Giving Thanks

Every Thanksgiving, in addition to taking stock and feeling a general gratefulness for my life, I try to focus on one particular aspect of my life to be thankful for.  This isn’t always an easy choice to make, because the truth is I live a life full of blessings, even so this year, I feel I have a clear choice.

It was a peaceful walk, but disaster wan’t far away.

A little over a year ago I completed the Tour du Mt. Blanc (here’s the old post) with a close friend of mine.  Midway through the trip

Best Enjoyed Slowly

“Best Enjoyed Slowly” – so runs the new tourism slogan for Latvia, a country not well known for tourism, but which is the out of the way place I’m currently lucky enough to be visiting.  While I would venture to say that most of life is best enjoyed slowly, I’m happy to say that I’ve been able to follow this advice particularly well in a country that, while it may lack the well known attractions of a France, has plenty of its own to offer those with the patience to enjoy it.

The Latvian beach stretches for nearly the length of the country.

Among the many things I’ve found to enjoy here have been the Baltic Sea with miles upon miles of sandy beach, the immense

Lesser Known Europe – The Baltics

Even before I started out on my life as a nomad I didn’t watch much television.  Still, when a friend of mine recommended I watch the new show “Vikings”, a surprise hit for the History Channel, I couldn’t resist the chance to get some free entertainment that I could pass off as education.  I was even more delighted when the first scene of the first episode featured mass carnage in what it described as the Eastern Baltic, the part of Europe I’m exploring now.

Few signs of the past Viking carnage…

The Baltics have come a long way in the last thousand years, but the region – now made up of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – is still largely unknown to the rest of the world.  I’ve been lucky enough to