In 1956, the world arrived in Cortina d’Ampezzo to watch Italy’s historic comeback. Cameras rolled in on new roads, the ammonia-cooled ice glittered under the floodlights of the stadium, and the Winter Games were broadcast live across Europe for the first time.

My first journey headed south. I was ten weeks old. My humans, R and H, had one of their brilliant ideas: let's drive to Andalusia. Two thousand kilometers on R's lap in a sports car. Holding my pee was still a work in progress. Especially on bumpy roads. And in Madrid. The warm feeling I gave her didn't last long.

Road signs in Italy are made for people who don't need them. Locals are born with an innate sense of direction that no algorithm can replicate. They enter roundabouts with the aplomb of joining a family dinner and leave just as decisively when they've had their share…

Maria hugs like a sunny Athens afternoon in autumn with a warmth I'd like to last. I melt into her arms. Her mezzo rolls out a melodious all-vowel welcome that lands in cutting consonants. Greek: a language that matches the land itself, all waves and rocks.

Our son is still mad at us about Peralta. Even after more than twenty years. Because we left him in an Italian hospital, just out of recovery from an emergency appendix operation, groggy, bewildered, and alone. He was eleven. We were starving. The trattoria down the road was irresistible.

H is going potty, I tell you. With some luck he’ll hold out a couple more years, until I catch up. Then we can get lost together within two blocks of home, arguing about which lamppost we’ve already peed against. People on the terraces will watch with the kind of compassion…

Koru. Launchpad. Dragonfly. If the names don’t resonate, you’re unlikely to ever set foot on board. These are the gigayachts of Messrs. Bezos, Zuckerberg, and Brin: floating fortresses, each among the most expensive assets a human can own. Vast technological marvels, designed…

If you’re Flemish, languages cling to you like fleas on a dog. Blame the genetics of being ruled by half of Europe since Julius Caesar marched over us in tortoise formation. At least he had the decency to call us the bravest. Since then we've learned to be pragmatic about nearshoring…

Maybe the best art is this: architecture of nothingness. Inside the Cisterna’s three post-industrial volumes—spaces that read like ritual—Thierry De Cordier’s NADA works hang like a monochrome tide: ten vast canvases, heavier than paint, weighted with ambience. They do not…

I made it. It took me just over six years to make it to the front row. To first class. The sharp end. Six years of my best behavior before my humans—forget the hooman doggolingo nonsense; I converse in correct multisyllabic words and the occasional alliteration, words as sharp as…

I guess it must have been the early nineties, when New York was still rough. Anything above 97th Street felt dodgy. Not that we went there; we were recommended to avoid it. There were carcasses hanging on rails dripping blood and fat on Chelsea pavements. Of course we went there.

I swear I saw her silhouetted in the rock. She was there as the sun broke through the leaden sky, rare light for the season. A woman saxophone player hunched over her instrument—intimately, the way women seem to coax sound from a saxophone, not force it, hips fluid rather than…

"Gamberi. GAMBERI. Ultimo kilo. 20 Euro." He yelled into the cabin of the jetfoil, his shoulder resting against the ship's metal bulkhead as he waved a plastic bag at eye level with his left arm, shaking it just enough to suggest the shrimps were alive. The gangplank screeched—metal against metal—as the ship rocked into the waves.

Mumbai, in April, arrives all at once. The air clings to your skin like a reused food wrapper, heavy with sea brine, gasoline, and something metallic you can't quite name. The light is harsh, and the noise unceasing. A fruit vendor shouting, the screech of tires, a bus's diesel engine coughing, cellphones ringing, a fragment of birdsong.

I don't easily express excitement. My mother's subdued reaction to all things emotional—except irritation, that is—genetically dominates my father's readily abundant tactility. And age doesn't help either; decades of intense travel seem to have formed a callus thick enough to dull even the most passionate experiences.

Abhijith was breathing hard as he massaged the oil into my body from my feet to my hands, using elegant, elongated movements as if he were conducting a symphonic orchestra. The last rays of the afternoon sun drew chevrons across my upper arms through the wooden slats of the window blinds.

I am still in doubt if the look on her face was one of disbelief or despair. She stood motionless at the perfectly decked-out breakfast buffet—a rarity in Italy—staring at a stack of white sandwiches near the toaster. Immobility near a breakfast buffet is not a common attitude among hotel guests. Unless they're hung over.

Betrayal. Pure and simple. Disruption at its worst. My well-organized canine life has been uprooted. On account of my human family. Can you imagine? I give them my unconditional love, loyalty, and attention, and what do I get back? A sister!

There aren't many places in the world where you can gaze in awe upon one continent from the other. Istanbul is a classic. But it doesn't feel like there's any difference between Asia and Europe because Istanbul is one big city connected by bridges and countless ferries to cross the Bosporus. Only Michael Palin…

We’re off to Tangier with the prospect of sun, and the first thing I do is shovel the snow off the pavement at 6 AM. We've had it with winter, but winter—obviously—hasn't had it with us. There’s a thin layer of white stuff clinging to the cobblestones. I consider leaving it there just for the beauty of it, but…