I was a little dubious about why I was heading up the Neroberg, a hill said to be one of the favorite places for a day trip for residents of Wiesbaden.

Our Halloween hike to a fabled ghost town in the Italian Alps did turn out to be scary, but less in a haunted sense and more in a “how are my injured wife and 5-year-old going to get down a steep mountain” sort of way.

Hiking the Alter Grenzweg trail near the southwestern German village of Berus, it’s hard to imagine that this border area was disputed for decades by the Germans and French and saw fierce fighting in World War II.

On a sunny but cool autumn morning, we headed out for a drive along the German Wine Road. Our aim, as always, was to start at its southern end at Schweigen, near the French border, and work our way back up to the northern end near Bockenheim. And like always, we didn’t make it.

One of Vicenza’s art museums has reopened after months of coronavirus lockdown with a new exhibit that looks at the future as envisioned by the past, and asks: What now?

As the coronavirus resurges in Europe, the last thing many families are thinking about is a theme park vacation.

The Oetztal in the heart of the Austrian Alps is a winter sports mecca, but there’s something to be said for getting there before the ski bums.

Churches are everywhere in predominantly Roman Catholic Italy.

The German Wine Route is billed as the country’s oldest scenic drive, winding 50 miles through the wine villages of the Pfalz region.

In the heart of Wiesbaden, there’s a green gem that offers hours of pleasure in the great outdoors for little or no cash.

When Frankfurt banker and spice dealer Johann Friedrich Staedel wrote his will in 1815, he included a clause that led to the creation of what was to become Germany’s oldest museum foundation.

My idea of a good vacation used to be discovering somewhere new and doing something active, like running a 10-miler to the ancient Greek amphitheater in Epidaurus or canoeing down a river in Madagascar.

The Hunsrueck region of Germany — an area of rolling hills between the Rhine, Moselle and Nahe rivers — has quite a bit to offer the traveler or adventurer.

The fantastically named Tiger & Turtle — Magic Mountain art installation in Duisburg, Germany, is billed on the city’s website as a “walkable roller coaster,” a claim bold enough to demand scrutiny.

As the mid-August heat bears down on Rheinland-Pfalz, many people are looking for ways to escape their non-air-conditioned homes to cool off and relax, and a pool is the perfect way.

Every picture tells a story, and in Vicenza’s civic museum, they’re not all pretty. Little girls are fated to an arranged marriage or the nunnery. A young man is shot with arrows then clubbed to death. Another is turned into a stag and killed by his own hounds.

Although not one of the best-known tourist destinations in Germany, Passau attracts throngs of international visitors each year, many of them on cruise ships making their way down the Danube River, but also many stopping off on their way to Austria, Hungary or Croatia.

Beer and bratwurst — they’re something the Germans are known for the world over.

Visiting Slovenia had been a dream of ours for some time. So after the worst of the coronavirus in Italy had passed and Slovenia reopened its border to visitors from its neighbor, we made the trip.

Lying on a wooden bench in a park with a panoramic view of the Rhine valley, I closed my eyes and dozed off.

The Black Forest town of Bad Wildbad is well known as a wellness getaway, and it’s where I experienced firsthand the German tradition of getting naked with strangers.

The Eberbach Monastery gives visitors a glimpse at nine centuries of winemaking and the life of the monks that made it.

Sometimes, the best-laid plans go pear-shaped.

There’s nothing like a good old-fashioned “rug flop,” where carpet vendors literally roll out the red carpet for service members stationed in Bahrain.

Like a scene from “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” gems line the cave walls in Steinkaulenberg mine in Idar-Oberstein, where visitors can get an up-close look at the only open gem mine in Europe.

San Marino is full of superlatives.

The myth of a siren, the creature who lures sailors with her song to crash their ships upon rocky shores, is at least as old as Homer’s Odyssey.

The last significant trip my family and I took before the coronavirus was a Christmastime weekend jaunt to Bristol, England, with five of our closest friends

Playtime for the average middle-class kid once meant preparation for work as an adult.

Where do you go when there’s nowhere to go? People living in northern Italy, normally spoiled for great destinations, have been dealing with that question for two months.