Oman: old Salalah
June 2016 Ancient vs Old I had blundered upon an archeological dig on the fringes of modern Salalah [see: Al Baleed, Salalah]. After...
Slovakia: Nitra
July 2019 Nitra is a city in western Slovakia, situated at the foot of Zobor Mountain in the valley of the river Nitra. It is located 95...
Dhaka: Lal Bagh
March 2012 In the middle of old Dhaka, sits the abandoned Mughal Fort of Lal Bagh. Dhaka in its day was the capital of the rich,...
Chile: Puerto Natales
February 2001 After a very long boat ride through the Chilean fjords of Patagonia - a very similar trip to the Inside Passage of Canada...
Canada: skating on the Rideau Canal
February 1990 slow learner My favorite part of the Sunday New York Times was the Travel Section and I anxiously awaited it each week. ...
Czech Republic: Castle Hill at Night, Prague
July 2019 I had watched the late afternoon glow on the Charles Bridge and then die as the lights slowly re-illuminated the statues of the...
Vienna: Hofburg Palace
April 2019 The first visit to the Hofburg in 1987 I was amazed. That initial trip to Europe was a series of "wow" moments, but also...
China: Palace Museum, Beijing
April 1998 The Forbidden City Only foreigners call the Palace Museum the "Forbidden City". To the Chinese it is the "Palace Museum" in...
Jakarta: Stasiun Kota
September 2014 Kota Station was completed in 1929. It represented an era where the Dutch were finally starting to take their colonial...
Lebanon: Corniche, Beirut
June 2019 Transformation of meanings A word I came to know while working in the Middle East was "corniche". Clearly a French word, I...
Jordan: As Salt
Bazaar June 2016 A very strange set of circumstances led me to As Salt. It all started in Diriyah, Riyadh on a visit with AQ when we...
Spain: Roman Amphitheatre of Sagunto
January 2020 over-renovated On my trip to Valencia, one of the day trips planned was to Sagunto to see its Roman amphitheatre. The trip...
Netherlands: Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
July 2017 I was day tripping into Amsterdam from Amersfoort, seeing chunks of the city as time and weather permitted. The day I was in...
Riyadh: Camel Step Coffee Roasters
December 2016 evolution I had been in Abha for two and a half years. I was getting used to Saudi Arabia, but also tired of how...
Sri Lanka: Galle
December 2003 saved by colonialism Brian and I had come out of the misty tea mountains of Sri Lanka and headed toward beautiful Galle, a...
Botanic Garden
July 2016 perseverance pays off The idea of a national garden in Singapore started in 1822 when Sir Stamford Raffles, the founder of...
Duhok: Cafe au Lait
May 2019 In my search for good coffee in Duhok, I eventually ended up at Cafe au Lait. Among all the coffee shops I had tried, it became...
Hershey: Butterfly House, Hotel Hershey Gardens
July 2019 On my last home leave from Iraq, I was staying with family at my address of record enjoying a little bit of calm and normalcy. ...
Alexandria: Barca
October 2021 After I moved to the safe house on Perry Place, NE in Washington yet AGAIN with the ever forbearing PM and DV at the end of...
Laos: Luang Prabang
August 2007 Luang Prabang. The only thing we knew about it was that it had a lot of old temples. That would have been the...
