Travel with Rolando Chang Barrero

  I Still Own Every Backyard I Walk Into A story of six, and every age that followed... I put the sunglasses on myself. Nobody had to ask me to. I just knew the moment called for them, and this one did. New yard, new fence, new everything. I planted my feet in the grass, put my hands on my hips, and decided: this place was mine now. I didn't know, of course, about the boxes packed in a hurry, or the conversations held behind closed doors that led to the morning we loaded the car again. All I knew was that there was a chain-link fence to press my face against, a rose bush taller than my head, and an orange flower — one single one — blooming right there in the middle of all that wild green. A good sign, I figured. Places with flowers were good places. There had been other yards before this one. I remembered them in pieces — the creak of a particular porch step, the smell of someone else's grass after rain, a neighbor's dog that barked every evening like clockwork. Each place...

Lisbon Aqueduct History – Hidden Gems! Águas Livres Aqueduct & Mãe d'Água Reservoir Portugal Series Rolando Chang Barrero It was my last day in Portugal, and I knew I couldn’t head back to the U.S. without seeing this. After days of being completely blown away—wandering through the storybook castles of Sintra , soaking in the coastal charm of Cascais , chasing dramatic cliffs in Lagos , navigating the contrasts of Albufeira , and ending with the golden shores of Faro —I thought I had seen it all. But Lisbon had one more quiet surprise waiting for me. Walking along the Águas Livres Aqueduct , I felt that same sense of amazement all over again—but in a completely different way. No crowds, no flash—just these massive arches stretching across the valley, built in the 1700s to bring water into a city that desperately needed it. And somehow, this elegant, practical structure survived the 1755 Lisbon earthquake when so much else didn’t. I stood there thinking about how something so...