Europe à la Mode

Check It Out on Amazon!
Hello and welcome! This is the place for all things Europe à la Mode—my new travel book that takes you on a six-week odyssey to five countries and nine cities across southern Europe.
Europe à la Mode embraces a “slow travel” philosophy and offers insights to elevate or “put the cherry on top” of your travel experience. It also features travelogues, anecdotes, and sample itineraries for nine popular European destinations: Vienna, Venice, Milan, Genoa, Nice, Barcelona, Lisbon, Faro, and Madrid. You can check it out at amazon.com/books.
Presentations & Book Signings
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Travel Club of the Desert – Palm Desert, CA - October 2, 2024
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Sun Lakes Travelers Club – Banning, CA – November 9, 2024
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Four Seasons Beaumont Travel Group – Beaumont, CA – TBA
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Palm Springs Writers Guild Book Festival - Rancho Mirage, CA - April 26, 2025
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Authors Series - Palm Springs Cultural Center - Palm Springs, CA - October 30, 2025
Travelogues & More
In this space, I'll be featuring a travel story or excerpt from my book. Down the road, you'll find a Book Shelf section featuring books written by other indie (independent) authors.
For this month's travelogue, I share a story from one of the beach towns we visited in Portugal's Algarve region.

Gotcha
Albufeira, Portugal
Back in the day, we spent mucho tiempo in Tijuana and Baja, bargaining and buying our fair share of souvenirs. Now, our older and wiser selves wouldn’t think of pawing through a pile of ponchos and Mexican gewgaws. Hence, no one was more surprised than I was at the outcome of our side trip to Albufeira.
A popular resort town in the Algarve region, Albufeira is home to thousands of dolphins and dozens of beautiful beaches. But to reach them, we needed to catch a cab from the local train station to the city’s Old Town.
There, on the main thoroughfare, overshadowing the charm of the Moorish architecture and cobbled streets, vendors packed the pavement ten-deep, hawking all manner of ticky-tacky trinkets and cheap clothing. Entire wardrobes could be had for the price of a taco. Were we back in TJ? Who would buy this stuff? Turns out, I would!
Killing time while waiting for our train to Faro, I began mindlessly browsing a rack of dresses strategically set up at the station entrance. Never mind that I had ditched dresses a decade ago—I boarded that train toting a flashy fuchsia, taco-priced dress that turned out to be even more unflattering than expected. Yep, they got me.
I decided to gift the garment to the hotel maid in Faro. Instead, the dress traveled to Madrid where I determinedly donned it for a flamenco performance. Having wrung my five-euros worth of wear from it, I fully intended to leave it behind.
But the dress had other ideas. It now resides in California where it leads a lonely existence in my closet. So much for older and wiser.