europe quick trips

With coronavirus infections still high in Germany, and U.S. and German authorities continuing to advise against unnecessary travel, I needed somewhere local to visit to get me out of the house.

Millions of pilgrims have made their way over the centuries up the hill from Vicenza to the Sanctuary of Saint Mary of Mount Berico, sometimes on their hands and knees.

europe quick trips

The middle of this year’s German winter may be a good time to visit the horseshoe-shaped meander on the Saar River called the Saarschleife.

europe quick trips

The Philosophenweg, as it’s known in German, is first a street and then a trail that runs along the hillside above the Neckar River, offering spectacular views of the city’s old town and famous castle across from it.

europe quick trips

In the thick of a pandemic and a countrywide lockdown, there’s nowhere to go except outdoors.

EUROPE QUICK TRIPS

A tripoint is the geographic spot where the borders of three countries meet. Europe has 48 of them.

With the coronavirus making travel difficult, if not impossible, but public health professionals urging people to get outside and get exercise, many Americans based at Aviano are heading for the hills – specifically, the Alps, or the Dolomites as they’re called in Italy.

“Blood Road,” says the gray sign alongside the road that leads to what was once Germany’s largest concentration camp, Buchenwald.

Not far from Kaiserslautern, there’s a fairy-tale village penetrable only to those who possess a pure heart — and a GPS and some cash.

The only legal party in my town is at a duck pond, and it involves mice.

There are many reasons to go to Weltenburg Abbey in Bavaria.

St. Martin is more than just a cute village with wine, though it would be a wonderful place even if it weren’t.

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.