Imagine the year 1246. You are standing at the sea gates of the imperial palace in Constantinople - just south of the Hippodrome -...

We are not only going to see lots of tourists during our trip. There are also plenty of shipyards we are going to sail past - Bay of...

For most of you, the name Josip Broz Tito still rings a bell. Indeed, he was the Croatian Partisan Leader the Nazi Germans never managed...

When sailing up the Dalmatian coast we will hear the cacophony of tourist chatter but only one domestic language: Croatian. Architectural...

Can anyone guess how the following three pictures are related to each other? Mone Lisa from Leonardo da Vinci The town of Herceg Novi The...

The older amongst you may remember the civil war in Yugoslavia from 1991 to 2001 which followed the break-up of the republic after the...

On C + 4 the Dragonfly, our sailboat, will reach Ulcinj in Montenegro, the (in)famous pirates' nest. It was a thorn in the flesh of the...

Yesterday was supposedly my last blog but I have my boarding pass already for the afternoon flight to Switzerland. How am I going to...

There is no sailing any longer and we deviated quite a bit yesterday from our original goal to explore Venetian trade routes. But given...

We arrived today at the further most southern point of our trip this year: Herzliya Marina - 15 min north of Tel Aviv. The Carpe Diem is...

After an early night yesterday we got up at 6.30 am this morning and left at 9.00 am for our tour through Cyprus. We decided to skip...

This morning we left the Carpe Diem V behind in the new yacht port of Iskenderun (former Alexandria ad Issue) to drive in one of the...

As we head further east, the distances are getting longer. We are now in the eastern part of Turkey. There are no leisure boats any...

Once on the boat last evening, we sailed a bit further east to gain some time for today. There is an old Phoenician settlement we want to...

Most of use have visited the Column of Trajan in Rome, the 35 meters high marble monument which not only commemorates his triumphs during...

Since we could not stop at Side we are now a day ahead of schedule. We are going to use it to have a closer look at the fortress the...

Are you as much a fan of Shawarma as I am? Good, lean meat with some pickled vegetables in on open sandwich? It is the only fast food I...

With the fall of Egypt, the Mediterranean - for almost one thousand years a unified, cultural space - became a frontier. Commercial ties...

After “Christianity and inflation”, many of you may wonder whether “The plague and the rise of Islam” is another one of Hugo’s...

Over the last few days, we have seen how Christianity slowly spread through the Roman empire. In 313 AD Emperor Constantine the Great...