Writing the City: Essays on New York

Travel agents often tout a combined two-country single tour beginning in Portugal, which occupies the Iberian Peninsula southwest of its border with Spain. Both countries offer cultural features that can be classed as original and a great deal of scenery that is of undeniably great beauty. As will be apparent from my previous travel-journey diary entries published on this website, when preparing my touristicagendas, I have focused on landscapes enhanced by the historical features of particular architectural and landscape interest. Only after such agendas were chosen by me and I had been able to book the hotel and make rental-car arrangements through the services of a reliable travel agency, was I able to begin with my daily travel-diary writing. I was undeniably disappointed when I arrived in Portugal for the first time in my life, and discovered that I had forgotten to put into my travel bag my incomparable- clear-focusing Leica, which had long ago been given as a present to my favorite professional photographer and daughter Lisa Barlow. To discover the marriage of my words about Portugal and Spain and the illustrations harvested from fertile soil on Wikimedia Commons

Travel journals are, for some people such as me, a treasured literary form. For many years, I have never gone on self-planned vacations without a six-by-eight-inch, hardcover accountant’s ledger book with at least fifty lined, blank pages suitable for handwriting. My aim is to share with literary intent an appreciation of various landscapes and the memorable personal experiences that I have had in visiting them. Italy has always been a prime vacation setting for me and my husband, Ted Rogers, and we have happily set our feet in many places, especially the area stretching from the Alps, where they divide Italy and France, to Sicily, the island at the toe of Italy’s cartographic boot. In addition to rural Tuscany and the cities of Venice, Milan, Florence, Siena, and Rome, we greatly appreciate Italy’s southernmost major city, Naples.