INDIA 2025: RATHAMBORE NATIONAL PARK DAY 3, FINAL SAFARI DRIVE

 November 29, 2025

We are on our last day in Ranthambore National Park and our last safari drive before beginning the long drive back to Delhi followed by the very long flight home. We get our usual early start.

Just to show what bird watching is like for those without a large lens, I have included a few actual/cropped shot pairings below. A lot of times I can see a speck and just aim and click, hoping that something will show up in my enlarged photo. Full disclosure: I have touched up some of the close-ups with AI.

Brown fish owl:

Black-winged kite:

This flock of peacocks is unmistakable. It is fun to see so many at one time.

The great egret is also easy to spot and identify because of its location.

UGANDA: LAST DAY IN KAMPALA

 July 26, 2025

Our last day in Uganda was spent on a walking tour in Kampala, the capital city. Let me say up front that it was very hot, that we walked and walked and walked until we were completely worn out, and that our guide was not the best at listening to us and/or discerning our needs. In fact, he ranks among our Top Ten Worst Guides.

That said, we still had a very interesting (in spite of being exhausting) experience in the city that rounded out our other experiences in the rural areas of the country.

Just walking to our first destination was educational. This shop, for example sells fresh flowers packaged to be placed on graves during funerals. I've never seen arrangements quite like these before! 

 

Our first stop was a craft market, and unfortunately I did not take any pictures, but Ella and I both bought several items--woven bracelets, a cloth bag, etc.

Just outside the market there were several artists selling their work. Much of it was too dramatic for me, but then, Uganda is a dramatic country!

I looked for Frida, but I couldn't find her. Uganda is one of the few countries we've traveled in where I didn't see her.

I kinda love this one and wish I'd bought it.

GERMANY: DACHAU

 May 25, 2025

We visited Mauthausen Concentration Camp in Austria in 2012 and Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp and Treblinka Concentration Camp in Poland in 2019, so we assumed we were more or less prepared for a visit to Dachau. However, I learned that you can't actually be "prepared" to face horror on the scale of a concentration camp.

Historians believe over 1.1 million people perished in Auschwitz during its less than five years of existence, 800,00 to 925,000 Jews were gassed in Treblinka in just over a year, and 90,000 to 120,000 people were killed or died from the horrific conditions at Mauthausen during its seven years of operation. In contrast, "only" 41,500 or so people died in the Dachau concentration camp and its extensive subcamp system, and that was over a period of twelve years. Auschwitz-Birkenau and Treblinka existed primarily as extermination centers--the "final solution to the Jewish problem." Mauthausen started as a labor camp, but eventually became an extermination center as well. Dachau was a prison camp--a place in the beginning for the Nazis to intern their political opponents; then groups regarded as criminals such as Jews, Romani, homosexuals, and Jehovah's Witnesses; and finally, foreign nationals from countries that Germany occupied or invaded.

We arrived in the city of Dachau by train, and I was kind of surprised that there was a city--I had only heard of the camp. A map at the station highlights "Historic Old Town," "Dachau Palace," and  ways to experience nature near the town of 50,000. The last thing on the list is a "Place of Learning and Commemoration"--the concentration camp.

We had a private guide who showed us a map of the major concentration camps in Germany itself--most of which I hadn't heard of--along with the subcamps and Aktion T-4 centers. There are so many.

Grafeneck, where our grandfather was murdered on May 21, 1940, is on the map.

It was gloomy and rainy at Dachau, appropriate weather for the experience.

The Dachau concentration camp was opened by Heinrich Himmler in 1933, the first concentration camp established by the Nazi Party and the longest to be in operation, from March 1933 to April 1945 when it was liberated by American forces.

GERMANY: WITTENBERG

 May 17, 2025

About 50 miles northwest of the sleepy little town of Torgau and also positioned on the Elbe River is Wittenberg, a somewhat larger city with 45,000 inhabitants. A university was established here in 1502, which attracted two important luminaries to its faculty line-up: Martin Luther and his friend and fellow reformer Philip Melanchthon.

Luther's and Melanchthon's portraits were painted by Lucas Cranach the Elder,
the most famous German portraitist of his day, who painted at least ELEVEN portraits
of Luther and over THIRTY of Melanchthon..

Wittenberg is a typical charming German town, maybe even more charming than most because unlike many other German cities of any size, it was spared destruction during World War II. Its religious history protected it from the Allies' bombs. However, it was occupied by the Soviets after the war and became part of East Germany in 1949.

Germany has their own version of "George Washington Slept Here." Two windows in this pretty building are marked with this information: Karl August (1757-1828), who was the Duke of Saxe-Weimar, visited the city in 1820, and Napoleon I, aka Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), King of France, slept here in 1806 and 1813. 

GERMANY: TORGAU

 May 17, 2025

Torgau is a smallish town in eastern Germany on the Elbe River that today has a population of about 20,000 people. Probably its biggest claim to fame is that it is the place where the US and Soviet armies first met at the end of World War II on April 25, 1945. Eventually, Torgau became part of the region controlled by the Soviet Union and known in the United States as East Germany.

But that was not our interest in the city. We had planned a few days in this area of Germany--Saxony--to become better acquainted with the religious reformer Martin Luther, who established Torgau as a key center for the Protestant Reformation. Luther traveled here more than 60 times from his home in nearby Wittenburg to consult with princes and theologians, and Torgau was where he consecrated the first church intentionally built as a Protestant church.

Our first stop was at the Hartenfels Castle, which was built in the 15th century, making it the largest completely preserved early Renaissance castle in all of Germany. 

One of the most interesting things about the castle is that is has a moat surrounding it that is full of greenery and logs rather than water.

That is because the moat is home to two brown bears. This tradition dates back to the castle's origins. After a pause beginning in the 19th century, the bears were reinstanted in the 1950s with a gift from the Leipzig Zoo. Benno and Bea, who are brother and sister, are the latest residents, having lived here since 2013. We only saw one of them, but I can't tell you which one.

IRELAND, DUBLIN: IRISH WRITERS WALKING TOUR, PART III (CHRIST CHURCH CATHEDRAL, THE MESSIAH, AND THE TEMPLE BAR)

 July 13, 2024

The next park of our walking tour was not particularly literary, but it was very interesting. Having just toured the largest Protestant cathedral in Dublin, St. Patrick's Cathedral, we now arrived at the largest Catholic cathedral in the city, Christ Church Cathedral. The cathedral was founded by the Vikings in the early 11th century, making it a 160 years or so older than St. Patrick's. Like all ancient churches, it was rebuilt several times, achieving its present form in the late 19th century.

The final renovations from 1871 to 1878 were funded by the whiskey distiller Henry Roe, who many have been trying to outdo Benjamin Guinness's renovations of St. Patrick's, which had been completed in 1865.

IRELAND, DUBLIN: IRISH WRITERS WALKING TOUR, PART II (ST. PATRICK'S CATHEDRAL AND MARSH'S LIBRARY)

 July 13, 2024

After lunch we headed to St. Patrick's Park, where a church has stood for over 1300 years. Today the church on that spot is known as St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin (there are a bazillion St. Patrick's churches in Ireland), and it is not only the national cathedral of the Church of Ireland, but also the largest church building in Ireland. A small part of the present church on the site dates all the way back to its 8th century origins.

The park and cathedral are notable for a couple of reasons.  First, tradition has it that about 1500 years ago, St. Patrick baptized the first Irish Christians in a well located next to the cathedral. 

The legend is supported by this artifact: a thousand-year-old engraving of a Celtic cross on a stone that was found in 1901 six feet underground covering the remains of an ancient well. 

IRELAND, DUBLIN: IRISH WRITERS WALKING TOUR, PART I (OSCAR WILDE SITES, ST. STEPHEN'S GREEN, GUINNESS, ST. PATRICK'S PARK LITERARY PARADE)

 July 13, 2024

On our last full day in Ireland including an Irish Writers Literary Walking Tour that Bob had booked in advance with Tours by Locals. We highly recommend our guide, Adam Ladd, who was fantastic.  

We started out by paying homage to the Irish poet and playwright Oscar Wilde (1854-1900). We walked by the Giant's Garden Playground, named after a fairy tale written by Wilde called "The Selfish Giant." It tells of a giant who returns from a trip and finds children playing in his garden. Not wanting to share, he builds a very high wall to keep them out. His actions cause a continual winter to descend upon the garden, so not even the giant can enjoy it. When the children sneak back into the garden, the trees are so happy that they bloom and spring returns. The giant realizes the error of his ways and tears down the wall, making the garden forever available to all the children.

IRELAND, DUBLIN: THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF IRELAND, THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF IRELAND, AND IRISH DANCING

 July 12, 2024

The National Library of Ireland is somewhat like our Library of Congress in the United States, albeit much, much smaller--12 million items as compared to the US Library of Congress's 167 million items. Its purpose is "To collect, preserve, promote and make accessible the documentary and intellectual life of Ireland and to contribute to the provision of access to the larger universe of recorded knowledge." This is a reference library, which means that guests can't check out a book, but can view them on the premises.

Built in 1890 in the classical style, the building houses the archival papers of some of Ireland's most prominent writers, including Seamus Heaney, James Joyce, Edna O'Brien, Colm Toibin, and W. B. Yeats.

Bob was not as excited about taking a stroll through the library as I was, so he sat on a bench on the porch and I went in for a quick visit.

IRELAND, DUBLIN'S GRAFTON STREET: DAVEY BYRNE'S PUB AND BEWLEY'S CAFE AND THEATER

 July 12, 2024

Many cities have "their street," the one that is associated with only that city and uniquely theirs--Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, 5th Avenue in New York City, Champs-Élysées in Paris, Downing Street in London. In Dublin, it is Grafton Street, a mostly pedestrian street that was a fashionable residential street in the 1700s, a dilapidated, crime-ridden street through the 1900s, and a shopping thoroughfare since the 20th century. It runs from Trinity College to St. Stevens Green, a distance of about 1600 feet. According to Wikipedia, it has some of the most expensive rent of any retail street in the world.

If you like people-watching and beautiful sites, Grafton Street is a great place to spend an hour or two, and compared to what we are used to in the United States, prices did not seem all that expensive.

The street is particularly famous for its buskers, and we saw at least a dozen. Most of them were unusually good. I was thinking, "Here's material for Ireland's Got Talent"!