Epic Group Travel Writers

Bergen, Norway, has a reputation for rain. Lots of rain: 83 inches over 230 days each year. But the weather gods smiled when we were there. Located on the southerly portion of Norway’s fiord-fringed coast, the city originally gained prominence as part of the Hanseatic League, a commercial and defensive confederation of merchant guilds and…

Sometimes a respite from all the jangles of our lives—the clicking, beeping, dinging, and talking heads—is necessary to preserve our sanity. Sometimes when we don’t know who to believe or even why, it’s a balm to mentally return to a time when certainty ruled people’s lives. A time when few expected a change in their…

Here is another contribution from the EPIC Group Travel Writers, who meet at Savvy Traveler. To learn more, visit www.epicgroupwriters.org. Three weeks into a Southwest escape, David and I strolled into the Death Valley tourist center, wrapped in contentment. A large woman in a green ranger uniform was commanding an attentive audience with her foreboding…

Here is another contribution from the EPIC Group Travel Writers, who meet at Savvy Traveler once a month. To learn more, visit www.epicgroupwriters.org Thought I was the first to coin the phrase “on the edge of the continent.” When I stood at the end of Golden Gate Park in San Francisco in 1968, it truly…

This is another contribution from the EPIC Group Travel Writers, who meet at Savvy Traveler once a month. To learn more, visit www.epicgroupwriters.org Meteora is a five-hour bus ride from the ancient and pagan holy site of Delphi in Greece, and a world away in religious beliefs. Glenn and I and the others on the…

The hard dirt road led us toward the distant mountains of the House Range. Out the car window, sagebrush, greasewood and saltgrass painted the immediate view with spots of green on yellow grass canvas. “We are in the middle of nowhere,” my daughter Sarah said. Henry, 10, asked, “What does that mean?” I explained that…

We rode on the smoothest of trails on a “bike and barge” trip that exceeded expectations. Averaging 30-mile daily rides, from Bruges to Amsterdam, we rolled through picturesque countryside while our barge made pace with us. No map in hand, nor GPS, and no directional disagreements with spouse. We simply followed our pied piper, Mike,…

This is another contribution from the EPIC Group Travel Writers, who meet at Savvy Traveler once a month. To learn more, visit www.epicgroupwriters.org The Lake District (Cumbria) in northwest England had been on my “someday-I-will-travel-to” list for ages. An added bonus to experiencing the beauty of this countryside would be to see where Beatrix Potter,…

This is another contribution from the EPIC Group Travel Writers, who meet at Savvy Traveler once a month. To learn more, visit www.epicgroupwriters.org It was easy to see where the term “ritzy” came from when the liveried doorman opened the portal for my daughter and me to enter the Ritz Hotel in London. She had…

This is another contribution from the EPIC Group Travel Writers, who meet at Savvy Traveler once a month. To learn more, visit www.epicgroupwriters.org A bookstore will never lead you astray if you’re looking for something to carry you to mysterious places. Our local bookshop in Rome (actually in my office building) had a delightful name,…

  This is another contribution from the EPIC Group Travel Writers, who meet at Savvy Traveler once a month. To learn more, visit www.epicgroupwriters.org Maybe we were crazy. “A bit daft,” some New Zealanders exclaimed as they scratched their heads when we took off on our bicycles for another day. We slowly pulled into traffic,…

“Do you think my son will want my job? No way!” One positive thing about being stopped in traffic in New York is the opportunity to talk with the driver. During a recent visit, we were trapped on Eighth Avenue near Strawberry Fields in Central Park, a detour because the normal route was blocked for…

On the Petit Pont over the Seine, I stopped to take a picture of Notre Dame. Walking south between the cathedral and the water, fallen leaves littered the walkway. They rustled as I kicked them. I observed the flying buttresses holding up the nave and choir and remembered learning about them in a college art…

When I lived in Rome, my husband and I did much of our weekly shopping on Saturdays. We often began at a stand set up on the sidewalk near our apartment, where an old woman sat on a stool trimming artichokes while her husband helped shoppers select the freshest tomatoes. But once a month we…

The apartment was a short-term rental through VRBO and located on a hill in the Alfama, one of the oldest districts in Lisbon, Portugal. We were on the 3rd (or 4th depending on what country you were in) floor, requiring careful negotiation of a narrow wooden stairway, which seemed endless at the close of a…

This is the 14th in a series of monthly stories by travel writers from EPIC Group Writers, an Edmonds non-profit organization whose mission is to support those who create, communicate and connect through cultural and artistic endeavors, especially the literary arts. It is a hot afternoon in Santa Clara, Cuba, and perhaps that is why…

This is the 13th in a series of monthly stories by travel writers from EPIC Group Writers, an Edmonds non-profit organization whose mission is to support those who create, communicate and connect through cultural and artistic endeavors, especially the literary arts. Grey and green became the predominant color when our little ship left sunny Grenada…

This is the 11th in a series of monthly stories by travel writers from EPIC Group Writers, an Edmonds non-profit organization whose mission is to support those who create, communicate and connect through cultural and artistic endeavors, especially the literary arts. New York City can be a daunting city to explore because it is so…

This is the 10th in a series of monthly stories by travel writers from EPIC Group Writers, an Edmonds non-profit organization whose mission is to support those who create, communicate and connect through cultural and artistic endeavors, especially the literary arts. The sun had not yet risen when our tour bus drove the short distance…

This is the ninth in a series of monthly stories by travel writers from EPIC Group Writers, an Edmonds non-profit organization whose mission is to support those who create, communicate and connect through cultural and artistic endeavors, especially the literary arts. Recently I wondered when the first ghost sighting was recorded, so as anyone would…

This is the eighth in a series of monthly stories by travel writers from EPIC Group Writers, an Edmonds non-profit organization whose mission is to support those who create, communicate and connect through cultural and artistic endeavors, especially the literary arts. I follow an old woman pushing an uncooperative wheelbarrow, as two dogs bark at…

This is the seventh in a series of monthly stories by travel writers from EPIC Group Writers, an Edmonds non-profit organization whose mission is to support those who create, communicate and connect through cultural and artistic endeavors, especially the literary arts. The Rome airport was in chaos because of a fire. Our one-hour flight to…