We all have a part of our lives we prefer not to visit again. Mine came when I was about 12. A traveling accordion salesman came to our house. I know, you think I am making this up. No, it was real. It happened. My parents were both home along with my younger sister and myself. It was a Saturday, a day that will live in infamy. The salesman only wanted a few minutes of our time and my parents let him in carrying a huge box with him. He said his music company was looking for local musical talent and opened that giant box revealing a black shiny accordion.

My three long weeks in London and England's North was about to close. I had covered a lot, experienced much and my education was well rewarded. My choice for the grand finale was easy. It was a place, like many dreamers before me had dreamed and visited; and now, a few miles from Carlisle, Cumbria, my dream was fulfilled. The Lake District is England's largest National Park and UNESCO World Heritage Site. Covering 912 square miles, it is home to more than 200 spectacular mountains and fells ('hills), along with lakes, rivers and tarns, surrounded by thriving villages and historic monuments. It is landscape that has inspired great works of art.

Most travelers know that the Caribbean islands are well-versed in rum, but Barbados goes one better because this is where rum was discovered. A tavern owner in Bridgetown one day early-17th century was searching for an empty shipping barrel when he inadvertently stumbled across one filled with a concoction worth selling -- a barrel of sugar cane fermented over time. Well, Mr. Rumball -- the tavern owner -- knew a good thing when he tasted it and soon the Caribbean's signature beverage was being served and sold all over the island -- and very quickly well-beyond. Presumably asking for a "tot" of Rumball's elixir was too cumbersome and the name was shortened to rum. The drink's popularity was so pervasive that the King of England decreed that the Royal Navy should partake on a daily basis and George Washington insisted that a barrel be available at his 1789 inauguration.

Sugaray Rayford is literally, larger than life…a gentle giant in both stature and compassion. Multiple times during our conversation we were interrupted by friends and fans wanting to take a picture with him or just shake his hand. Mid-sentence he would stop, smile for the picture and thank them for coming out to see him. Soft-spoken unless he's onstage Rayford is both a storyteller and musicologist but is quick to credit those around him for his success. He places the most emphasis on being where his is today on the love, encouragement and support of his wife, Pam.

What can be said that has not already been said about Hadrian's Wall: A marvel of Roman ingenuity, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the last frontier of the Roman Empire. A stretch of 73 miles of stones from sea to sea, covering the entire width of the island of Britannia, from Wallsend on the River Tyne in the east to Bowness-on-Solway in the west. A Wall up to 15ft. in height and 6 ft. deep with large forts and smaller mile castles with intervening turrets. It took six years of work by skilled Roman legionary masons, along with thousands of auxiliary soldiers, to build. Upon its completion, the Wall was fully manned by almost 10,000 Roman soldiers to protect the Roman province of Britannia, Imperial Rome's final province and frontier, from the barbaric Caledonians of the north.

I used to live around the Washington, DC area in my college days and I’d been to the Smithsonian Museum and the different monuments. But it never occurred to me that this is the town where President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. So to my delight and surprise I found out, through a museum information booth, that the original Ford Theater where he was shot and the house where he died had been preserved all these years and it was just a few blocks away.

I always loathed him. I had a lady pal whose good friend was the widow of a Chilean minister under Allende. The former minister, a foe of Pinochet and an opponent of foreign investment in Chile, was blown up while driving along Washington’s Embassy Row. My friend despises all things Kissinger, who helped usher in Pinochet’s dictatorship.

Detroit's reigning Queen of the Blues; Thornetta Davis recently graced Southern California with a royal visit courtesy of the San Diego Gourmet Blues Series. Ms. Davis' performance made it perfectly clear why she was honored with the Female Soul Blues Artist of the year at the 2023 Blues Music Awards in Memphis last May. Thornetta and her Motor City entourage follow a musical path that is uniquely their own and the songbook they work from contain the crown jewels of soul, blues, rock and funk. For more than two hours she reminded So Cal's blues faithful what the true meaning of Detroit's thriving music scene is all about. "Detroit, man! Give it up for Detroit musicians! Don't sleep on us!"

The sound of the tracks was calming as my railway car glided effortlessly through Northern England's breathtaking countryside. Watching the miles pass from a train window allows a perspective that is not offered by plane travel. And now, heading to Carlisle in Cumbria, nothing else seemed to matter besides the little farms and villages and sweeping green fields in England's north. Our life-long London friend, Trish, sat beside us, occasionally offering a soft-spoken narrative of its history, a history where the green fields were once soaked in the color of red from the Celts, the Romans, the Vikings, the Angles and Saxons, the Normans, the Jacobites and the Border Reivers

I’ve spent much of my life first 17 years of life dreaming about the boulevards of Provence and street cafes of Paris. I ended up instead as an exchange student in industrial town in the coal and steel region of in Lorraine, France. But that didn’t daunt my love of travel.