Margie and I like to travel, and intend to travel more now that I'm retired. Travel in Europe and Central and South America also complements my interest in foreign languages (I speak French pretty well, adequate Spanish and Italian for tourist purposes, and I still recall a bit of my college German).

I've been posting information about these trips in various ways. Occasionally, I've posted reports on my own web page. More often, I post a trip report on the Fodor's travel forum. I also sometimes post photographs on Shutterfly (some of these were originally on the Kodak EasyShare Photo site, which Shutterfly took over).

We find the Fodor's Forums to be enormously useful in planning our trips. Posters on the forums are extremely generous with their time, answering travel questions based on their own personal experience. In return, we post "trip reports" when we come back from a trip, and answer questions asked by others. Both Margie and I post under the screen name "justretired". You can learn more about our use of Fodor's on my blog entry Fodor's Forums.

The trips are listed below in reverse chronological order (that is, the most recent first). The underlined link after the name of each of the following reports will take you to the following:

      Web page will take you to a report on my own web page (with a few photos)
      Fodor's will take you to a page on a Fodor's Forum (text only, with comments by others)
      Photos will take you to pictures on the Shutterfly photo site

ITALY, SEPTEMBER 2012   Trip Report: Sicily:   Fodor's

FRANCE, 2011   Trip Report: Dordogne, based in Sarlat:   Fodor's

SPAIN, SEPTEMBER 2010   Trip Report: Madrid, San Sebastian, Salamanca, Segovia:   Fodor's

COSTA RICA, FEBRUARY, 2010

Wild Planet Adventures tour:   Fodor's   Photos

FRANCE, SEPTEMBER, 2009

Trip report: Languedoc, Gorges du Tarn, Arles   Web page   Fodor's
Visit to Jean-Marc and Kristin Espinasse in southern France   Web page

MEXICO, MARCH, 2009

Trip report: Club Med, Cancún  Fodor's

ITALY, OCTOBER, 2008 Trip report - Italy (Montepulciano/Lucca)   Fodor's

FRANCE, SEPTEMBER, 2007 Trip report: three weeks in Bonnieux (Provence)   Fodor's

MEXICO, FEBRUARY, 2007 Trip report: Akumal and Cozumel, Mexico   Fodor's

ITALY, MAY–JUNE, 2006
Lakes district, Dolomites, Venice, and Milan   Photos   Fodor's

Each section of the above report, at the end, provides a link to the next section. But if you want to go to them directly, the separate sections are at:

      Trip report: The Lakes District   Fodor's
      Trip report: The Dolomites   Fodor's
      Trip report: Venice   Fodor's
      Trip report: Milan (Milano), and some final thoughts   Fodor's

FRANCE, SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER, 2004

On the road in Lyon, Ecole des Trois Ponts, & Provence   Fodor's
Lyon, Roanne, Ecole des Trois Ponts, Provence   Web page   Fodor's

SPAIN, NOVEMBER, 2003 Trip Report, Madrid and Andalucía   Fodor's

FRANCE, MISCELLANEOUS
My page of tips on driving in France:   Web page
Deciphering French menus (Patricia Wells glossary)   Fodor's
The Friendly French   Fodor's

I also have a page of travel documents that we have carried with us (these are Microsoft Word documents). They include two files on Venice, and files on restaurants in the parts of Provence and Languedoc that we have visted.

Another page tells you how to type accented characters, which can be useful when entering information about foreign destinations.

FINALLY: I posted a page about HTML "tags" you can use when posting on Fodor's, to better format your text. It shows you how to enter text in bold, italics, and other formats, how to enter accented characters such as é, special characters such as ç and €, and so on.