SEATTLE–Well, first there was the disappointment of not having a parlor car on the Coast Starlight coming up from Oakland. Now there is the disappointment of realizing that Assaggio’s, my favorite restaurant here in Seattle, where I was planning to have dinner tonight, is closed on Sundays. I discovered Assaggio Ristoranti by accident probably…
I tend to start planning my travels well in advance. I work up a rough itinerary and spend the next several weeks, or even months, tweaking it . . . adding a day here, checking out various hotels there, looking at train schedules and, assuming it’s Europe, considering different trains based on their arrival or…
This is the entrance to the Grand Canal … and it’s pretty grand, all right. It narrows to perhaps a couple of hundred feet wide as it circles through the city, but plenty of room for two-way boat traffic. How badly do you want to ride in a gondola? That’s what these people are…
I had a terrible time finding the Hotel Flora here in Venice. I knew that was going to happen because the hotel provided a very explicit set of directions which contained the phrase, “You can’t miss it.” Trust me: Yes, you can. The…