A Traveller’s Eye, A Thinker’s Heart
I like to tell stories. I like to take photos.
And I like to share them. Enjoy.
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THEY’RE TAKING ME TO MARRAKECH
I spent much of my youth hearing Graham Nash singing about the Marrakech Express. It was a big hit in the early 1970s and always on the radio. I often visualized about that train with ‘ducks and pigs and chickens’ and ‘charming cobras in the square’. Marrakesh seemed like some exotic, far off land in…
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MORE CAMERAS THAN TULIPS
It’s tulip time and the bulbs are blooming in full force in Holland Zuid. So Padma and I set out to cure our spring fever and travelled to the land of tulips over the weekend. Our destination was Keukenhof Garden, a 32-hectare garden dedicated to all bulby things growing in spring. We first drove around…
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TWELVE STATIONS OF THE CROSS. ONE SUNDAY MORNING.
Last Autumn, Padma and I hiked atop one of the Seven Hills at Petersberg on the right bank of the Rhine. We saw a couple stations of the cross and I wondered if there might be others. I later discovered on Wikipedia that the Petersberger Bittweg trail begins at the bottom of the hill and…
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A STUMBLE WITH A VIEW
Padma and I went out for a late afternoon walk yesterday in the forest near our home. I was focusing on some distant views of Oberwinter with its Rhine backdrop and managed to get my feet tangled in the thick leaf litter. Clumsy as I am I took a roll and ended up on my…
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BACHARACH
Every night before retiring, I see a book sitting next to my bed. A book I use frequently to dream about my next adventure: the Lonely Planet Guide to Germany. The cover shows a little village with a dominant church on a river. After some map gazing I discovered the cover pic was taken just…
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THE BATTLE OF VERDUN – A CENTURY LATER
As we turn our attention this weekend to the centenary of the signing of the armistice to end World War I, I look back at a visit that Padma, Xander, Joseph and I took this summer to a battlefield in France which proved to be the ultimate test of human endurance. The Battle of Verdun…
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ZEELAND
There are more bicycles than people in the Netherlands so we decided to do as the Dutch do and jump on some bikes during our stay in the Zeeland province in southwestern Netherlands. Xander, Joseph, Padma and I hired some bikes and cycled along paths to Veere, a village on the Lake Veere. The lake…
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PAYING RESPECTS TO OUR COUSIN
General George S. Patton Jr commanded the 3rd Army of the United States as they victoriously entered Nazi Germany during World War II. He remained in post-war Germany but was killed in an auto accident while going out pheasant hunting near Heidelberg just months after the war ended. He wanted to be buried with his…
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BACK TO OSLO
We left Ålesund early, the road tracing islands and bridges south through a familiar rhythm of ferries and tunnels. By late afternoon we rolled into Bergen, parked the car, and traded steering wheel for cable car, riding the Fløibanen up to Mount Fløyen. From the lookout, the city spread out in orderly colour—Bryggen’s timber fronts,…
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