Worldcrunch
The tanning pits at Fes” Chouara tannery look like a giant painter’s palette. But the tanning process requires that hides be first soaked in a mixture of cow urine, quicklime, water, and salt. The stench is such that tour guides will often provide visitors with sprigs of fresh mint to help them face the odor.
Traveling by car for more than 50 years, you develop some habits: One of them was that for lunch, we’d wander off the beaten path and picnic somewhere nice. Too bad this stone table we call dolmen, in the South of France, was a little bit too tall for us.
Over the years, we saw Prague transition from austere Soviet Czechoslovakia to the more tourist-friendly Czech Republic. I took this picture of my wife in the Old Town Square — one of Europe’s most beautiful squares — just about eight months before the dissolution of Czechoslovakia into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Twenty-eight years ago, my wife and I entered the future: Not only did we travel by plane for the first time, but we got to visit Spaceship Earth, in Disney World“s EPCOT Center. The time machine-themed narration played during the ride, penned by science fiction author Ray Bradbury, was narrated by the news broadcaster Walter […]
Walking under Mycenae’s Lion Gate and its monumental lintel, you understand why they call its construction the work of “Cyclopean masonry.” How else but with the strength of giants could such imposing blocks of stone be lifted 3,300 years ago?
The leading Brazilian artist defies our expectations with photographed installations, challenging a society too apt to consume images rather than examine them.
The Dehiwala Zoo in Sri Lanka is one of the oldest zoos in Asia. It used to be a sanctuary for orphaned baby elephants, but when we visited it, the huge nursery — actually the largest herd of captive elephants in the world — had moved to nearby Pinnawala . There were only a couple […]
In the first half of the 20th century, French cabaret singer Maurice Chevalier was a huge star in the United States, eventually earning the right to put his footprints and handprints in the concrete blocks on the historic Hollywood Walk of Fame. A fluent English speaker — unlike me, unfortunately — he always put on […]
An Australian woman diagnosed with a degenerative eye disease that will soon take her sight decided she would travel the world and document her photos on Instagram.
It was a day off for these Italian nuns, who were chatting on the deck of a ferry headed to Elba, the Mediterranean island 20 kilometers off the coast of Tuscany.
With the choir of traditional folk singing I was part of, we went to many national — and international — gatherings of groups of singers and dancers who were trying to preserve their local cultural heritage. I took this picture of these two Cannettes with my very first camera, an Exacta Varex.
On the Saintes archipelago in the Lesser Antilles live the green iguana (which appears on the coat of arms of the Terre-de-Haut municipality) and the local Iguana delicatissima. Everything was going just fine until the two started to mingle, giving birth to a hybrid iguana threatening both species.
This monkey, which looks like it was scrawled on a cave wall, is actually a 300-foot-long geoglyph of unknown origin, seen from a plane in Peru’s Nazca Desert.
I took maybe one my favorite series of photos in the villages of western India’s Rajasthan. The colors and contrasts of everyday life in this poor but lively area made for some strong human portraits.
Certain buildings in Mariánské Lázne still retain some of their Bohemian grandeur, from when the spa town then known as Marienbad was a favorite destination among the European elite early in the 20th century. But by the time we got there at century’s end, a few years after the birth the Czech Republic, that golden […]
Back in 1965, you could still leave your car in the holiest of all parking lots, next to Bernini’s fountain on St. Peter’s Square.
There’s a place where children are as tall as houses, and where it takes about 10 steps to walk across an entire city, like Amsterdam … This place is Legoland, in Billund, Denmark.
I have a pretty decent wine cellar back home. It’s underground, so there’s no light and the temperature is constant. It’s just a little bit too humid, meaning that I sometimes have a hard time deciphering the labels. So who knows, I may still have a bottle from that time I went to the town […]
This is the church where El Greco was baptized. The Spanish Renaissance painter, whose real name was Doménikos Theotokópoulos, was actually born in Crete — hence his nickname, “The Greek.”
In 60 years of travels, I have very few mishaps to report. But this slide comes with a story. My wife and I were traveling through central Morocco with four other people in a Volkswagen van. On the road to Midelt, we were surprised by heavy rain, which caused rocks to fall and block our […]
Religious offerings are important on the Indonesian island of Bali. Long processions of women can be seen threading their way to the Hindu temples, carrying towers of flowers, fruit, cakes, meats and eggs on their heads, often for long distances.
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.
Melrose Abbey, in southeastern Scotland, has a troubled history, having been destroyed and rebuilt numerous times since its founding in 1136. It seems to be holding up better since authorities understood that the lavish ruins of the Cistercian abbey were best used for tourism rather than religion.
An online series of photographs brings the writer back to his first great journey, via the Trans-Siberia rail, from his native Yugoslavia to post-Mao China.
The number of ceramic figures decorating the roofs of Beijing’s Forbidden City is proportionate to the status of the building: Only the Hall of Supreme Harmony at the Imperial Palace Museum boasts 10 such mystical beasts. The person who lived in this building must still have been pretty important, as 8 is also a lucky […]
Living a stone’s throw from Switzerland has its perks. People can go for a swim in the beautiful lakes — such as Lake Brienz here — but I’m more interested in Fendant, a dry and fruity white wine that’s particularly refreshing on a hot July day.
The month of March in Thailand is usually rather hot and dry. Still, you can sometimes run into monsoon-like weather, and be as powerless as these monks trying to cross a flooded street in the center of the country.
There are some lesser known places that give you some serious “travel credibility,” like Belize, Swaziland — or Kaliningrad. Being home to a very large number of storks during the warmer months, the Russian enclave reminded me of Alsace, a stone’s throw away from where I live in eastern France.
The Eagle Mesa, the Sitting Hen, the Totem Pole, the Mittens … The sandstone buttes of Monument Valley lend themselves very well to man’s imagination. This here formation is called the Three Sisters, as it is supposed to resemble a Catholic nun facing her two pupils. To me it looks more like a gigantic “W” […]
Holy Week is the occasion of many colorful processions around Mexico, like here with this Paseo de los Judas Indultados (“Procession of Judas”) in front of Mexico City“s National Palace. Particular importance is given to Judas Iscariot — and an effigy of the man who betrayed Jesus is usually burned on the night of Easter […]
No one knows why the people of Morne-à-l’Eau in Guadeloupe have chosen to bury their dead in these checkered black-and-white tombs — perhaps because both black and white are colors of mourning in different parts of the world? Anyway, the famous cemetery’s design naturally brought me back to my chess-playing days.
The Stavrovouni Monastery in southern Cyprus is one of the few places that boasts a piece of the Holy Cross. It was particularly interesting to see how one of the oldest monasteries in the world manages to maintain the island’s tradition of Byzantine icon painting.
This is the arresting Rock of Monaco, back when you could snap a picture without having to slalom between obnoxious sports cars.
As I’ve already pointed out, eating in China is a singular experience. And though the stalls of the soup vendors in the streets of Xi’an, in central China, smelled delicious, you have to keep an open mind and expect something … well … exotic in your bowl.
Although it is somewhat cast into the shadow by the world-famous temple of Petra nearby, the Wadi Rum region in southern Jordan is popular among travelers who want to discover the wonders of the desert and its Bedouin heritage.
Las Vegas, Shenzhen, Mexico … Paris” Eiffel Tower has inspired countless duplicates. We came upon this one standing a mere 18-meters tall at the entrance of Filiatra, in Greece’s southern Peloponnese region.
The Tsar Bell on the grounds of Moscow“s Kremlin is the biggest bell in the world, but it has never rung. During a fire in 1737, before the bell’s decoration was completed, guards threw cold water on it, causing a slab to crack off. The bell is so huge — look at the man on […]
By the end, Pascal Bourquin will be 75 years old. It will take him 25 years to achieve his goal of walking every Swiss hiking trail, the equivalent of circling the earth twice.
The Sacré-Coeur church in Audincourt is an unexpected modern jewel in the somewhat inconspicuous industrial town where I’m from: The stain-glass windows were made by French cubist artist Fernand Léger. I snapped this photo on the day the church was inaugurated by the archbishop of Besançon.
Our first trip to Tunisia was more focused toward the interior of the country, driving our Peugeot 404 down to Tozeur near the Sahara, but we still saved time for a detour to catch a glimpse of the beautiful island of Djerba in the Gulf of Gabes.