Be In the Know. Sign up to have DesignDestinations delivered right to your inbox, weekly.
Who would have thought that when we checked into the iconic Balmoral Hotel in the middle of Edinburgh that we’d be given a room three down from the one in which J K Rowling holed up in to finish “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows.” Yep, that’s what happened. Her name is on the door. […]
When I think of Edinburgh, Scotland, bagpipers, the gateway to golfing and maybe an image of Mary Queen of Scots floats into my mind. Yes, these are all parts of this old and interesting city way north in the British Isles. But there’s more. Yes. Lots more. Here are a few other sights you...
My first impression of Copenhagen was all about the water–life on and along side the canals. Lovely surprise and quite charming. To read the post on canals, click here. Today I’d like to share other highlights of this welcoming city. Our brief time visiting Copenhagen was really...
The canals in Copenhagen absolutely amazed me. I had no idea. It was almost disorienting. One expects and knows about the canals in Amsterdam and, of course, Venice, but Wow…….the canals in the largest city in Denmark both took me by surprise and delighted me at the same time....
by Kate Dernocoeur, guest blogger During two month-long visits to Prague (Czech Republic), I always enjoyed encountering new and various designs in the ubiquitous cobblestones. I found myself enchanted by them on my first visit (2008), and was able to add to my collection of photos on my...
by Judy Bereza, Guest Blogger Forget all your assumptions about hiking in Switzerland. You don’t need to be a fitness freak; in fact, if you can walk, you can be comfortably transported to the top of jaw dropping peaks, with perfect emerald valleys laid out below. And, if you happen to get...
I am an absolute sucker for castles. When my husband and I got married a lifetime ago, we did the obligatory Europe on $5 to $10 a day trip, using the money we got as wedding gifts. We spent the first two weeks traveling up and down England and Scotland visiting a “castle a day.” […]
Lord Byron wrote to his Mother from Sintra calling it, “The village is perhaps in every respect, the most delightful in Europe.” Whether this is still true or not remains to be seen, but it is a lovely spot. The tiny town, about an hour outside of Lisbon, felt to me like Disneyland, only it...
Mosterio dos Jeronimos Don’t go to Lisbon without visiting two major tourist destinations—a monastery and a museum, an easy walk from each other outside of the main Lisbon area. The Mosterio dos Jeronimos, the grandest building in Lisbon, is built over the site of a small chapel raised...
If you go to Lisbon, be sure to take hiking boots. At least day hikers, the kind for up and down and uneven surfaces. The narrow and sometimes treacherous streets in the old part of City of Seven Hills are steep, turning, twisting revealing great slivers of the Tagus River and urban landscape....