Late one February afternoon in 2018, my husband, Paul, and I arrived at Hili, an archaeological site 6 miles north of the oasis city of Al Ain in Abu Dhabi.

At first, we were confused. What we saw before us was different from most of the archaeological sites we had visited around the world, including those we had just visited a week or two before in Oman, Abu Dhabi's neighbor to the southeast.

At Hili, it is not just rock or stone remnants from the past lying on the...

Sixty miles west of Madrid lies one of my favorite places in Spain: the small city of Ávila (population 58,000). Four decades ago I wrote two books of walking tours of European cities. Ávila was one of the 24 cities included in those books.

One of the reasons Ávila ranks as special is its magnificent stone walls that encircle the city, among the best preserved in Europe. I wanted to walk along these walls again and revisit the medieval city they enclose. I also wanted to see...

Ask anyone what the greatest disaster at sea is that they can think of and almost invariably the answer will be “the sinking of the Titanic.” 

Shortly before midnight on April 14, 1912, the Titanic, on her maiden voyage from Europe to New York, struck an iceberg and sank within three hours early on the morning of April 15. Only 705 survived. More than 1,500 died in the cold waters of the North Atlantic.

My husband, Paul, and I flew to Halifax, Nova...