Category Archives: Travel

Southeast Asia

Posted on by
Reply

In the near future, I am going to begin posting a (long) series of blog entries about Dan’s and my recent trip to Singapore, Myanmar, and Cambodia. I’ve been through a first-pass edit of literally thousands of photographs, and I’m culling the best few that will give you a flavor of what the places, the people, and the activities were like, without putting you into visual overload.

So that you can get a sense of the big picture, here’s a table of contents, of sorts. I’ll start with Myanmar (Burma), move on to Cambodia, and then show Singapore. This is not the order in which we traveled. We traveled to Singapore first, then Myanmar, Cambodia, and (briefly, no pictures) Thailand. However, the order I’m using makes sense as we will move from the most removed from what we consider the “modern” world to the most modern.

Inside Myanmar, I’ll show some highlights of Yangon (Rangoon, until recently the capital) first, then Bagan (a UNESCO World Heritage site), bustling Mandalay, and the enchanting and surreal Inle Lake. Each of these may require more than one entry, so it’s going to be a longer Web journey than the actual trip. But I hope you’ll stay with me on this visual adventure!

 

Eight pipers piping

Posted on by
Reply

My hotel room here in San Francisco is on the corner of Grant Avenue and Harlan Place, a narrow side street that runs eastwards toward “The Irish Bank,” a pub with obvious ethnic affiliations. Oh, and I should mention that today is St. Patrick’s Day. And so today there were Scottish bagpipers in Harlan Place serenading beneath my window.

Eight pipers piping

Well, yes, Scottish is not Irish, but I think they’re both Celtic. And besides, on today of all days we’re all Irish, aren’t we? And it was wonderful! All the more so when the eight pipers piping were joined by eight drummers drumming.

I just love San Francisco!

Recoleta Cemetery

Posted on by
Reply

We had done no research on Recoleta Cemetery–no knowledge of what famous people might be buried there–but friends who had visited there recently said not to miss it. And we had an image of what a cemetery not to be missed would be like. After all, we have such a cemetery here in the Boston area: Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge and Watertown, MA. Beautiful Mt. Auburn Cemetery, an oasis of peace embedded within a busy urban setting, its landmark tombs scattered widely among what must be one of the most beautiful garden landscapes in America.

Yes, we were definitely looking forward to seeing Recoleta Cemetery, an oasis of tranquility (as we imagined) in the bustling urban environment.

We should have been prepared, but we weren’t. It was as if having seen, let’s say, Block Island, we next went to see Manhattan Island with the idea that it might evince similar rural beauty and tranquility.

Imagine our surprise as we entered the gate to the city of the dead in the midst of the living city, far less green than the great city around it, its maze of shrunken streets crowded with mausoleums.

Strange and wonderful features abounded. Mausoleums topped with crosses and domes, and ornamented with wrought iron fences and elaborate doors. Round mausoleums and domed. Mausoleums open to reveal stained glass and statues within.

Statues of angels and humans everywhere reflected pensively on human mortality.

After wandering dizzily in the cemetery for a while, we were as lost as Hansel and Gretel in the great forest, all our bread crumbs eaten by the birds. Even Dan, with his near-infallible sense of direction, had no idea which way was out. And this view (downloaded from the Internet) may explain how this could happen.

One last note, just in case you were wondering: We did eventually get out.  🙂

Milonga, shorter video

Posted on by
Reply

I may have solved the problem of the length of the video previously posted. When you click on the link below, it should play (It plays on Windows. I don’t know about you Apple users).

La Milonga Ideal

This video is quite a bit smaller than the previous video (less than 1 mb, compared to 30mb), but regrettably, of poorer quality. Still, you can get a good 16-second sense of the evening. Enjoy!

Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay

Posted on by
Reply

Ah, Uruguay. I want to go back.

We took the high-speed Buquebus ferry from Buenos Aires to Colonia del Sacramento on New Years Eve day, a one-hour ride across the Rio de la Plata in the morning, another hour back to Buenos Aires before dinner that evening. A good day-trip. Colonia del Sacramento is a World Heritage city, the oldest in Uruguay, originally founded in 1680 by the Portuguese. The original street plan and many of the old buildings still stand in the historic district.

We were expecting an historic, yet lively and slightly exotic, city something like Cartagena, Colombia.

We underestimated the effects of Colonia’s much smaller size (population of about 20,000 compared to Cartagena’s 900,000), the fact that a holiday started that evening, and perhaps also the magical peace of Uruguay’s culture.

Dogs slept in the streets, opening only a moderately interested eye when a car passed by every ten minutes or so. Cats preened on the tops of cars and in open windows.

The historic district was even quieter than the rest of the town. All the museums were closed for the holiday. The few tourists dutifully checked out the few tourist shops that were open and looked at the historic buildings, notably an old lighthouse whose top offered lovely views over the old town.

Otherwise the tourists sought a shady spot against the heat of the day. What else was there to do? Those dogs and cats had the right attitude!

The streets in the newer part of town were shadier and also livelier. (I confess here that the boundary between the newer town and the historic district, where the old city wall no longer existed, wasn’t always clear, and some or even most of these pictures may technically be in the historic district, though not the oldest part of it.)

We spent a pleasant half hour or so in a clothing store that featured unusual items, all made in Uruguay, chatting with the shop owner. There were no other customers. There was no hurry, plenty of time to enjoy the company.

There was plenty of time, too, to sit in the grass under a tree by the edge of the broad river and read a book. Until the wind picked up and like other tourists we sought the shelter of a sidewalk cafe, perhaps one shaded by bougainvilleas as big as trees.

Somewhere during the course of this magical day, the mind slows down and the heart grows deeper and consciousness takes a slow curving turn at right angles to all other states of mind ever experienced up to this point. Life is better than good, here in Uruguay. Every slow moment is delicious. A week here would be world without end. We have to come back.

Calle Florida

Posted on by
Reply

Florida Street (or Calle Florida in Spanish) is one of Buenos Aires’s famous tourist attractions. Okay, so… we’re tourists, aren’t we? And the malls in Recoleta, where we’re staying, are just ever so chi-chi and correct. And full of chain stores a lot like those we have back home. We’d like to see some shopping that’s a little more colorful and local.

Calle Florida is certainly colorful. And busy, with street vendors selling their wares on both sides of the street as well as up and down its middle, for block after block after block.

What we hadn’t expected–though if we’d read more about the street’s long history as a pedestrian shopping street, we should have known–is that Calle Florida is also lined with beautiful old shopping galleries.

We also found some attractive and interesting street details.

Finally, ending on a gargoylish theme, this one is from the door of the university administration building just a few blocks away from Calle Florida.

Palermo Soho

Posted on by
Reply

There’s a lot to be said for the Palermo Soho neighborhood of Buenos Aires. And believe me, I will say it.  🙂  But first, let me mention that Dan and I were staying in the fashionable, high-brow Recoleta district at the incomparable Palacio Duhau – Park Hyatt Hotel, an establishment whose prices would have been well beyond our budget without a little help from American Express points earned by the sweat of Dan’s brow. Or, well, by the extent of his business travel. Recoleta is lovely in a sort of Beacon Hill way. Lovely and ever so proper. We liked it. We were eager to see someplace else.

Soho beckoned.

We went there to see the boutiques and restaurants. Which were nice enough. But we fell in love with the street art. There was such an air of freedom and exuberance about the place! (Lots of pictures later in this post.)

First, the streets themselves were attractive: brightly colored buildings set along tree-shaded avenues and colorful alleys. Here’s one such alley.

The shops and restaurant interiors also did not disappoint. From street cafes to formal restaurants to shops, they were lovely inside.

But the real treat of visiting Palermo Soho was the street art. Many of the shop and building owners decorated their exteriors with wonderfully painted storefronts that ranged from the interesting to the positively exuberant. I can’t resist street art. Here’s a sampling. (There are a lot of pictures in this section. I like them all so much, it’s hard to choose!)

I’ve been saving the very best one for last: Noah taken hostage aboard the ark!

Next: Calle Florida, Buenos Aires’s pedestrian shopping street.

Vineyards of Mendoza: Sottano

Posted on by
Reply

Dan assures me that in some ways Bodega Sottano was the most interesting of the four vineyards we visited. I missed many of the points our guide made, as I was struggling to keep the contents of my stomach where they belonged (see lunch, previous post). So here are Dan’s observations about Bodega Sottano.

This winery, it seems to me (Dan says), shows a great deal about how the wine industry has been able to grow so quickly in Mendoza. The winery is a first venture for the sons of a family with Mendoza winemaking roots. It’s relatively new, founded (I think) in 2003. Rather than investing a lot of money in building or landscaping, which are both fairly minimal, the founders have invested heavily in production capacity, using the most modern technology.

Aiming to make high-quality wines in the mid- to high-price range, Bodega Sottano is growing carefully. They currently use perhaps only a tenth of their winemaking capacity and rent the rest of their capacity out to others. This strategy has the dual benefit of allowing them to pay for the equipment that they ultimately want to be able to use, while at the same time allowing other start-up winemakers to make wines without any heavy initial investment in production equipment.

It’s a great win-win arrangement (Dan says) that shows how Mendoza could have moved from maybe fifty to maybe over a thousand wineries in just ten years, becoming one of the world’s top winemaking regions.

Vineyards of Mendoza: Melipal

Posted on by
Reply

Our third stop on the winery tour of the Lujan de Cuyo is Bodega Melipal.

It’s the high point of the day in more ways than one. The first way, we’ve been expecting. More than expecting–looking forward to. We’ve been drinking wine all morning. We’re hungry, and behold! It’s lunchtime!

The lunch is beautifully presented, and each course is accompanied by a delicious wine pairing. The dessert and its accompanying dessert wine are a fine finishing touch.

There was a problem with the lunch for me, and perhaps me alone. The lone vegetarian in the group, I was given a main course of roasted or sauteed vegetables. It was beautiful to look at, and tasty, too.

But between the cheese it was covered with (and I with a degree of lactose intolerance and no lactase with me) and the oil (perhaps olive oil) it was swimming in, I ended up with a terribly upset stomach that stayed with me for the rest of the day.When I could barely even sip a taste of wine at our next vineyard, I knew the situation was bad.

I don’t blame Melipal for this. The place, the service, and the wine were all excellent. Just my poor luck.

The other delightful surprise about Melipal was the landscaping. This was far and away the most beautiful of the vineyards we visited–perhaps anywhere, ever.

After lunch, we move on to Bodega Sottano in the next post.

Vineyards of Mendoza: Kaiken

Posted on by
Reply

Our tour of four representative wineries of the Lujan de Cuyo region of Mendoza continued at Kaiken Winery. Here we were treated to a walk in the fields to learn about the cultivation of the grapes.

Some of these vineyards contained vines seventy to a hundred years old; others were fairly recently planted.

Hail is a major hazard–in an area where climate is moderate, rainfall light, and irrigation pervasive, there are few hazards of grape growing; and vintages are consistent, year after year. The single major hazard is hail, which can fall hard and heavy, with hailstones as large as baseballs. Hail can ruin a crop in minutes. And so netting to protect the vines from hail, though expensive, is increasingly being used.

These vines are watered using water-saving drip irrigation. We also saw areas where the vines were irrigated in the traditional way through the use of irrigation ditches (acequias). The vines here had much heavier stems–they might have been older–but less abundant foliage. I don’t know how the grape production compares.

Everywhere, the early-summer grapes were beautiful.

In addition to tasting a number of Kaiken’s excellent wines, we were also given a taste of the wine still fermenting in the tank. It wasn’t grape juice any more; it was really wine! And–it was also excellent.

Next post: Bodegas Melipal and Sottano