to … Read more
We all have our public and private faces. So does that very grande dame Venice. Venezia. Everyone knows her canals, bridges, and palazzi. San Marco… And the gondolieri with their blue-and-white striped T-shirts… Her grand churches… But we have been lucky enough to spend time in her “backwaters” of Castello, a former ship-building center nearer … Read more
Imagine you lived in a 600-year-old kingdom, Austria-Hungary, which ruled a vast swath of central Europe, its own world of high culture, literature, art, and music. And then one day at the end of the Great War, you awoke to see your grand imperial city, Vienna, reduced to the capital of a small, powerless state. … Read more
Merre va Margit Hid? Where is Margaret Bridge? No offense, only affection for both: Prague is the cool, chic, with-it sister while Budapest is the wry intellectual in arty vintage clothing. During our six-hour train ride to Budapest, we chatted with an Aussie couple bound for a Danube cruise and two young Scots sampling the local … Read more
You know how those holiday pictures never capture your feeling of the place? Prague is a city of utterly jaw-dropping views, every time you turn your head…every angle. And yet, my photos seem flat, at least they don’t convey the magnificence of the views, the architecture, the sense of time. Our first view was pretty good, … Read more
A Long Day’s Night Amsterdam is not an easy city to leave, but we had a train to catch. My original plan had been to take the sleeper to Prague, recommended by “The Man in Seat 61.” The Man, Mark Smith, is a real railway professional and lover of old-fashioned travel, who has developed this site … Read more