The Canary island of Fuerteventura is a popular seaside tourist destination, but further inland are the remains of Spain’s dark past of LGBTQ+ persecution during the regime of dictator Francisco Franco.
Tag: island
Used as military bases, airports, residential areas, or platforms to drill for resources, artificial islands are growing — despite warnings that sea levels are rising. A deep dive into the phenomenon of why we are building more islands — and what an islander mentality is.
There’s the obvious stops. And then there’s the off-the-beaten path venues and activities — all recommended by an Istanbulite travel journalist!
Haiti’s descent into hell continues, and the international community is at a loss to help the gang-ridden island. An international police force led by Kenya is expected, but when? And will it work?
Inside an old watchtower dangling over the crashing waves of the port of Capraia, dwell 6,000 books and their keeper: 33-year-old Viola, a librarian who took the time during the COVID-19 pandemic to ask herself, “What makes you truly happy?”
The Greek islands have always been the dream destination of many, with their crystalline waters and wild flora. But there is one attraction that captures the attention of the masses, who clamber on top of one another for the chance of capturing it: the sunset. In the economy of attention and social media, how does sunset tourism affect the enjoyment of our vacation?
The species of pig evolved into ultra-resilient, disease-free predators while isolated on Auckland Island that could be a boon for state-of-the-art xenotransplantation, a medical procedure in which cells, tissues, or organs from one species are transferred into another species, which could reduce the need for human organ donors.
As a growing number of people pack up and leave the former British colony, the question arises: What to do about the family dog?
The easternmost island of the Dodecanese archipelago is just a stone’s throw from the coast of Turkey, where the president’s neo-Ottoman rhetoric is cause for concern.
Some of the world’s most insular places are cut off by land, not water.
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Raft Of The Seals
There’s something almost Géricault-esque in the pyramidal structure of this shot, and the way these seals meld with the rocks of Ballestas Islands, off the coast of Peru.
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Where Beauty Was Born
According to legend, the rocks of Petra tou Romiou in southwestern Cyprus, is where the Greek goddess of love and beauty, Aphrodite, was born. I’ll spare you the full (and quite graphic) myth of her birth — it may spoil the serenity of this coastline.
CAIRO — Just north of the Egyptian capital, a short ferryboat ride will take you to the southern tip of the Nile island of Warraq. It has patches of agricultural land and scattered houses and deeper in, the island resembles a typical Cairo neighborhood with tightly-stacked buildings and narrow streets packed with motorcycles and tuk-tuks. […]
Germany’s jet set loves this island and yet we have it almost all to ourselves. What makes Sylt so special?
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Headed West
This was beyond a cross-country summer trip. From my hometown in eastern France, I had to drive across the whole country, heading for Britanny. I then carried on westward to the Finistère department. Then hopped on a boat for about an hour and voilà: I got to the small and picturesque island of Ouessant (Ushant), […]
KISH — The island of Kish is a far cry from the rest of Iran. Although it’s just 19 kilometers from the mainland, this Persian Gulf outpost features the kind of open hedonism that would be shocking in other parts of the country. As hard-line politicians and religious figures target so-called Western imports such as […]
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Brediterranean View
The Mediterranean island of Malta has kept many traces of its British past: Bedford buses (driving on the left side of the road), pubs, and these beautiful bow windows overlooking the beautiful port of Valletta.
JEJU ISLAND — Kang Ok-ja, 75, looks out toward the ocean from the roadside. It’s not a good day for diving, she tells me. Waves crash against black volcanic rocks that line a stretch of Jeju Island’s north coast. Wind and rain are common on this South Korean island. “The waves don’t look so high now but the wind is picking up and they’ll get bigger,” says Kang. “It won’t be safe for us to dive today.” She would know. Kang is a haenyeo, or “sea woman,” and has been diving in these waters since she was a teenager. For […]
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Greek Break
Like me before him, my grandson (who’s been translating my comments into English for this here blog) is taking his spring break in the Greek Cyclades archipelago. Wishing him well on his journey — who knows, he may also stumble upon a Crete-shape cloud? During this two-week hiatus, take a look back at all the […]
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Superstitious Boats
The colorful Maltese fishing boats called luzzus are said to date back to Phoenician times. They’re famous for the small pair of eyes drawn on their hulls — an ancient superstition supposed to ward off evil and bring protection to the fishermen.
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View From The Back
I bet this city worker wished his “office” faced the other way, so he could gaze upon the citadel of Victoria, on Gozo, Malta“s second-largest island.
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Still French
Corsica has been part of France for nearly two-and-a-half centuries, but relations with Paris have always been complicated: Last week, Corsican nationalist and independence movements scored big during the country’s regional elections. French or otherwise, it was postcard beautiful on my most recent of three visits to the island.
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Snow White Revisited
In the fairy tale, the evil queen disguises herself as an old woman and tries to kill Snow White with a poisoned apple. What the story left out is that she then moved to Cyprus to sell jars of marmalade.
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Dormant Atlantis
The Greek island of Santorini, in the southern Aegean Sea, is one big active volcano. And though it’s dormant, there’s always the risk of an eruption that could destroy the beautiful whitewashed houses as one did some 3,600 years ago.
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School’s Out
Once a quiet fishing village in northeast Malta, Sliema became the island’s first tourist resort. And with all the kids running around and playing on the promenade that day, it was easy to forget that Sliema means “peace” in Maltese.
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Mauritian Melody
This group of Mauritian musicians were having a picnic on the beach, in the ocean breeze, to the sounds of the ravanne goatskin drum and the triangle — traditional instruments of the Séga genre.
While the average Dane generates more than 10 tons of CO2 each year, a resident on the island of Samso actually spares the planet three. The island changed its fate by invest
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We Call It La Valette
The Mediterranean island of Malta has a past marked by Frenchmen. The capital of Valletta was named after Knight Hospitaller Jean Parisot de Valette, whose order then surrendered to Napoleon Bonaparte. But my visit there didn’t make it into history books.
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The Donkey That Wanted To Be A Chameleon
That shade of blue you often find on the Greek island of Santorini was also perfect for this donkey’s saddle. “The Donkey That Wanted To Be A Chameleon” would make a great fable by Jean de La Fontaine, wouldn’t it?
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Peaceful Panorama
Though it’s closer to the Italian Peninsula, the island of Corsica belongs to France. But the words that come to my mind when I look at this panorama are in Italian: Che pace! (“Such peace!”)
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Napoleon Complex
From the Place d’Austerlitz, the statue of Napoleon watches over Ajaccio, the town in which he was born. Some may see a resemblance with Prague’s Stalin Monument, but the statue of the French emperor is significantly smaller — adding to the myth that Napoleon was short in stature when in fact he was 5 feet […]
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Sweet Past
At the end of the 19th century, Saint-Leu’s Stella Matutina sugarcane factory employed some 250 Indian, Cafre and Malagasy workers. It closed its doors in 1978 and has now been turned into a museum. The loading platforms are still functional — a token of the French island’s once flourishing sugar economy.
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A Man’s Job
Seeing these two girls with their spindles and balls of yarn, going their merry way on a steep path of Lake Titicaca’s Taquile Island, you might think they are among the Peruvian girls and women who create the kind of high-quality handicraft I’ve already told you about. But on Taquile, women are only allowed to […]
The island was a German colony until 1914, which was once a source of pride and income for many. A century later, this part of its history is deepening Samoa’s economic and social woe.
FILICUDI — The most-hated man right now on the Aeolian islands wasn’t looking for trouble. A die-hard lover of deep-sea fishing and diving, Dario Lopes, 53, has taken and posted various videos of jellyfish in recent years. But then one clip, shot off the coast of the island of Filicudi, went viral around Italy. “It […]
KEFLAVIK — The first thing that strikes you on landing at Keflavik International Airport is the weather. It’s raining. The clouds hang so low that it looks like you could reach out and touch them. Welcome to Iceland. A land mass covering 103,000 square kilometers, Iceland is a little larger than Hungary, but at 330,000 […]
Idjwi is a rare example of a preserved ecosystem in the troubled eastern Congolese region. But poverty and crop disease are now putting this tranquil island at risk too.
PUNTA PIRULIL – You probably couldn’t live any further west than Don Orlando does. He lives in Punta Pirulil on the western edge of the green island of Chiloé, off the coast of Chile. In his book In Patagonia, British writer Bruce Chatwin (1940-1989) described Chiloé as an island of “black storms and black soil.” […]
PAPEETE – Regardless of what geographers might say, there is a certain proximity between Tahiti and Iceland… The lush green rock dropped in the middle of the southeast Pacific Ocean might be a hundred times smaller than the chunk of windswept ice in the Northern Atlantic Ocean, but insularity is not about surface or latitude. […]