In a few hours I will climb into a couchette on the night train to Madrid, bringing to a close my week of trudging around Barcelona with all six pockets of my cargo shorts ludicrously over-filled with various journalist battery-powered gadgets, maps, pamphlets and breath mints. These shorts are an…

Well, it’s been another rough week in paradise. I’ve suffered through four nights of five star treatment (in three different hotels). Sadly, tomorrow I am downgraded to a four star business hotel in Barcelona’s decidedly uncool and un-centrally located financial district. Woe is me. As I write this, I am…

Friends/LP editors/groupies, I’m happy to announce that I submitted the last of my Tuscany work for two different LP books (Tuscany and Umbria 5 and Italy 8, both due in stores February 2008) last Tuesday, 10 full days before deadline. Now I don’t wanna brag or anything, but WHO’S YOUR…

You are never gonna guess where I am right now. Bonus smartass creativity points for anyone who thought “The Home for Disturbed Travel Writers with Bad Breath? Finally?” In truth, at this moment, I am technically in Arlington, Virginia, but for the past three days I have been crisscrossing my…

So, I was in Malta almost two weeks ago. For the record, it was not a vacation. It was all business, as far as my long-suffering LP editors are concerned. The Maltese Strongbow cider distributor admiring an odd four-day spike in sales may testify differently, but that’s purely circumstantial evidence….

I’m shameless about a lot of stuff, but there are only three things that I’m so shameless about that if it weren’t me doing whatever it was, I’d pants me just to teach me a lesson. Those three things are: – Self-promotion – Abusing any opportunity for free booze –…

I’ve been back from Malta for like three days, but its really only been about 12 minutes when you take out the waking hours that I’ve been entrenched in frenzied catch-up work. Apart from one indulgent shower and a run to the market in the next village because all I…

The first thing you learn as a writer – or in my case I just figured it out about a year ago – is that you really need to have your ‘space’. The space where you go to write. It should be comfortable, virtually devoid of distractions, with all necessary…

Have you ever noticed how there’s just too damn many saints, popes, royalty and leaders for any person with a reasonable social life to keep track of? I’m even fuzzy about the ones that are still alive, much less the untold hundreds of dead ones that people with a good…

I love breakfast in Italy for three key reasons: 1. Wicked 2. Good 3. Coffee It’s one of the simple, given pleasures of being here. You can walk into the crustiest, backwater, hilltown train station café, order an 80 cent café macchiato (‘stained coffee’, an espresso shot, with a dribble…