Work+Travel=Adventure

06/19/2026

Starting in 2027, any airline flying into or out of countries in the European Union has to include a carry-on bag in the base ticket price. No more getting hit with extra fees just to use the overhead bin! Do you think airlines in America should do the same...🤔

More details in the article below ⬇️

06/18/2026

Romania's national railway has relaunched daily direct summer trains from Bucharest to destinations in Türkiye and Bulgaria, with fares starting from €27.
➡️ https://l.euronews.com/LMBV

06/11/2026

Now you know …

In 1903, the French government expelled the Carthusian monks from their monastery in the Alps and seized everything they owned.

The monastery. The distillery. The equipment. All of it. There was just one little problem.

Only two monks in the entire order knew the recipe for Chartreuse, and they had memorized it. There was nothing written down that the government could take.

The French government hired chemists to reverse-engineer it. They analyzed every bottle they could find. They ran every test available to early 20th-century science. They could not replicate it. The liqueur they produced under the Chartreuse name was so inferior that it destroyed the brand almost immediately. Sales collapsed. The company the government set up to produce it went bankrupt in 1929.

The monks, meanwhile, had relocated to Tarragona in Spain and were producing the real thing the entire time.

In 1929, the same year the French government's operation went under, the monks quietly bought back the rights to their own name and returned to their monastery.

The recipe is still known by exactly two monks at any given time. When one dies or becomes too ill to continue, he passes his portion to a successor. The full recipe has never been written down in a form that has left the order.

Chartreuse is made from 130 Alpine plants and herbs. The monks tend the distillery themselves. They take no outside employees into the production process. The 1605 manuscript that started all of this is still held in the monastery archive.

The French Third Republic lasted from 1870 to 1940.

The monks are still there, still making Chartreuse.

-Donnie

eatshistory.com

06/11/2026

06/10/2026

Most people think of France as a country of elegant palaces and grand châteaux. But some of its most remarkable castles were built for war, not comfort. From Carcassonne's 52 towers to Bonaguil's cannon resistant defenses, these fortresses were designed to survive when kingdoms collided.

Medieval France was a patchwork of duchies, counties, and rival kingdoms, all watching their borders carefully. The fortresses that still stand today survived because they were built in the right places, with the right defenses, and often by people who knew war was never far away.

Here are nine of France's toughest medieval fortresses:

1. Château de Fougères (Brittany)
Built on a rocky outcrop to guard the Breton border against the kings of France, with thirteen towers spread across three defensive lines. Changed hands repeatedly during the Hundred Years' War and still ranks among the largest medieval fortresses in Europe.

2. Château de Bonaguil (Lot-et-Garonne)
The last great medieval fortress built in France, finished around 1500 just as artillery was making castles obsolete. Bérenger de Roquefeuil designed it specifically to withstand cannon fire, and it was never taken.

3. Cité de Carcassonne (Languedoc)
A double ring of walls and 52 towers guarding the old border between France and the Crown of Aragon. The fortress was so intimidating that the Black Prince marched past it in 1355 without even attempting a siege.

4. Château de Bergues (Flanders)
Part of a fortified town on the shifting French Flemish frontier, repeatedly reworked as the border moved. Vauban added his star shaped bastions in the 17th century, but the medieval bones are still visible in the walls and gates.

5. Château Gaillard (Normandy)
Richard the Lionheart built it in just two years to block Philip II of France from invading Normandy. Philip eventually took it in 1204 after an eight month siege, and its loss effectively ended English rule in Normandy.

6. Château de Salses (Roussillon)
A half buried fortress built by the Spanish in the 1490s to defend the Catalan border against French invasion. Its squat walls were designed to absorb cannon fire, and it changed hands several times before becoming permanently French in 1659.

7. Château de Dinan (Brittany)
Anchored the eastern edge of Brittany against French encroachment, with a massive keep built by Duke John IV in the 1380s. Bertrand du Guesclin famously fought a judicial duel just outside its walls.

8. Château de Montségur (Ariège)
A Cathar stronghold perched on a Pyrenean peak, holding out against the French crown until 1244 when around 200 defenders were burned after surrendering. The current ruins are a 13th century rebuild on the same dramatic cliff.

9. Château de Foix (Ariège)
Three towers stand on a sheer rock above the town, controlling a key Pyrenean route into Spanish territory. Simon de Montfort tried to take it during the Albigensian Crusade and failed, which says a lot about its position.

These weren't built to impress visitors. They were built to hold the line, and centuries later many of them still dominate the landscape.

If you could spend a day exploring just one of these fortresses, which would you choose and why?

05/25/2026

The Alhambra in Granada, Spain 🇪🇸

05/24/2026

Italica near Seville was the first Roman city built in Hispania, founded in 206 BCE, and the birthplace of emperors Trajan and Hadrian.

The extraordinary mosaic floors, the enormous amphitheatre with a capacity of 25,000, and the complete urban grid of the Hadrianic extension make it one of the finest Roman sites in the Iberian Peninsula.

Entry to Italica costs around 1.50 euros for EU citizens and the site is almost never crowded.

Those who walk the streets of the Hadrianic city among the extraordinary mosaic floors and look across the amphitheatre from the highest seating tier describe it as the most significant and most peacefully accessible Roman site available within 10 kilometres of a major Spanish city.

05/24/2026

From Scottish castles to 1930s ranches, these historic hotels will take you back in time. Read more in the comments. ⬇️

05/22/2026

A new CTV W5 investigation says at least 17 innocent Canadian travelers have been detained or jailed abroad after their baggage tags were allegedly switched onto suitcases packed with drugs.

The scheme works by removing a real passenger’s checked-bag tag and attaching it to a different bag, falsely making the drug-filled suitcase appear to belong to that traveler.

The twist is that Canadian police have already charged airport baggage workers in a separate tag-switching case, including two Swissport employees accused of trying to send more than $147,000 worth of cannabis to France through Toronto Pearson.

The RCMP says baggage tag switching can make contraband appear connected to an “unknowing traveler,” creating a nightmare scenario for anyone who checks luggage.

Some wrongly accused passengers were eventually released, but not before facing arrest, detention, legal costs, and the terrifying possibility of drug-smuggling charges in foreign countries.

For travelers, the warning is brutal: once your bag disappears behind the counter, your name tag may be the most dangerous thing attached to it.

05/19/2026