Clooney purchased the villa more than 20 years earlier. Back then, not many foreign celebrities gallivanted around these parts. He invested a few million to fix up the place and triggered a generation of sightseers. According to gossip from the locals, Clooney was now sick of people sneaking photos from the lake. I couldn’t blame him.

Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic is a photographer’s delight. We’ve been lucky enough this year to have had two professional guides in the Czech Republic (one in Prague and another in Brno, the second largest city in the country.) Both guides gave the same advice: Don’t come with lists with convictions you have to see certain things. The way to enjoy Czech Republic cities, they say, is to wander aimlessly and see what comes up. And what comes up is we find Prague is a beautiful old city, one of the few major European cities that was not seriously damaged in World War II and one of the few to show no evidence of the Romans.

Hong Kong was always a favorite city, one that offered multiple adventures and my first close-up view of a great mix of East and West.

Long overdue for a return, last fall I was offered a chance to attend Peru’s first eco-travel conference, with side explorations of northeast and northern Peru, including the world's highest tropical mountain range and ancient ruins far older than Machu Picchu. Those locales proved an embarrassment of riches, well-worth recounting. But I’ll do that down the road. For now I’ll describe my return to the lower elevation of Lima. I had to kill a day awaiting a midnight flight to the States. At the baggage claim, I overheard a couple fellow travelers setting up passage on a boat to islands off the coast of Lima. They aimed to swim with the sea lions that ruled those seas. That sounded terrific. I quickly signed on. 

I was there as part of a US group of travel media and our visit did not, sadly, allow us time to stay very long, but had I been on my own I would have loved to have stayed there for about a week or longer. It's a great place to vacation and is fascinating, charming, lovely and really interesting in its own right. I don't know about you, but when I think of Germany, I think of places like Bavaria and big cities like Berlin and Munich. Lakeshore towns like Friedrichshafen do not come to mind - I mean it looks and feels and sounds more like some gorgeous, very romantic Italian resort.

My wife and I had just arrived at Rio de Janeiro’s famous Copacabana Beach.  It was in February, the height of Brazil’s Austral summer. Surrounded by deeply tanned locals, playing ball games, and some even dancing the samba, I looked like I just got off the boat from Finland.

I just stood in wonder, marveling at this site that brought tears not only to my eyes, but also the eyes of my big, strong son-in-law. Not wanting to miss a thing, Jeannette and Kolin ventured higher on foot, while I retreated to the CRV, where Sally was waiting. During this trip she rarely got out of the vehicle, enjoying the sights vicariously, as she had been on this tour many times before. The next stop was Sunset Point, where we viewed Bryce Canyon from a different angle.

I had never seen so many tall and sleek model types in my life. I watched with fascination as they rushed through Milan’s  Piazza del Duomo (“Cathedral Square”) for an unknown rendezvous or appointment, dressed in the latest fashion. It was also the first time I had ever paid $16 for a café latte, but it was well worth the price for a front row table facing the magnificent Piazza.

A sensory blitz overtakes me as I shamble (yes, the result of that red-eye, early-morning arrival at Heathrow, so I am a little beleaguered) into the very groovy nhow Hotel lobby in Shoreditch, a London neighborhood that has (to quote Wikipedia) "become synonymous with the concept of contemporary 'hipsterfication' of regenerated urban areas"

Built in the late 1700s its location on a lonely, high cliff that overlooks the often raging seas below is, in my view, one of the most romantic and yes, stunning places in all of Bonnie Scotland. It was a delightful and wonderfully sunny day when I visited and, as a WW2 buff, I was fascinated to learn that the entire top floor is a luxurious suite called “The Eisenhower Apartment.” It was so named in 1945 as a “Thank You” from the people of Scotland to the American general for what he did in WW2.