Travel Stories Archives

Category: Travel Stories

From San Francisco to Madrid to Valencia

There were a few elements of my latest trip, this one to Valencia, Spain, that I thought you might enjoy hearing about. One element is much different on this trip from any I’ve made previous: I have with me a new 32″ aluminum suitcase that weighs 72 pounds. Its contents will be revealed once […]

It’s All at the Mall

Wikipedia lists 68 shopping malls in Dubai with even more under construction, so today we thought we’d see what this mall thing is about. Being American I thought I knew something about shopping. Turns out, not really.

Dubai Dubai Du

It’s 11:30PM here in Dubai and the family is asleep after a long day of jet-lagged tourism. Since in a few days I’ll be on the strangest MotoGP schedule of the year (arriving at the Losail circuit in the late afternoon and working until around 3AM) I’m trying to stay up to make those first […]

More Rossi Brotherhood, German Style

In 2009 I visited the famed Nordschleife, the German public racetrack, and posted about it here. Then in December last year I posted a little story about encountering a Valentino (Vale) Rossi fan in an unexpected place. A few months later I was pleased to receive an email from a German who had read both […]

A Tale of Two Cities

Originally Published in June, 2011 This is not the original work by this title, but a shorter version by a lesser know author. However, it is about two sides of the same city and it begins with this dramatic question: how did I manage to meet a couple of hookers tonight and what happened next? […]

Good On Ya, Sydney!

(Pre-script: I’m writing this at a kid’s playground while the baby sleeps and the nipper chases around with a load of other kids, and I’m working as fast as I can to get this done before the sprout wakes up, so please excuse typos etc.) There’s just something really cool about seeing in person a […]

Photo Diary: A Day Off In Doha

Not a lot of text today, just some photos from our visit to the Souk and its environs with a few comments here and there. We started the day off at around 11:30 by meeting Lauren and Randy at the souk and before long wound up at the pet section of the old market. The […]

Shopping In Doha

As host and master chef Andrew Wheeler shopped for groceries this afternoon, I was at liberty to browse the aisles for interesting products. When my wife and I lived in France, going shopping almost always involved stumbling across an amusingly-named product of some type. It’s quite challenging to market a product in a foreign culture […]

Testing, testing, one, two, three…

Quite a day yesterday, partially because it just kept on going and didn’t end until 4 this morning. When I went to bed here in the living room, David and Jensen were still finishing their work. If you’re here because of an interest in MotoGP, make sure to check out their coverage at MotoMatters and […]

Yin and Yang —

David Emmett from MotoMatters and Jensen Beeler from Asphalt & Rubber have arrived and at the moment (3:13AM) we are all sitting at our computers, a sort of motorbike-related nerd fest. Jensen tried to sleep but couldn’t, so he got up to report on the Daytona 200, and David is updating MotoMatters, and I just […]