I once met an elfish, black-clad old man in the little town of Ventry, on Ireland’s Dingle Peninsula. When I asked if he was born here, he paused, breathed deeply, and said, “No, ’twas about 5 miles down the road.”

I asked him if he had lived here all his life.

He answered, “Not yet.”

When I told him where I was from, a faraway smile filled his eyes as he looked out to sea and muttered, “Aye, the shores of Americay.”

Submerged in a mucky peat brine, it occurs to me that this must be the strangest bath I have ever taken.

I’m in the well-preserved Czech spa town of Trebon. I’ve decided to supplement my intense time in touristy Prague by venturing south, deeper into the Czech countryside.

Trebon’s biosphere of artificial lakes dates back to the 14th century. Over the years, people have transformed what was a flooding marshland into a clever combination of lakes, oak-lined...

Here’s one of my favorite European memories illustrating how, if you know where to look, you can find human bones on display in many corners of the Continent.

Deep under the streets of Paris, I was all alone ... surrounded by literally millions of bones — tibiae, fibulae, pelvises, and skulls, all stacked along miles of tunnels. I was in the Paris Catacombs. I jumped at the opportunity to pick up what, once upon a time, was a human head. As what seemed like two centuries...