One of the major reasons I decided to travel to Barcelona this spring was the possibility of flying directly and non stop from Miami to Barcelona in Iberia’s newly inaugurated luxury service with fully horizontal seats. Not sure of what to expected at the sometimes overcrowded airport in South Florida’s largest city I arrived at the Iberia counter three hours early. Check-in was speedy and I was pleased to discover I had been assigned an aisle seat as I had requested.
This striking music hall, built between 1905 and 1908 as the headquarters of the Orfeó Català , a nonprofit organization dedicated to the promotion of Catalan culture, had more than a century of history when I first attended a sold out concert there on a cool spring evening during a week long visit to Barcelona. It was love at first sight.
When I first heard the name Via Veneto I thought of the famous shopping street in Rome, Italy and wondered what kind of cuisine the restaurant served. Soon I discovered the restaurant offered a contemporary interpretation of Catalan dishes within a nostalgic setting designed during the Italian Dolce Vita era.
This boutique property in the northern Sabi Sand Reserve was a gem. Built lovingly on a former family farm the lodge was ideally situated on the banks of the Chitwa Dam, providing a magnificent birding and wildlife setting. In addition to very good wild life viewing with a personable ranger we enjoyed the many qualities of the property itself.
One minute we were heading out on a game drive and the next the adrenaline was pumping as we raced to a sighting. We heard there were wild dogs in the area and that if we were lucky we might be able to see them. Our energetic guide had a reputation for being able to stay close to a wild dog pack so we had high hopes we might see the elusive animals. A wild dog viewing is a rare reward on a game viewing trip. Everyone in our game viewing vehicle was excited at the prospect of seeing them.
On our most recent game viewing trip to South Africa we discovered the luxury of direct flights to and from the airport in Johannesburg and the game reserves in and near the famous Kruger National Park. In previous safari trips we had either flown to a regional airport and driven a couple of hours to our lodges or driven six to eight hours directly from the city to the lodges. In either case it was necessary to drive an hour on very bumpy unpaved roads within the reserves without cell phone signal or the ability to get out of our vehicles because of the wild animals in the area.