In the northwest corner of the Portuguese island of Madeira, the contrast between the serene, warm lava pools and the ocean waves crashing in when the wind rises is simply stunning.
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Volcano Diving
Tag: tourism
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Gastronomic Dilemma
The geese in southwestern France would produce what may be the country’s most controversial, yet scrumptious, delicacy: foie gras.
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Letting Lenin Be
This is Lenin’s Mausoleum in Moscow“s Red Square, where the communist leader’s embalmed body is on public display. I preferred taking pictures of the marble and granite tomb from the outside.
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After Charles
In 1969, nine years before I went there, Caernafon Castle in northwestern Wales was used for the investiture of Charles, Prince of Wales. It raised the profile of the medieval fortress, but its beauty was well worth visiting in its own right.
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Carrying The Water
In the cradle of the Himalayas, these Nepalese kids were using all kinds of weirdly shaped pots, vases and buckets to bring water back to the village, from the only source available to the community.
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Polar Family Circle
Though it has long, cold and snowy winters, Finland’s northernmost province of Lapland, famous for being the traditional home of Santa Claus, has warm (enough) summers. Here, my wife Claudine, my daughter Cécile and I are posing for a sunny family portrait along the polar circle.
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Buffalo Status
In southern Indonesia’s Torajan villages, water buffalo horns are displayed on the houses’ facades as a mark of social standing.
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You Have My Vote
Howard Zerangue served more than 25 years as sheriff of Opelousas, Louisiana. I wonder why that is …
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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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Bluer Than Blue
Blue sky, blue car, blue bicycle, and a very blue pub.
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A Land Of Fairy Tales
Visiting the Schwarzwälder Freilichtmuseum Vogtsbauernhof is like getting lost in a fairy tale. The open air museum, in the middle of the Black Forest, takes you back to rural Germany 400 years ago. Is that Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother sewing something for Hansel and Gretel?
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Class Of ’72
How impeccably dressed and well-behaved these students appeared when we visited the University of Coimbra in central Portugal. The university, the country’s oldest, is also well known for its annual Queima das Fitas, a massive and sometimes rowdy “burning of the ribbons” student festival that lasts for eight days each spring.
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Latest Cruise
Many such “blue caves” hide under the chalky cliffs of Paxi, the small group of islands near Corfu in western Greece, where I was two months ago — marking my 12th visit to Greece in the past 53 years.
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Hindu And Headstrong
Looks can be deceiving: These Hindu women in northern India’s Rajasthan region were not carrying flowers on their head (the flowers were actually in the background) but rather heavy concrete blocks for construction.
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Arch Nemesis
The elk-antler sculpture that arches across Highway 89 in Afton, Wyoming is the largest in the world. Are there others? An impressive 15-ton agglomeration of more than 3,000 antlers, it looked quite solid to me. My wife, however, decided it was safer to stand under the little arch next to it.
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Mythical Mexican Mural
The mural on the northern wall of Mexico City’s Central Library, on the campus of the National Autonomous University of Mexico — the largest university in Latin America — is a sight to behold. The central section depicts the mythical founding of Mexico-Tenochtitlan, the former capital of the Mexican Empire, with an eagle eating a […]
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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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Now You See Me
We all know that the black-and-white coats of zebras act as camouflage. But it’s only after you’ve spent time on safari squinting to try and spot them that you really understand it.
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The Lord’s Way
This Orthodox bishop in the Greek city of Patras was on his way to St Andrew’s Cathedral, the largest church in the country.
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Old Bridge, Old Picture
This picture of the 14th-century Valentré stone arch bridge in southwestern France (one of the oldest in the country) is one of the very first photographs I took with my Exakta Varex camera. Though the German Ihagee brand is now defunct, the slides held pretty well — and are now digitized for all eternity with […]
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A Different Proverb
Here’s a Moroccan version of “like a bull in a china shop.” I must say “like three sheep in a pottery souk” doesn’t have quite the same ring.
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Lake Of Diamonds
During this cold night of May, the lake had frozen, and in the morning the banks were sparkling like diamonds … Beautiful, but chilly. Thankfully, at the Lake Louise Inn where we stayed, there was a fireplace in our bedroom.
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Fish & Flowers
My wife was walking with a lei garland of flowers around her neck on a on the beach near Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka. Luckily, it was a windy day, so the ocean breeze kept the smell of the local fish away from us!
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From A Lost Tower
I took this shot from the top of the World Trade Center.
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Miraculously Spared
The baroque Merced church is something of a curiosity in Antigua, Guatemala, a city famous for its ruins of colonial churches: It held up admirably well after a series of devastating earthquakes in the 18th and 19th centuries, after which the capital was moved from Antigua to its current location, Guatemala City.
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A Quest For Balance
Watching the acrobatic show at the Shanghai Circus, one can’t help but think, “There’s got to be a trick.” But no, the stunning tower of chairs is genuine — the result of gestures perfected over 2,000 years in the quest for perfect balance.
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Russia Rebuilt
The village of Mandrogi, by the Svir River, is a tourist destination built in 1996 at the site of a village destroyed in World War II. The buildings, recreated in the traditional northern Russian style, house craft workshops and retail shops.
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Traditions On TV
Singing and dancing groups from all over the world, including the choir I conducted at the time, met in Middlesbrough, northern England, for the Teesside International Eisteddfod — a folk traditions festival so prestigious it was broadcast on the BBC.
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Enough Rum For Everyone
On the French island of Martinique, the La Mauny distillery is one of the biggest in the Lesser Antilles. About 30,000 tons of sugarcane are ground there every year, to produce three million liters of rum. Cheers!
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We’re All Dancing, We’re All Dancing
There’s a famous nursery rhyme about the bridge of Avignon, in southern France, that goes: Sur le Pont d’Avignon L’on y danse, l’on y danse Sur le Pont d’Avignon L’on y danse tous en rond (On the bridge of Avignon We’re all dancing, we’re all dancing On the bridge of Avignon We’re all dancing in […]
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Stalling Stall
“Tony” the Cypriot shoe seller definitely had a knack for presenting shoes in a novel way.
In the late 1950s, some villages in southern Portugal still didn’t have access to running water. I guess you could call this walking water?
This isn’t even the most famous or the most monumental of the 27 gates in northern Morocco“s city of Meknes.
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Tiny Kingdom
Andorra, one of the smallest nations in the world nestled between France and Spain, is a monarchy headed by two Co-Princes: the Spanish-Roman Catholic Bishop of Urgell and … and the president of France. Back when we visited, the latter was of course Charles de Gaulle.
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Not-So-Far West
The lunar landscapes of the Tabernas Desert, near Almeria in southern Spain, were used as filming locations for some of Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns in the 1960s. When my wife and I went there in the 1980s it was pretty much abandoned, but it has since become a major tourist attraction.
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Allied Dog
Our dog, whom we had gotten soon after the end of World War II and named “Jeep,” was keeping a benevolent eye on our cat.
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The Haymaking Stork
This stork decided to keep company with these Romanian haymakers near Covasna, a scene reminiscent of my childhood in the French countryside.
Oysters are my péché mignon — literally my “cute sin,” or guilty pleasure. I’ll have a shovelful or two, thank you very much.
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At Your Doorstep
Hopefully this bakery in central Turkey didn’t get its flour delivered the way it did its coal.
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Canadian Cabin
I’ve never skied in my life, but luckily you don’t have to be a winter sports enthusiast to appreciate the glaciers and dense pine forests of the Canadian Rockies. A cozy part of the scenery was Lake Louise Inn, nestled among the snowy peaks of Banff National Park in the western province of Alberta.