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.”
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In The Name
Tag: travel
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Back On The Horse
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.
At one spot where France and Italy cross, we see a futuristic ascent to a majestic panorama of the Alps. Farther south, desperate migrants’ fate hangs in the balance.
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Holiday Hiatus
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 …
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All Along The Watchtower
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.
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Magic Mechanic
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.
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The Three Ages Of Spain
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.
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The Oyster Is Your World
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.
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Historical Stopover
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.
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Unforgettable Landmarks
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.
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Barely Hanging
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 […]
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Covered Market
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.
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Pineapple Express
In Brazil, you can buy delicious pineapples at roadside stalls pretty much everywhere. And we did.
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Familiar Parade
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 […]
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Pungent Watercolor
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.
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Neolithic Picnic
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.
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Opening Up
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.
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Future In A Golf Ball
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 […]
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Through The Lion Gate
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?
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Land Of Little Trees
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.
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Sri Lanka Show
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 […]
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Treacherous Trail
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.
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La French Touch
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.
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Fourteen Nuns On A Boat
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.
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Another Kind Of Cannes Festival
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.
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Endangered Symbol
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.
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End O’ The Road
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.
MOSCOW — Russia placed 45th in the world on the most recent Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Index, a ranking of 141 countries compiled twice a year by the World Economic Forum and Strategy Partners Group. This represents a significant improvement over the previous year, when it ranked 63rd. Industry analysts agree that the driving factor […]
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Look Again
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.
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The Potter’s Portrait
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 […]
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Parked Nearer, My God, To Thee
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.
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Danish Giants
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.
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Through The Grapevine
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 […]
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‘The Greek’
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.”
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Flooded Memory
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 […]
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Balinese Balancing
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.
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View From The Bottom
There are several ways to look at the statue of Pan and a Nymph, near Dubrovnik’s Gate of Pile.