INDIA, VARANASI: WEAVING FACTORY, MORE CITY WALKING, AND THE GHATS AT NIGHT

 December 25, 2024

India is famous for its textiles, particularly its silk, and Varanasi is known as one of the chief and best producers of silk in India. If we had known that, we may have purchased fewer woven items from the looms in Kaziranga/Assam! (Okay, maybe not.)

With our permission, our guide took us to one of the weaving ateliers in Varanasi. It was located in what looked like a large, beautiful home.

We walked into a large room full of a dozen or more looms, some in use and some not.

The host who guided us through the workshop showed us some samples of their most exquisite work. Look at all the colors and the intricate detail!

The crude back of the same piece makes the front seem even more remarkable. This is not embroidery--it is weaving with warp and weft.

COLOMBIA: BOGOTA PART II (SHOPPING, PLAZA DE BOLIVAR, CITY STREETS, AND A SERENDIPITOUS MEET-UP)

 March 17, 2023

From the Botero Museum, we walked to an area where souvenir items are for sale on tables lining the street. This is the "Old Town," known in Bogotá as the Candelaria District, and it includes the foundation buildings of the city. Candelaria is Spanish for "Candlemas," a Christian holiday that commemorates the presentation of the baby Jesus at the temple.

On our way there, we passed this awesome three-wheeler that was selling, among other things, arroz con leche, or rice pudding.

The Nobel prize-winning novelist Gabriel García Márquez (1927-2014) is extremely popular in his home country of Colombia, as well he should be. There are many sites named for him, such as the cultural center in Bogotá that we walked by.

We also saw many artworks depicting "Gabo," as he is affectionately known in Colombia. He looks like someone I would want to know, at least in this painting!

There was a lot of art for sale, often copies of well-known works, such as Botero's Mona Lisa in the bottom right corner.

ECUADOR, GALAPAGOS ISLANDS: ISABELA ISLAND - TAGUS COVE HIKE

March 24, 2022, Morning and Lunch

During the night our catamaran left Fernandina Island and returned to Isabela Island, dropping anchor just off Tagus Cove on the northwestern coast of the island.

We got up early for a 6:00 AM breakfast, and by 7:00 we were in pangas on our way to a dry landing at Tagus Cove.

Tagus Cove was visited by Charles Darwin in 1835 and has always been a hideout for pirates, whalers, and other sea voyagers. The cove gets its name from a British ship, the Tagus, that anchored there in 1814 looking for some of the giant tortoises to replenish their food supply.

Starting in the early 19th century, visitors to this site began carving their name and the year into the cliff. (It just takes one to start a trend.) 

The oldest is this one: 1836.

The practice was outlawed when the Galapagos National Park was established in 1959-1960, although I see "Feb 1974 Oceana" on the right. Clearly this was before tourists had to be accompanied by a naturalist!

TEXAS, HOUSTON: THE GRAFFITI BUILDING AND SHIPLEY DO-NUTS

 November 29, 2021

Bob knows I love street art/good graffiti, and somehow he found out about the Houston Graffiti Building, located near downtown Houston, and added it to our itinerary. A bunch of old industrial buildings have been "repurposed" as an outdoor art museum. There don't appear to be businesses inside these buildings as the parking lot only had the cars of the people who came to take pictures of the art. 

I don't think any of the art is meant to be permanent, and the pictures I have found online of this site are different than the ones I took, but this is how I will remember our visit. I don't think too many words are needed--just enjoy.

This video shows the front section parallel to the parking lot. From here we circumnavigated the complex until we returned to the parking lot.

NEW YORK CITY ART AND ARCHITECTURE: WORLD TRADE CENTER MEMORIAL

I think art is in the water in NYC. There just aren't many bare walls, no matter where you go. Here are a few samples from the subway:

I'm a lover of graffiti/street art, and NYC has plenty of that:

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND: MURALS, ART, ARCHITECTURE, AND A GOOD BOOK

One of the best things about Baltimore is its ubiquitous murals. In 1975,  the Baltimore Mural Program was created to beautify the city, create a sense of pride, encourage and employ artists, and put young people to work. The result has been over 250 murals being created all over the city.

The first one we saw (and it was impossible not to see this one) was Migracion/Migration. It's actually painted twice--once on the large wall and then again on the smaller wall to the left.

The artist is a Peruvian who goes by the moniker El Decerto. The man in the mural, who looks like he could be an immigrant, is holding a broken key and a small building. Bird shapes that include parts of the man's face are flying away from him. I'm not sure, but maybe the artist is saying that immigration is not all that great, that promises of a better life are broken. Any other ideas?

Vulpes Vulpes (the Latin word for "foxes") is also by El Decerto. Note the caption: "never bow down."

PUERTO RICO: SAN JUAN FORTRESSES AND STREET ART

The last places we visited in San Juan were two "castles" or fortresses on top of a hill overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. Together they make up the San Juan National Historic Site, a World Heritage Site since 1983 that is managed by the U.S. National Park Service.

The first was the Castillo de San Cristobal, the largest Spanish fortification in the New World. It was finished in 1783, covered 27 acres, and was used as a fortress through World War II.

The outside walls are impressively massive:

This would be a kid's dream playground for many reasons, among which is the fact that there are six hidden underground tunnels.

NEW YORK CITY MISCELLANY: STREET ART, THE HUNGARIAN PASTRY SHOP, ST. JOHN THE DIVINE DOORS, THE SUBWAY, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

If you've been to New York City, you know that there is no shortage of things to see. Once you get past the major tourist sites--the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, the 9/11 Memorial, Central Park, the art museums, and so forth--you might think you've seen it all, but you've NEVER seen it all in NYC.

NEW YORK CITY STREET ART
I am always on the lookout for interesting graffiti and all kinds of public art, especially in large cities. New York City has something to look at on almost every corner.

For example, in one nook a bronze statue stands out rather conspicuously against a tower of letters:

Lady Liberty has had a new facial and make-up job since the last time I'd seen her:

This black and white panel has a Halloween-y feel . . .

. . . and is topped by an enormous, creepy, eerie green child that appears to be 3-D and straight out of a low-budget horror movie:

THE MARRAKESH EXPRESS

Our next and final main stop on our Grand Moroccan Tour was the fabulous city of Marrakech (the French spelling that we saw more often in the country than the alternate spelling "Marrakesh").  With a population of just under one million, Marrakech is the 4th-largest city in Morocco and perhaps its most important. Its main square, Jemaa el-Fnaa, is the busiest in all of Africa.

During our long drive from Skoura to Marrakech through the Atlas Mountains, we had a lot of time to chat with our driver Aziz. Bob and I do our best to absorb the culture of the places we visit, but we also feel a responsibility to spread the best of American culture. Our driver Aziz shared all his favorite American pop music with us--Rihanna, Celine Dion, and Adele, and we asked him if he had ever heard of Crosby, Stills and Nash or the song "Marrakesh Express."  When he said NO, well, we knew we had a mission. After all, Marrakech was our next destination! He pulled up the song on YouTube on his phone (yes, even in Morocco in the middle of nowhere you can do that), and he was quite taken by it. 

Yes! Success!

If I could go back to any place in the world we have been, Marrakech (and Fes) would definitely be on the list. Marrakech is the Rio version of Sao Paulo-like Fes. It is full of energy, crowded with people, and bursting with color. It's a party city, and we loved it.

I'm going to start my series of Marrakech posts with a photo overview of the city itself. I'll insert some commentary here and there, but the photos can mostly speak for themselves.

Let's begin by opening a few doors of Marrakech:

MOROCCO: FROM LOS ANGELES TO FES

For some reason, the countdown to our Morocco trip was especially exciting. "Four weeks from now we'll be in Morocco!" "Eleven days from now we'll be in Morocco!" "Tomorrow we leave for Morocco!" We planned well in advance, catching up on our immunizations, picking up a prescription antibiotic "just in case," and discussing what to pack. Somehow I didn't notice until we got to the airport that this was my husband's stylish footwear selection:

Yeah, I tried to sit a few seats away.

Speaking of the airport, for years LAX has been remodeling the Tom Bradley International Terminal. Believe me, it needed it. It was the ugliest terminal in the world. Now, however, the scaffolding is down, revealing an upscale and interesting shopping area. I think it can hold its own among the world's international terminals. I especially love this video tower upon which various images are projected for twenty or thirty minutes at a time. I call this particular projection "The Monument of Lost Luggage":

We had a very L-O-N-G non-stop flight to Paris (10 hours), and then a very short connection (1.5 hours). All those wonderful French pastries and baguettes in the CDG airport were calling to me but had to wait until our next visit on our return flight. Airport security was especially tight because Paris had been attacked by ISIS terrorists just four months before. We showed our passports when we disembarked from our LA flight. We were routed back through a full security check that required a couple more passport checks. There were long lines everywhere. We showed our passports again to get on the bus that took us out to our plane. Altogether I think we showed our passports four times just for a transfer to a different plane in the same airport. We made it to our connecting flight gate with just enough time for a bathroom stop before catching the bus to the plane and boarding. At least we got to see "Casablanca" on the sign.

Our flight took a bit more than two hours, and we arrived in Casablanca ahead of schedule. I think we got there before the English-speaking driver who was sent by Naturally Morocco, the tour company we worked with to arrange drivers and tour guides. We wandered around for a bit checking all the signs being held up until one tour guide mentioned to us that there was a second international arrival gate and that we might want to try that one. We did, and we found our driver Yusuf holding up a sign that said "Cannon." Whew.

After we stopped at an ATM machine in the terminal for some cash (Note: This was the best exchange rate we had on the entire trip), we headed out of Casablanca along the Atlantic coastline towards the capital city of Rabat, where we would turn inland towards Fes.

Old travel poster: "Railway Companies of Morocco"

EGYPT: A CARRIAGE RIDE THROUGH LUXOR

Earlier in our Egyptian travels we had been given a carriage ride from our boat to Edfu Temple as part of our tour package. We got a second opportunity for a carriage ride in Luxor on our own dime. The plan was to drive around for an hour and a half to give us a closer look at the city, with a short stop to stretch our legs in the market. 

We left our cruise boat, not always docked in the most pristine of places:

And met the men, horses, and vehicles to whom we would entrust our lives for the next two hours:

From a respectable distance, the carriage above looks like Cinderella's coach, but our jalopy wasn't quite that nice. The wooden wheels were padded with strips of uninflated rubber, which cushioned the ride only so much.

Julia waves from another carriage (We liked taking pictures of each other):

Our driver told us his name was Mustafa and the horse's name was Cinderella. (Hmmm, a possible Disney fixation?) That was about the extent of his English, but he was friendly and tried hard to please, stopping once to chat with a friend and buy a street snack of some kind of bean that he insisted we share with him, pulling over later to pick a bouquet for me, and letting me sit in front and "drive" the carriage on the way back (when the horse was on auto pilot).

SOUTH DAKOTA: RAPID CITY

As the name implies, Rapid City was built on the banks of a swiftly flowing river. Like all of South Dakota, the original Lakota inhabitants were pushed out when gold was discovered in the nearby Black Hills.With a population of just over 70,000, Rapid City is about the same size as the city where I live in Southern California, but where my town is just a village by California standards, Rapid City is the second largest city in South Dakota.

Rapid City feels much more like the farming community of 4,500 people that I grew up in than the city I live in now.

I never would have pegged Rapid City as an artsy place. Heck, I would never have linked anywhere in South Dakota with art. Our recent visit showed me that I was wrong about a lot of things regarding South Dakota.

Our first encounter with Rapid City's art was this beautiful bronze statue of a Native American woman braiding her granddaughter's hair:

SERBIA: Parting Thoughts

To kick off this last post on Serbia, I will begin with a few of my favorite images from Novi Sad and Belgrade:

We saw only a two or three McDonald's the entire trip, and this may have been the only KFC, and we didn't actually see it, but we assume it was 250 m ahead as promised:

We passed the 35-story Genex Tower, also known as the Western City Gate, several times during our time in Belgrade. It was built in 1977 in the "Brutalist" style and has to be one of the most unique skyscrapers we have seen. That crazy rotunda between the two buildings is a revolving restaurant. We didn't know about this building when we were doing our planning, or perhaps we would have planned to eat a meal there. Now that would have been a unique experience.