EARLY IN OUR MARRIAGE MY BETTER HALF never once complained when frequent travel-writing gigs took me away for long weekends whether it was Bardstown to cover the Kentucky Bourbon Festival or West Palm Beach for a story on greyhound racing. Ditto when weeks-long foreign assignments meant calls at all hours from remote destinations like Australia's Cape York Peninsula and the rural backcountry of El Salvador. There were, of course, the expected disconnects:

Me: “I ate witchetty grubs with my Aboriginal hosts tonight.”

Her: “Sal’s Snowball Stand opened yesterday.”

Everything changed when opportunities arose to travel with my best mate and Huckleberry friend. For us the destination didn’t matter though as a rule we enjoy the road less traveled, preferably abroad because the welcomed unfamiliarity of different cultures never fails to awaken and liberate us from our sardine-tin comfort zones.

Among the first things I notice during our shared journeys is that my innamorata looks even more beautiful in foreign countries (I’m convinced most women do). The reason is simple: Instead of the plumbing aisle at Home Depot, I'm instead glimpsing my Bae against the ruins of Pompeii, the vistas of Santorini, a medieval underground passageway in Southern France. One afternoon in Mykonos, for instance, sitting at a sidewalk café table sipping espresso while Cathy is running errands nearby, I look up to observe a tall, youngish woman exiting the farmacia across the street.

“Shazam,” I say to myself, “who’s that smoke-show Jackie O. rocking the jetsetter shades and Capri pants?” A split-second later, I gasp: “Yikes, it’s the wife!”

Another lesson is that nothing compares to seeing the world through the eyes of the person you love most in this world, such as watching her gaze through the taxi window in downtown Athens while speeding past iconic structures she remembers from high school history books.

“Oh my god,” she whispers. “It’s the Temple of Zeus.”

When in Greece we linger over slow Mediterranean dinners at candlelit sidewalk cafés scattered throughout the Plaka, the oldest neighborhood in Athens. At night the trees twinkle with lights and the air is punctuated with the distant sound of an organ grinder playing “Never on Sunday,” as the illuminated Parthenon glimmers from atop the Acropolis nearby. Occasionally the bliss is interrupted by the rattle and hum of a moped buzzing past with a Domino’s sign and stack of pizza boxes strapped to the seat rack. Go figure.

Another assignment to Greece finds us hunkered down on the legendary island of Lesbos, working up stories for my always grumbling editors. An early-morning stroll through the beach village of Eresos leads to a tidy bungalow fronted by an exquisite, overflowing garden. The elderly woman living there spies Cathy admiring her roses and beckons from the doorway for us to come inside, pointing to her wedding band as we walk past the white-haired gentleman snoring on the wrought-iron bench by the turquoise colored front door.

During the next two hours Anna prepares traditional Greek coffee as we sit in her homey kitchen framed by white-lace window curtains — her not speaking a word of English; us not a syllable of Greek — communicating best we can our respective lives through gestures and expressions. Anna is in her 80s and worked as a school teacher before she retired and began a second career as an artist. Gracious and kind, she tours us through her well-kept, modestly appointed home, gesturing proudly to her artwork hanging on the walls.

“If this were a Monty Python skit,” I whisper to Cathy, “we're about to be shoved into a room with all the other tourists Anna has taken prisoner over the years.” Cathy shoots me that all-too-familiar smile, the really sweet one she flashes in public when she can’t say, “You’re an idiot.”

Anna motions for Cathy to join her in the garden. The spry octogenarian snips off a couple of roses and gently places them in Cathy’s hands, my wife blinking back tears as they hug goodbye. For the next few minutes we walk the cobblestone streets of Eresos in silence, keenly aware that this island’s trove of breathtaking overlooks and ancient statues are little match for the unexpected cultural exchange and outpouring of hospitality we have just experienced.

The silence, however, proves short-lived the moment it occurs to me that everything and everyone on the island of Lesbos is technically, well, Lesbian. I keep my wisecracks to myself. After all, locals have heard it all before especially from the estimated thousands of lesbian tourists who flock annually to this stunning Aegean isle for its International Women’s Festival and to soak up the vibe of Lesbos' ancient Sapphic lore. None of which stops me, of course, from snapping a photo of the hand-painted wooden sign hanging on the dockside restaurant: “Try our Lesbian sauce on fish and seafood."

BATHHOUSE BLUES 

Our first joint trip to Istanbul finds me eager to introduce Cathy to a classic hammam, or Turkish bath, since I have masochistically enjoyed the experience during previous solo visits to this ancient metropolis once known as Constantinople and the only city in the world that straddles two continents: Europe and Asia. We head to Aga Hamami, built in 1494, the oldest in Istanbul and my long-time favorite, to enjoy the sexually segregated Turkish tradition.

What I deliberately do not tell my wife is that true Turkish baths are not the coddling, spa-like mini-vacations found stateside but rather Anatolian torture zones apparently sanctioned by The Hague’s International Criminal Court. The centuries-old ritual, which dates to the Ottoman Empire, requires guests to first recline and relax on large circular marble slabs heated by the continuous flow of soothing hot water. Without warning the beefy masseur unceremoniously heaves a large bucket of hot soapy water in your face — a real WTF moment for any first-time hammam-goer. Soon he sets to work scrubbing — nay, scouring — your entire body with industrial-strength loofah pads prior to the Ottoman version of a happy ending: cracking your back for the sheer fun of it.

On the women’s side, smoking is permitted — not by customers, but rather the masseuses. For Cathy the sight of a Marlboro dangling from the lips of her corpulent, half-naked Turkish masseuse is no doubt making this time-honored Istanbul experience nothing short of spectacular.

My bath massage finishes early so I wait in the lobby. Minutes later Cathy bursts through the door of the women’s side with a steely-eyed look I have never seen before. I hide my face behind a copy of Fanatik, the popular Turkish sports magazine, as my uncontrollable laughter is echoed by chuckles from a group of elderly men standing nearby who look on with amusement.

“You,” says Cathy, “are sooo dead to me.”

OH, MY GAUDI!

Truth be told the sum total of my solo assignments to the Iberian peninsula pale when compared to the first time I get to show Cathy my all-time favorite city in the world, Barcelona, during our first visit together to the capital of Catalonia, the politically autonomous and independence-seeking province tucked on the northeasternmost edge of Spain.

She falls hopelessly in love with the city. This as we hold hands like teenagers while exploring modernista architect Antoni Gaudi’s whimsical confections, such as his otherworldly Sagrada Familia and Casa Mila, getting lost amid the cobblestone rabbit warrens of the medieval Barrio Gothic, and strolling Las Ramblas, the city's famous tree-shaded promenade that stretches to the Mediterranean shore.

Adventurous days and romantic nights also find us prowling near-secreted tapas bars and browsing museums dedicated to the pre-Paris works of then-youthful Barcelona residents Pablo Picasso and Joan Miró, reveling in the Spanish tradition of lengthy late-night dinners (not unlike New Orleans), and exploring the solemn grace of 13th-century Gothic cathedrals illuminated solely by candlelight.

Eventually calamity strikes. My shoulder bag containing my camera, passport and money is stolen at a sidewalk café on the heavily pedestrianized Rambla Catalunya. Cathy experiences a bona-fide meltdown until a 30s-ish Dutch woman sitting nearby comes to our rescue. The woman excuses herself from her tablemates in Dutch, speaks Spanish to the police officer so he can file his report, and then in English offers to let us stay at her apartment if we are without lodging or money to afford a place. Talk about the dual blessings of multilingualism and the kindness of strangers.

All I know for certain is that we are scheduled to fly home from Barcelona the next day and I have no passport. It is 3 a.m. before we return to our hotel. I jump on the phone to the U.S. Consul for Barcelona whom I awaken out of a dead sleep.

Consul: “Where were you robbed?”

Me: “Rambla Cataluyna — we didn’t even see them, they were so fast.”

Consul (mildly chuckling): “Oh, I had my purse stolen there just last week. Come in tomorrow as soon as we open and we’ll get you a new passport. I promise, you won’t miss your flight.”

We didn’t.

FOR THE BIRDS

The gold-tile mosaics of St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice glitter in the background as a pair of tuxedo-clad café orchestras, dueling from opposite sides of Piazza San Marco, slide into sunset serenade mode. Few couples sitting at the half-empty tables this lazy October afternoon seem to give a sole mio that cappuccinos here cost $12 a pop and cocktails nearly three times that amount.

The group of school girls kneeling to feed the pigeons might look like angels, but the curly-haired little boy running through the square definitely has the devil in him. He leaps into the air and lands with both feet stomping terra firma. Hundreds of the startled birds take flight like a massive, fluttering gray blanket.

“Roberto!” several girls squeal in protest.

I had photographed my wife feeding the pigeons, this city’s unofficial mascots, during our first visit years ago to this time-warped tiara of frescoed cathedrals and leaning campaniles. What should have been a magical moment, however, turned into terror the moment Cathy opened the small plastic bag of dried corn we had purchased from the piazza vendor. The pigeons showed no mercy as the wildly flapping, over-gorged bastardi descended en masse, perching everywhere — her head, arms and shoulders, and then some.

“Get ’em off!” Cathy shrieked, her arms flailing in the air. “They’re dis-GUST-ing!”

My camera clicked away. “Don’t move — this is epic!” I shouted.

In Venice, apparently, boys and girls regardless of age never see eye to eye when it comes to pigeons.

HANGOVER CURE

Thirty-one years ago my bride and I honeymooned like rock stars on St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Since then we’ve returned countless times like homing pigeons to our favorite West Indies paradise. Here we party like college kids.

When the sun goes down, our favorite place to drop anchor is Sosa’s. Proprietor and Dominican Republic native Maria Sosa’s cozy Cruz Bay eatery caters to down-island Dominicans who’ve come to St. John looking for construction work. It’s not difficult to party deep into the blue Caribbean night thanks to the rustic venue's hearty West Indian fare which is served up alongside a sexy blend of rhythmic merengue music and Dominican-distilled Barceló Añejo rum. Four hours and twice as many cocktails later, I spy Cathy and the beautiful “Madam Sosa” (our nickname for her) at a nearby table, laughing and hugging all over each other like sozzled sorority sisters.

At Madam Sosa’s insistence, Cathy and I venture into the tumbledown restaurant’s dimly lighted, secret-ish looking back room. Here we find a few likewise inebriated couples slow dancing amid a seedy décor of mirrored walls, pulsing disco lights, and ratty red-leather banquettes occupied by skinny single guys slouching in sweaty work shirts unbuttoned to the waist. We take to the dance floor to see just how much sleazy fun we can handle before the room’s overwhelming pungency of quiet desperation forces us to bid adieu mid-merengue.

Staggering back to our accommodations, we trudge up steep Bay Street arm-in-arm like war buddies leaving a battlefield, past the Cruz Bay Cemetery. “Did we pay our tab?” Cathy asks laughing.

Next morning the alarm clock jolts me awake at 7:30 a.m. My plans call for a solo outing to shoot the island’s postcard-pretty beaches, but my hangover demands more shuteye. Cathy reminds me there is no guarantee the good weather will last all week and that I had better shoot while the shooting is good. She bolts out of bed.

“I’ll go with you,” she says, still groggy. “We’ll make a morning of it.” Her words are music to my ears.

First stop is Sosa’s. Cathy ventures inside to inquire if we had paid our tab from the previous night, as I keep our rental Jeep idling on the street, and soon returns. “According to Madam Sosa we not only paid our tab,” says Cathy, “but we’re a charming couple and we should come back tonight.” As soon as my new liver arrives.

Next up is Hercules for a take-away breakfast of coffee and traditional West Indian curry-meat pies called pates. This for our drive along Northline Road — home to St. John’s world-renowned pearl necklace of drop-dead gorgeous white-sand beaches of coral reefs and tropical Windex-colored waters. The day’s adventures later finds us ignoring a “No Trespassing” sign and jumping a chain-link fence like middle-aged hooligans to photograph the interior of a long-abandoned, gorgeously dilapidated building and its glorious vistas of this near-magical island’s stunning hill-framed shoreline.

Together we nail the shot and later celebrate with a sumptuous meal of enoki mushroom samosas and pan-seared mahi at Asolare, a romantic fine-dining den perched on a hillside overlooking the twinkling lights of Cruz Bay.

Our restless spirits ache for the next adventure.

Say what you will about marriage. Best I can tell, I hooked up for life — 31 years ago and counting — with the coolest travel babe and partner-in-crime on the planet. Lucky me.