Queen Elizabeth II  greeted  the crowds, shaking hands and patting babies on her walkabout in the Channel Islands off the coast of France in 2005.   Photo by Gene Korte      Guernsey, Jersey and Sark are the names of three of the four main Channel Islands that pledge allegiance to the Union Jack while located 20 […]

This view of paradise greets travelers who arrive at Bora Bora’s Motu Mute Airport.  Photo by Gene Korte   Ia ora na! Greetings from Bora Bora — a tiny piece of heaven in the South Pacific. The water is impossibly blue, except for those improbable shades of green, and everywhere you turn, it is — snap, snap, snap — picture […]

Barbados is one of the southernmost islands in the Caribbean where daytime highs average 75 to 80 degrees, and the air is cooled by constant trade winds. Photo by Gene Korte        You can imagine, of course, that the beaches are fabulous here.  You even get to choose between the pounding surf of […]

Dubrovnik in Croatia on the Cote d’Azur coastline of the Adriatic is one of the best-preserved medieval walled cities in the world.       Photo by Gene Korte   The Adriatic is an inviting 500-mile-long sea with Italy on its western coastline and once isolated European countries on its eastern shores. Despite a delightful Mediterranean type climate, this region has been mostly off the American […]

November through March is the season when ships make their way down through the rough-and-tumble waters of the Drake Passage from the southern tip of South America to the northern reaches of Antarctica. It’s the ice continent’s summer.    Photo by Gene Korte   Antarctica is home to 90 percent of the world’s ice. Because of that, […]