Traveling the world … and some final thoughts

In my previous post, I ran down five of the most pleasant travel experiences I’ve enjoyed while touring the 50-odd countries I’ve had the fortune to visit over the past three decades. Let’s continue with five more.

5. Portugal: After visiting Brazil a number of years ago, it seemed only natural for my wife, Mary Pat Treuthart, and me to visit the home of the Portuguese language, which we did in 2023. We began in Lisbon, traveled by bus to the northern city of Porto, rented a car and then headed south along the coast all the way down to Portugal’s southern-most region, the Algarve.

Since Lisbon is more hilly than San Francisco, it’s not easy for the elderly or those with disabilities to navigate by foot. But there are numerous other ways to get around, from the city’s iconic trams to scooter cabs that are particularly good at negotiating steep and narrow streets. The center of Porto is far more walkable.

What impressed us the most about Portugal, though, was the ocean-side town of Nazaré, famous for the big waves that hit the coast during the winter season. During our spring visit the ocean was calm, but our imaginations allowed us to picture what it might be like to ride down an 80-foot-or-more tower of water.

4. Spain: Most people who go to Spain are drawn to either Madrid or Barcelona. During my first visit several year ago I was no different. But on a more recent stay two years ago we traveled to several other cities either by train or rented car.

That’s how we were able to tour Córdoba’s famous Mezquita Cathedral, walk the streets of Sevilla and explore the underground lair of the Nerja Cave. But among those and other ventures, what stood out was Granada’s grand Alhambra Palace and its gardens.

3. Albania: Most people I talk to don’t understand why anyone would want to explore Albania. And I understand this attitude since the country was off limits to outsiders for several decades following World War II.

But the week we spent there in 2024, starting in the capital city of Tirana and then hiring a driver to take us around the rest of the country, proved enlightening. Not only did we enjoy first-rate accommodations and meals at discount prices, but the people we met – including and especially our driver, Martin Mustafa – proved to be as friendly as you’ll find anywhere.

2. Italy: Other than the UK and France, the one European country that most people want to visit is Italy. And those who go there for the first time tend to explore three cities: Rome, Florence and Venice.

But Italy has 20 regions, its version of states, and the differences between them are profound. Those up north – especially Lombardy and Trentino Alto Adige – have far more in common with, say, Austria than they do with the southern-most regions of Calabria and Sicily, not to mention Sardinia. Mary Pat and I have been able to visit them all, our highlights being not just the three mentioned above, but cities such as Taormina in Sicily, Pescara in Abruzzo, Trieste in Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Matera in Basilicata, Alghero in Sardinia and the islands: Pantelleria, Capri and Lipari (plus four of its six Aeolian neighbors).

1. Kosovo: Traveling is one way to learn about how other people live and work in the world. But nothing beats a longer stay, one that gives you a chance to better experience those worlds and the people who inhabit them.

During a semester-long sabbatical that Mary Pat took in 2006, she volunteered for a legal project in Pristina, Kosovo, which had been under NATO and United Nations administration since 1999 following the Yugoslav wars. Her job was to work with Kosovar law students and teach them about legal methodology.

We ended up spending six weeks in Pristina, living first out of a hotel and then for a time in an apartment of an American judge who let us stay there while she went to Germany for a medical procedure. Our stay allowed us to make friends with a number of Kosovars, some of whom we still correspond with.

Final thoughts: Any number of other countries could – and probably should – be substituted for some of those listed above. Driving Iceland’s Ring Road, for example, or visiting Michael Collins’ grave in the Glasnevin Cemetery of Belfast, Northern Ireland. Walking among ancient temples in Greece and Sicily, seeing the birthplace of Mother Teresa in what is now Skopje, North Macedonia, or enjoying the street foor of Seoul, South Korea.

But that feeling extends as well to the several countries set around the Baltic Sea to South America’s Argentina, Brazil and the Uruguayan city of Colonia. To Sydney, Australia, all of New Zealand and the beaches of Bali. Also to the Chinese metropolises of Shanghai and Beijing and to Delhi, India. Even the Middle Eastern enclaves of Doha, Qatar, and Dubai, the jewel of the United Arab Emirates (where we dined one night in the shadow of the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa).

I have great memories of them all. And I hope to enjoy even more. I won’t, though, be writing about them here. After having been a blogger for The Spokesman-Review since 2003 – a job I was commissioned to do by my friend and former colleague Ken Sands and continued to write after retiring from the paper’s print edition in 2009 – this is my last post.

Over the years I’ve blogged about everything. Movies was my main emphasis for years. And while travel came in second, the two topics often coincided, especially when Mary Pat and I headed to film festivals in places as far apart as Seattle, Park City (Utah’s then home of the Sundance Film Festival), New York, Reykjavik and Florence, Italy.

I plan to continue writing on occasion for the print edition in whatever format The Spokesman-Review adopts in coming years. But 22 years as a blogger is enough.

Time for other voices to take over.