I’m Rich — a proud European, currently living on the Côte d’Azur after 22 years teaching in the United Arab Emirates. These days life moves between the places I call home: the Côte d’Azur, Cape Town, and Dubai, with long stretches in Crete every July and August.

Wherever I go, I ask myself the same question: could I live here? That’s the instinct behind everything I write — the casual coffee shop over the guidebook restaurant, the walk most visitors never take. That’s usually the difference between staying long enough to notice a place, and never staying long enough to see it. Everything on this site comes from that difference.