If you pick up a handful of dirt in Los Angeles or a handful in Istanbul, it’s the same stuff. Part of what makes travel fascinating for us is the people and their lives in the unique countries they live in. But there is something else interesting about these individuals, whether adults or children, regardless of religion or politics. Let me tell you a quick story:

Years ago when we traveled in Mexico, we used to laugh at people coming south with their motorhomes or campers full of canned food, on the assumption that people in Mexico didn’t have anything to eat. Now, as we travel through some of the most remote countries in the world, some may wonder how do we survive? What’s for dinner?

Our friend Tom Hughey back in California loves to read about our experiences, the people and the interesting places we visit but being a practical kind of guy, he was wondering, about the local infrastructure, so we started photographing items of different nature.

While visiting the Numisi Winery in Velistsikhe, Misha, the Russian husband of Nunu, invited us to tag along to visit their farm where he wanted to pick up some fresh milk.

We had been looking forward to Georgian wines since we had our last sip of Italian Nero d’Avila. To our disappointment, most of the stores in Georgia stocked plenty of beer, vodka and juices, but rarely wines. Much of the table wine we found in the country was either homemade or produced by wineries and sold in 5-liter plastic containers. It was invariably on the sweet side. This was not Napa Valley, where there is a winery every couple of miles advertising their wine-tasting rooms, tours and picknick facilities.

Our final stop in Portugal was really more of a surprise. We were just looking for a place to stop for lunch when saw the fortress and church of Mourão on top of the hill inviting us. Turned out the route we chose was a little too narrow to be comfortable so we parked and […]

Following our difficult decision to bypass some of the more beautiful places in southern Portugal and head towards Spain, we were making better time now. There were still a couple locations on our route towards the Spanish border that our friend Soares insisted we must stop and see. The first was Monsaraz. Megalithic Circle of […]

There was a time when good wine came in a gallon jug with a screw cap. Perhaps we can all remember Carlo Rossi, “No wine is sold before its time”, or good old Red Mountain Burgundy. As our tastes and perhaps our budget improved, we graduated to better wines that were preserved with these little […]

Leaving the narrow streets of Évora, we looked on the map for someplace a little quieter to camp and saw that we were near the historic site of the largest single megalithic monument on the Iberian Peninsula, dating back some 7000 years. Located in a relatively remote area away from civilization on a dirt track, […]

Another day, another castle, another church and another ruin. We just can’t seem to pass them up. After a somewhat strange night spent next to a sports complex where kids were practicing soccer until midnight, that’s when the dogs started barking. We are starting to learn that there is virtually no place in Portugal where […]