Eric Anderson, MD & Nancy Anderson, RN

Admirers of Captain James Cook might now find his celebrated 18th century pioneer explorations of the South Seas diminished by today’s would-be revisionists.

Frequent visitors to the Hawaiian Islands naturally develop favorites – for us, it’s Maui. Although Maui may be dominant, its tourists don’t often visit its small Cinderella-like stepsisters next door.

There’s something cheerless about how a city gets developed and immediately the big upscale hotels start building to have a presence. That isn’t an issue in Minneapolis.

Minneapolis is essentially an American story – a story of enterprising engineering, confident success, rolled-up sleeves hard work, then collapse of industry and the need to re-invent itself.

History may interest the travel writer. But not all travelers care about history. Let’s look at all this in Minneapolis – as seen in October 2016.

In one of Europe's great cities, the newest attraction is an impressive art museum.

The distance from Koblenz, heading north on the Rhine to Cologne (Köln) is about 70 miles. It’s easy to confuse the two cities on a German map because to foreigners the names seem similar. But they are so different.

Bernkastel is known for its wine, and for the origin story of its most famous vineyard. It's our next stop on our tour of the Rhine River.

Trier has a complicated history dating back millennia and featuring booms and busts and invasion after invasion. These days it's known for its wine and as the birthplace of a very prominent, and controversial, political figure.

Luxembourg is tiny, but the country sits at the crossroads of Europe, and has the history to prove it.

As we continue our look at the Rhine River, we stop at two charming German villages.

Speyer is the first German stop in our tour of the Rhine River. It's small in population, but large when it comes to attractions and museums.

Alsace sits on the edge of France near Germany, and its history is rich with influences from both countries.

A tour of the Rhine River takes travelers to four countries, including the gorgeous cities of Basel and Colmar.

Basel's smart, sophisticated style makes it a natural for art lovers. Here are five sites you won't want to miss.

A trip to Basel brings you into contact with everything lovely about this wealthy European country.

Lausanne is home to the International Olympic Committee and the largest collection of Olympic memorabilia. The museum's halls carry stories not only of victory, but also of the triumph of competition.

Switzerland is known for its luxury, and the mountainous paradise doesn't disappoint.

A tour can be a great way to visit Europe, but it's nice to have some time to roam freely. Here's what we found while on the loose in Warsaw.

Warsaw's many museums explore a mix of the country's old and more recent history. A favorite is the Marie Curie museum.

Warsaw is about 180 miles of flat plains away from Gdansk. But it makes for an interesting road trip, filled with plenty of food and history.

Gdansk, way at the "top" of Poland, er the North Pole, might be the perfect place for anyone interested in European history because the city the Germans once called Danzig has survived every challenge whether geographical, political, commercial, or historical.

A journey across Poland's plains leads the Andersons to the hometown of Nicolaus Copernicus, who offended the church and endangered his own life when he discovered that the earth revolved around the sun.

It would appear that any part of North America which hopes to do well in the most modern of clean industries, tourism, suffers if all it has to offer the tourist is a great plain of featureless terrain. Poland, however, does not need to create museums across its great central lowlands, European history has already done that.

A visit to Auschwitz can be perplexing for tourists. The heavy history of the World War II concentration camp is too much for some travelers, but the monument also stands as a means for human beings to reckon with our history.

A road trip through Poland takes travel columnists Eric and Nancy Anderson to a 900-year-old salt mine and the heights of the Tatra Mountains.

Americans generally have a hard time understanding European history. But in a place like Kazimierz, the site of Oskar Schindler's heroic fight to protect Jewish workers during World War II, the horrific events of the Holocaust are unavoidable, even if the reasoning behind the cruelty remains unfathomable.

Kazimierz was a bustling, thriving part of Krakow before Hitler invaded Poland in 1939 and it was where Oskar Schindler, the German "opportunist" bought a factory and eventually used it to famously save the lives of some 1,200 Jews.

Krakow has so many interesting buildings and monuments, it's easy to pass by without noticing them all.

In historic Krakow, take a tour through the city's impressive Museum of Pharmacy and its Library Museum at Jagiellonian University.