Worldcrunch
The fishermen of Nazaré and their wives seemed far away from the turmoil their country was experiencing: A mere eight months before we visited the remote seaside village, the Guinea-Bissau War of Independence between Portugal and its colony broke out — an 11-year-long war during which thousands of soldiers and civilians on both sides would […]
In the northeast of Canada“s New Brunswick province, the Village Historique Acadien depicts life as it was between the late 18th and early 20th century in Acadia, the area settled by French colonizers in North America. Dressed in period costumes, the village’s actors brought ancestral trades to life, allowing us to travel back through time, […]
No, this Nile crocodile didn’t get lost all the way down in South Africa’s Kruger National Park. This scary predator can be found throughout much of the African continent, and is best photographed with a telephoto lens.
Many shapes hide in the pink ganite of the calanques de Piana, on the French island of Corsica. Given the right angle, you may see a monk, a lion, a devil’s head — or in this case, a heart.
A stone’s throw from the Great Pyramids, these traditional potters used a peculiar, ancient technique: While we’re used to seeing the clay turn on a wheel, the man here used a kind of crank to carve the inside of his bowl.
From launching new air routes to studying Mandarin, Egypt’s tourism industry isn’t just standing idly by while post-revolution problems keep American and European visitors away.
This one is for the History books: Sarajevo would be almost entirely destroyed during the Bosnian war some 20 years after I took this picture.
Having myself long been the conductor of a choir, it was only natural that I should snap a picture of this adorable orchestra of bamboo flutes in the Indonesian island of Sulawesi.
As strange as it sounds, this daytime photo could very well have been taken at night: My wife and I were on our way back from Norway“s North Cape, where we watched the midnight sun go down, flirt with the horizon, and go back up.
If, like me, you believe in the truth of Latin roots, we can agree that the beautiful Corsican town of Bonifacio was aptly named: It means “well-fated.”
Le petit-fils (grandson) is back from his vacation through seven states in the southeastern United States. He tells me that the horse head hitching posts I saw in New Orleans 23 years ago are still there — though they’re not used by the innumerable carriage tours that have now invaded the city’s French Quarter.
My partner in crime, le petit-fils (grandson) Bertrand, is following in my footsteps and touring the Southeastern United States. During this hiatus, take a look back at all the places we’ve already been in My Grand-Père’s World …
From the top of the cathedral’s towers, the Notre-Dame gargoyles — designed by genius Gothic Revival architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc — have been watching over the roofs of Paris, the Tour Saint-Jacques and the Sacré-Coeur since the 1840s.
Our Peugeot 404 broke down in El Djem — one of the only times anything ever happened to our car, over the thousands and thousands of miles we drove. The local mechanic repaired it … by pouring water onto the hood! Luckily, there are worst places to be stranded in than in front of the […]
Enjoy the view.
On a hot April day on the Plaza Mayor (Main Square) of Cuenca in central Spain, generations intermingle as activity resumes — after the compulsory afternoon siesta.
This is how they used to farm oysters on the Île d’Oléron in western France: using tiles as cultch for the mollusks to attach to. This kind of traditional method has since largely disappeared.
Driving from what was then a peaceful Syria, we stopped in Jerash, in northern Jordan, to enjoy the view of the well-preserved ruins of the Greco-Roman city Gerasa.
Some landmarks are baffling. Why has the statue of a naked little boy urinating into a fountain’s basin become so popular? More than the Manneken Pis, I remember Brussels for the only sauerkraut with champagne I’ve eaten in my life. Now that is a landmark.
We shine the spotlight this week on Venezuela: PRISONER POLITICS Plenty of glowing foreign press coverage of the arrival in Caracas of former Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez, who came to support opposition leaders who’ve been jailed by the government of President Nicolás Maduro. But El Correo del Orinoco, a state-owned daily, wrote that the […]
In Northern China“s Shanxi Province, the Xuankong Temple, also known as Hanging Temple, clings precariously to a sheer precipice, some 75 meters above the ground. It’s not as dangerous as it looks, though: The temple hangs thanks to oak crossbeams fitted into the cliff — the supporting beams below were put there merely for dramatic […]
The vast majority of the inhabitants of Pec are Kosovo Albanians — and in the 1960s, the highlanders still wore the traditional qeleshe, a white brimless felt cap. I brought one back, obviously.
In Brazil, you can buy delicious pineapples at roadside stalls pretty much everywhere. And we did.
During the summer months, the Ceremonial Guard performs the “Changing of the Guard” ceremony on the lawns of Ottawa’s Parliament Hill. The uniforms are very similar to those of the British Queen’s Guards, and are just one feature of the Canadian capital that surprised me in how much it looked and felt like capitals back […]
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.
JERUSALEM — Three patients are sitting in the spacious waiting room at the offices of the Israeli medical tourism agency iMer. Through the large glass windows of its offices inside the Hadassah hospital in Jerusalem, they can see the scenic Ein Karem valley with the surrounding mountains and green forests. Despite the breathtaking biblical landscape, […]
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?
I’ve already shared a first glimpse of the lush gardens of Suzhou, the “Venice of China” on the country’s east coast. Here’s another shot of the city’s “Lingering Garden,” which boasts more than 500 valuable penjing specimens, the miniature trees comparable to the Japanese bonsai.
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 […]
Driving on the “good side” of the fence, in a then-divided Germany, I was able to take a look at the infamous Iron Curtain. The sand below the fence wasn’t there to make landings easier for those fleeing from East to West Germany. No, it made it easier for border patrols to track them down.
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 […]
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.
Rolling sand dunes and ascetic silence. Kites and boards flying over lagoon waters. And tomato farms. It’s Dakhla, the windy Moroccan city of sustainability.
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.
With its somber beauty, the Scottish village of John o” Groats, is the end of the road when traveling to the extreme northeast of Great Britain. It is the start or finish of the UK’s longest “coast-to-coast,” with Land’s End in southwestern England exactly 876 miles (1,410 kilometers) away.
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.