Worldcrunch
Upon taking this mysterious shot of Yellowstone National Park“s hot springs, my camera’s lens cap fell in the mud. Thankfully it was close enough to retrieve without risking that it might melt into the landscape.
I don’t often go for artistic shots, but this lighthouse staircase in the big fishing port of Hvide Sande, in western Denmark, caught my eye.
The limestone temples on the island of Malta rank among the world’s oldest religious sites. As with Stonehenge or the Ecuadorian Kalasaya, some of the site’s prehistoric monoliths were astronomically aligned. I aligned this daytime shot with a perfectly blue sky.
Rice is a staple food on the Indonesian island of Java. The country is one of the world’s biggest producers, and cultivating it means a lot of work for both men and women. But during the drying stage, there’s not much to do but wait.
Hanging bunches of dates, a parked motorcycle, leisurely locals: This was part of what I saw in Palmyra, beyond its famous ruins, during a visit to Syria long before the civil war sadly changed the beautiful scenery.
It was time to clean up after the 15th anniversary parade at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida.
India’s capital, New Delhi, has long been known for its over-the-top traffic jams and erratic drivers — here’s how it looked 22 years ago.
Granted, it was the “60s — but of which century?
One of the best things about traveling in organized tours is that you get priority tickets for everything, meaning that we never had to wait in line to get into the Vatican, the Taj Mahal, or in this case, the Mayan city of Tulum.
When you travel as much as I did, laundry drying in the heat is one of the sights you get to see around the world and through the ages.
Amalienborg, the winter home of the Danish royal family, is located next to a ferry docking point — very convenient for tourists. You may notice this slide is a little bit dusty, but my grandson and I didn’t want to photoshop that away.
This was a souvlaki of epic proportions, near the ancient site of Mycenae in southern Greece.
The style of mailboxes around the world varies considerably. This opulent one, in eastern Germany, looked like it could have been used by Kaiser Wilhelm II.
Straw hats, maracas, decoratives masks … The ancient Sri Lankan city of Anuradhapura is considered sacred to the Buddhist world, and a great place to buy just about anything!
Our faithful Peugeot 404 makes a cameo appearance, with the Ribat fortress of Monastir in the background.
If you visit northern China’s Xuankong Temple, the famous “Hanging Temple” built into a cliff some 75 meters above the ground, believe me: You won’t let go of the hand rail.
The penitent on the right-hand side of this picture was having a hard time breathing under his capirote, during Easter processions in southern Spain.
The Þingvellir rift valley, in southwestern Iceland, marks the the separation between the Eurasian and North American Plates, clearly visible in the canyon-like Almannagjá fault.
It must be tricky for the Bigouden women to wear their traditional lace bonnets — some of them 35 centimeters in height — in windy Brittany.
Some 6,000 people gathered in Bogota for artist Spencer Tunik’s latest outdoor photo shoot. The clothes-free event was a stunning splash of hope for a country torn for so long.
My wife was sitting in the opulent mansion of the Madewood plantation, near New Orleans — its antebellum elegance in stark contrast with its troubled history of slavery.
The Mayan site of Copán was hard to reach. But when we did get there, we were rewarded with remarkable examples of Mayan sculpture — some with very peculiar dentition.
In our own modest way, we contributed to Spain’s economic boom in the 1960s, back when the country, then led by Gen. Francisco Franco, opened up to tourism. This is Toledo’s wonderful Alcázar, with the Tagus River in the foreground.
In the Bible, Moses ascended Mount Nebo in Jordan, and from this ridge on the King’s Highway, he was granted a view of the Promised Land. Unfortunately, like Moses, I never made it there.
If Ornans looks picturesque enough on my photographs, it’s nothing compared to the way 19th-century painter Gustave Courbet — arguably the most celebrated artist from my neck of the woods — depicted the village in his masterpieces.
This unusual float, part of the Madeira Flower Festival that fills the streets of Funchal every spring, looked very comfortable indeed.
This monument on Minsk’s Island of Tears is dedicated to the memory of the Belarusian soldiers who died in the 1979-1988 Soviet-Afghan war.
The choir of traditional French music I was part of was often invited to folk festivals at home and abroad. One time in Villefranche-de-Rouergue, in southern France, I was picked as a judge for a bourrée competition, and ended up watching people dance for hours under a scorching July sun. Needless to say, the dancers […]
Not only is the Swayambhunath shrine near Kathmandu fascinating, it’s also swarming with monkeys — some more pious than others.
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 […]
Some things never change. If you stay at the Posada de Don Rodrigo in Antigua, Guatemala, it looks like you will still be treated to the sound of a traditional marimba band, as I was 27 years ago.
In Tunisia’s capital, colorful Bardo guards kept a watchful eye on the Lion Staircase, one of the entrances leading to the parliament building inside the Bardo Palace.
The Georgi Dimitrov mausoleum in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, was built in 1949 to contain the embalmed body of the country’s first communist leader. After the fall of the USSR, some members of the government started thinking the monument was an embarrassing nod to Bulgaria’s totalitarian past, and in 1999, they decided to blow […]
The Scottish island of Staffa, with its other-wordly basalt pillars similar to the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland, unites two of my interests: German classical music composer Felix Mendelssohn composed an overture, inspired by the cathedral-like echoes of the island’s Fingal’s Cave; and the place is also mentioned in the adventure novels of French writer […]
Democracy flourishing in the tiniest hamlets deep in the Brazilian rainforest, as a city council campaign takes root in the northern state of Pará.
When in Rome, on a particularly hot day, do as the Romans do: Leave town, head for the nearby Villa d’Este and walk behind the water of the Fontana dell’Ovato.
At the markets of Peć, in western Kosovo, there was no real way for me to tell whether I was in the 19th or 20th century.
On our first trip to Norway (driving from France in our Peugeot 203), we stopped for a moment in Oslo before making our way to the country’s inland regions. You can see the capital’s new two-towered City Hall, which had been completed 10 years earlier. Three decades later, in 1990, it would become the site […]
It’s easy to be lulled into a sense of calm by the Canadian Rockies’ peaceful lakes and beautiful landscapes — and to forget that they’re also home to deadly grizzly and black bears. I was kindly reminded of their presence, in both English and French.
Rio“s Sambadrome is not always this quiet: Picture countless samba school dancers parading down the 700-meter stretch of street, with up to tens of thousands of spectators cheering from the concrete bleachers.