Autumn Years Winter 2023/24

S ince “retiring” in their sixties 25 years ago after running a success ful marketing and production business in Manhattan, Barbara, 85, and Manos, 82, have traveled the world in alliance with tourism boards, public relations companies, product promo tion boards, individual companies and luxury hotels. Barbara is an award winning travel writer and sometimes photographer who specializes in history, culture, arts and religion. While Manos’ expertise is food and wine and of course luxury trav el, he is also an award winning photogra pher. They have been to every continent except Australia; ridden on camels in the Moroccan desert; slept on beds carved out of ice in a snow hotel in Norway; and gone underwater in a submersible in Barbados. They have also flown on a tri plane over the Hudson Valley; climbed Machu Picchu; spent a night in the king’s chamber in the Great Pyramid of Giza and another in the center of Stonehenge in the Salisbury Plain on the summer

Barbara and Manos in Ecuador Capilla del Hombre, 2010.

solstice; floated in a Zodiac boat in Antarctica in the middle of a blizzard; and watched the annual wildebeest migration in Tanzania from the vantage point of a hot air balloon. They have together and individually dined on fine, exotic and culturally diverse foods and wines and stayed in storied five-star hotels in many world capitals. Barbara and Manos are storytellers who have experienced “trips” of a lifetime and shared them with the world through their writings and imagery. When they travel on press trips, “We just show up at the airport, travel to distant and exotic lands and when we return home we do extensive research to verify our facts and then share our experiences with our readers,” says Barbara. The youngest of three, Barbara was born in Philadelphia. Her father tragi cally died when she was just six years

Barbara with her mother, sister and brother.

old, and her newly wid owed mother moved to Atlantic City with her son and two daughters shortly thereafter. Barbara describes her upbringing

as one with narrow exposure to history, culture or art, which she tried to over come by ravenously devouring books. A lover of storytelling, she long dreamed of writing herself someday. After graduat ing from high school, Barbara worked for several years while living at home and eventually saved enough to move to New York City. “That’s when my education truly began,” explains Barbara, who joyously embraced the cultural opportunities that surrounded her in New York City. She learned about art at city museums

36 AUTUMN YEARS I WINTER 2023/24