During a recent visit to Palm Springs, California, Jayne and I explored Joshua Tree National Park . It is here that the Sonoran  and Mojave deserts  meet… …containing a forest of strange Joshua Trees and a number of unique rock formations called Inselbergs . The famous San Andreas Fault  bounds the south side of the park. The […]

In this final look at our recent trip to southern Italy, I’d like to talk about a few miscellaneous topics. One of the other locations we visited was the city of Santa Maria di Leuca . Founded in the early 1st century AD by some monks, it is the southeastern extremity of Italy — traditionally considered […]

Our most favorite location during our recent visit to southern Italy was the ancient cave city  of Matera . This world heritage, UNESCO-listed , site is a gorge filled with ancient cave dwellings known as Sassi. The Sassi are houses dug into the rock itself. The ancient town grew up on one slope of the ravine created […]

Another stop we made was in the town of Polignano a Mare , considered by some to be the “pearl of the Adriatic”. I agree with this description and consider this to be the prettiest town we visited during our trip. It wasn’t too big or crowded, lined the rocky cliffs with their grottos, beautiful water, […]

While visiting southern Italy, the city of Lecce  was one of our first stops. Lecce  is commonly nicknamed “The Florence of the South” because of its many baroque  monuments. I call this one, the “Stairway to heaven”! The oldest part of the city is said to be 2000 years old, dating back to the Greeks […]