The Intrepid Tourist

Oxfordshire: A Weekend in the English Countryside, Fall 1998

2012-02-20T09:51:00.000-08:00

Oxfordshire, Sheep Grazing

(Excerpt from the London Diaries, September 1998)

A Taste of Fall
The weather has changed to more fall-like temperatures and there is a nip in the air. Every day is a mixture of overcast, sun, clouds, rain, and wind as weather systems sweep down from the north. One difference between England and California is the skies—here they constantly change. It is no wonder that artists like Turner and Constable were so fascinated by them. In our outings we were lucky to be outside during the nice times and inside when it turned nasty. One thing about changeable weather, it never lasts long.

A Weekend in Oxfordshire

Thames River, near Reading

On Friday evening we took the train to Reading, which is about a half hour west of London, to spend the weekend with friends. Their home, an 18th century stone warehouse converted into a large house, has a beautiful garden with a fountain in back and overlooks the Thames in the front. At that point the river is perhaps thirty yards across and meanders under willows on one side and along a sheep pasture on the other. We watched swans and ducks, fishermen, and passing canal boats, which you can rent by the week for a leisurely trip along the river.

Giant White Horses

Uffington White Horse, Oxfordshire

Our morning excursion on Saturday was to see the Uffington White Horse. This is a giant drawing of a horse (about 40 feet long) carved into the top of a hillside. According to the sign, it is 3000 years old and was probably carved at the same time Neolithic people built a fort on the top of a nearby hill. (All you can see of the fort now are the ditches around it, but the view of the countryside from there is terrific.) The chalk downlands are a geologic feature of southern England and are characterized by rolling hills covered with short grass and tiny, almost alpine-like, flowers. The downlands are used mostly for grazing and apparently people raise racehorses in this region. Just under the soil, is the soft, chalk stone. The grass and dirt were removed to make the drawing of the horse.
The outline of the horse is white, but it is surrounded by green grass, which makes it easy to see from a long way away. The one thing that puzzled us, though, is that you can’t see the whole horse at once except from the air. We decided that the neolithic creators of the horse must have known that airplanes would be invented sometime in the future. I had never heard of these giant chalk figures before, but apparently there are quite a few of them in this part of England. I picked up a piece of the chalk rock and tried writing with it on another stone and it worked almost as well as the blackboard variety.

Churchill’s Home

Blenheim Palace, Birthplace of Winston Churchill

In the afternoon, we visited Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, the home of the Duke of Marlborough and the birthplace of Winston Churchill. Blenheim is a grand country house and surrounded by 2000 acres of beautiful gardens and lakes, most of which were designed by a renowned 18th landscape architect named Capability Brown. This was back in the days when, if there wasn’t a lake where you needed one, you simply dug out the landscape and filled it with water to create one. Or, if you wanted your hedge to look like a bird, you simply sculpted it that way.

Topiary Bird, Blenheim Palace

While we were at Blenheim, the ever changeable weather changed, and it started to rain, so we headed home for a nice cup of tea.
Note: We returned to Oxfordshire a month later to visit the town and university of Oxford, which will be covered in another post.

Hay drying in a field, Oxfordshire

Japantown, San Francisco

2012-02-13T11:45:00.000-08:00

Paper lanterns at Soko Hardware, Japantown, San Francisco

When most people think of tourist destinations in San Francisco, they think of Chinatown. But, just as interesting and not so crowded with tourists is Japantown, on Post Street, between Laguna and Fillmore. During the Christmas holidays we made a family expedition into San Francisco and stopped for lunch and a look around in Japantown. Highlights included browsing in Soko Hardware store, which carries everything from lightbulbs and garden supplies to pottery and paper lanterns; posing in front of the Tori Gate on the Buchanan Mall and the Peace Pagoda in the plaza across the street; shopping for trinkets at Daiso, the huge Japanese equivalent of a 99 cent store (one of our purchases was a pair of socks with five toes); and lunch at the upstairs Iroha restaurant, where we had sushi and huge bowls of udon noodles.

Sushi and udon noodles at Iroha Restaurant

Before World War II, this area of San Francisco was a thriving Japanese community, but during the war many residents were forced to leave and go to internment camps. Although some returned, today this area is mostly for tourists, but with an amazing array of shops and businesses carrying Japanese goods. We purchased some beautiful handmade Japanese paper, some ceramic bowls, and souvenir chopsticks for the kids. It was fun to window shop and see on display lovely silk fabrics, welcome kitties, all sorts of origami, and more. Many of the shops and restaurants are in Kintetsu Mall and Miyako Mall, which flank the Peace Plaza. The Miyako Mall is also the location of the Japanese American Historical Society and has photos and information about the World War II detention camps.

Origami decorations were everywhere

We did a self-guided tour of Japantown using a card from City Walks San Francisco: 50 Adventures on Foot, published by Chronicle Books. Each card in the set is a miniature guidebook, with a map on one side and notes about places to visit on the other. In my opinion, the “deck” of cards is a brilliant concept. I don’t know how many times as a tourist I have struggled with unwieldy maps (when I only needed to use one small section) and bulky guidebooks, in which I was always losing the appropriate page and had more information than I needed at the time. The City Walks cards (about 4" by 6"), printed on heavy cardstock, fit easily into your purse or pocket and are easy to consult as you walk along.

After our lunch in Japantown, we headed for the San Francisco Opera House, about ten minutes away (by car) for an afternoon performance of the Nutcracker by the San Francisco Ballet. Altogether, it was a very successful day in the city!

Getting there: San Francisco is a city with excellent public transportation and Japantown can be reached by buses #2, 3, 4, or 22. However, we went by car. Unlike some parts of the city, where parking is a challenge, we had no trouble finding parking along Post Street. There is also a parking garage adjacent to the malls.

London's Toynbee Hall: The First Settlement House

2012-02-06T13:19:00.000-08:00

Toynbee Hall is in London's East End

In the summer and fall of 1998, during our three month stay in London, I paid a visit to Toynbee Hall, founded in 1884. I wanted to get more insight into the beginnings of the settlement house movement in England and also how it evolved--or in fact, didn't evolve--in the same way as it did in the United States. The visit was inspired by the research I did for my book, Children of the Settlement Houses, and my own background growing up in a settlement house in Minneapolis. (Until I was ten, my family lived at the Northeast Neighborhood House, now East Side Neighborhood Services, which my father directed. Go to at my website and to my Dec 14 Art and Books blog for more about my life growing up at Northeast Neighborhood House.)

Social reformers Samuel and Henrietta Bartlett founded Toynbee Hall

Much of Toynbee Hall was bombed during WWII, but the main building that has the dining room and main meeting room remains almost unchanged. I was surprised to find out that the main focus, even into the 1980's, was still residential--that college and post college students from Oxford and Cambridge would live in Toynbee Hall and the idea was that somehow this meeting of the classes in the neighborhood would result in the enlightening of the poor. I somewhat overstate the case, because there are some ongoing programs for children and the elderly at Toynbee Hall, but it doesn't seem to have the vibrancy of U.S. settlements, which as far as I can tell have changed a lot in the last hundred years to meet the needs of the time. Part of the stodginess of Toynbee Hall, I'm told, is because of the huge cutbacks in funding for social programs during the Thatcher years. Many social service agencies in Britain have still not recovered. In any case, it was fascinating for me to see the roots of the settlement house movement. You might say that if it hadn't been for Toynbee Hall my parents might never have met and I wouldn't be here today. (My parents were social workers and met in Chicago in the 1930's. They lived and worked at Association House as they were training for their careers in settlement house work.)

Settlement houses still exist today, mostly in large cities, and are community centers offering a wide range of social services ranging from day care and food banks to sports and recreational programs, services for seniors, and more. A famous early settlement house in the United States is Hull House, founded by Jane Addams in Chicago. I visited Hull House, now a museum, earlier in the same summer that I visited Toynbee Hall. The neighborhood that Hull House originally served was torn down for urban renewal, but the original building is maintained by the University of Illinois. Settlements have evolved as the needs of the people in the neighborhoods around them have changed. Some have closed their doors but many continue to serve the people in their surrounding communities. Sadly, the Jane Addams Hull Association, which had served people in Chicago for 122 years, closed its doors on January 27, 2012, a victim of the economic downturn and inability to fund its programs.

In 1884 when Toynbee Hall was founded, the neighborhood around the settlement, which is in London’s East End, was largely Jewish and eastern European , but now it is almost totally Bengali. As you walk down the main shopping street you see shops filled with strange vegetables, exotic spices and beautiful saris. The neighborhood is also famous for its restaurants and on the day of my visit I had a delicious and inexpensive curry lunch at one of them.

London Museums

2012-01-30T12:00:00.000-08:00

Natural History Museum, London

Here are notes of some of my museum visits from my diary of our three month stay in London in the fall of 1998. London is packed with museums, so this is just a sampling! Click on the links for current information about museum hours, locations, etc.

Museum of London
    My other excursions last week included a trip to see the Museum of London, which traces the history of the city from 50,000 years ago. (I didn’t realize that until the end of the Ice Age 10,000 years ago, Britain wasn’t an island and people simply walked across from Europe.) I have never been able to keep the kings and queens of English history straight, but this museum does a good job of making it clear when and why ruling families changed. I didn’t allow enough time so I’ll have to go back to find out what happened after Henry VIII.

    (A few weeks later.) On Saturday afternoon we decided to visit the Museum of London. The museum is so packed with information that one can easily go there again and again. One of the items that caught my attention this time was the story of building the wall around London when it was the Roman city of Londinium. The stones for the wall came from a quarry near the mouth of the Thames and were transported by boat up the river to the city. We know this because one of the boats sank with its load of stones and was preserved in the mud of the river. Wedged into a hole in the side of the boat archeologists also found a pair or men’s leather underwear. Apparently some Roman sailor had tried, in vain, to use his clothing to stop a leak in this ultimately unseaworthy vessel.

St. Paul’s Cathedral
    After tea in the museum café we visited St. Paul’s Cathedral. Unlike most other English cathedrals, which are medieval, St. Paul’s is baroque, built after the earlier medieval cathedral was destroyed in the great London fire. It is topped by an enormous dome which is one of London’s most impressive landmarks. We decided to stay for the 5:00 Evensong, a sung service performed by the priests and the St. Paul’s Cathedral choir. This is a boys’ choir with the soprano parts sung by little boys, who looked as young as seven or eight, and were positively cherubic in their long robes and high, fluted collars. I had been eager to hear one of the Anglican cathedral choirs after watching the Masterpiece Theater series, “The Choir” (based on a novel by Joanna Trollop), on television last year. The boys’ voices are so pure and clear and they just soared in the huge space of the cathedral.

National Portrait Gallery
    Last Monday I met a friend and toured the National Portrait Gallery, which is a collection of portraits of notable British people from medieval times to the present and ranges from political figures like Winston Churchill and royal personages to ballet dancers, writers and pop singers. Most are paintings, although in the modern era there are some photos. Almost every name is familiar from history books (or in the modern era from the news) and I was amazed at how the pictures brought the people to life and in some cases revealed a different character. In an early picture of Henry VIII he is actually quite thin!

Natural History Museum
    On Thursday morning I finally visited the Natural History Museum, and I spent most of my time in their excellent dinosaur and fossil collection. I discovered that one of the most important fossil collectors of the last century was a woman named Mary Anning and that she made her first major find at the age of eleven. I am trying to get more information about her with the idea that I might write a story about her later. [Note: I did include her and her discoveries in my books Giant Sea Reptiles of the Dinosaur Age and Pterosaurs: Rulers of the Skies in the Dinosaur Age.]

Victoria and Albert Museum
    The Victoria and Albert Museum is across the street from the Natural History Museum so I spent the afternoon there. It has an enormous collection ranging from paintings (including more Constables and Turners) to costumes and decorative arts from all over the world. I went to two special exhibits, one of the work of Grinling Gibbons, a wood carver who made elaborate decorations for doorways, fireplaces, mirrors, etc. in the 18th century, and the other of the work of Aubrey Beardsley, whose black and white drawings characterize the 1890’s. I did a paper on his work when I was in college, although I never saw then the quite shocking erotic drawings that were on display here.

Museum of Childhood
    On the same outing as my visit to Toynbee Hall, I visited the Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood, a museum that is packed with dolls, doll houses, toys, trains, etc. many from Victorian times but others that were more recent. It was a bit odd to see Malibu Suntan Barbie displayed alongside China dolls dressed in 19th century outfits. In the shop there was a series of children’s books on Victorian life in Britain and now that I'm home I regret that I didn't buy one called "Victorian Toilets.”

Royal Academy of Art
    One of my stops was at the Royal Academy of Art, which has a special exhibition of Picasso ceramics. It is a wonderful show with room after room of all kinds of ceramics including vases turned into voluptuous women, birds and other creatures, plates painted and decorated with ceramic fish and forks, other plates with bullfighting scenes where the plate itself becomes a miniature bull ring, painted tile murals, etc, etc. The sheer quantity and inventiveness show what a genius Picasso was. The show was crowded and included a lot of school children taking notes and carefully sketching various pieces. I thought to myself, what a great homework assignment! Maybe the kids didn’t think so, but most other children are lucky to see pictures of great art in books or posters. As I came out of the museum I noticed the elaborately decorated shop windows across the street and realized that the store was Fortnum and Mason’s, the famous food emporium. So I went in to take a look and it was like another museum with every kind of pickled, bottled, boxed, or packaged food imaginable, all at great cost and displayed and wrapped so nicely that it seemed a shame that one would have to open the packages up to eat what was inside.

Australia's Great Ocean Road

2012-01-23T12:26:00.000-08:00

View of the coast along the Great Ocean Road from our B and B in Apollo Bay

March 1999 (excerpt from my diary of our three month stay in Melbourne)
Our expedition for the weekend was a trip along the Great Ocean Road--Australia’s equivalent of California's Highway 1. Our first stop was in the port city of Geelong, Victoria’s second largest city and the center of the wool industry. We toured the National Wool Museum there which was a nicely displayed explanation of the history of the sheep industry and the many steps between a sheep on the hoof and a piece of finished fabric.

Fore! Golf course at Anglesea

After lunch we began our scenic drive along the coast (stopping to view the kangaroos on the golf course at Anglesea) and arrived at our B and B in Apollo Bay by mid-afternoon. I had decided to splurge a bit and chose a “room with a view.” Actually we had a whole vacation house that sat on top of the ridge above the town and had a 360 view of the coast and surrounding countryside. The view was spectacular and it was too bad we couldn’t just stay there for the whole weekend.

Rainforest near Anglesea

The next morning we continued on our way and drove through Otway National Park where we stopped to do a short walk through lush rainforest and then drove to the headland to visit the lighthouse which stands on a cliff nearly 100 meters above the shore. This is the point that marks the division of the Bass Strait (between Australia and Tasmania) and the Southern Ocean.

Lighthouse on Otway Peninsula

My brother (who was visiting) and I climbed to the top of the lighthouse (no longer in operation but open to tourists) and the attendant told us that going south from there the next landfall was Antarctica; going west, one wouldn’t hit land until reaching Patagonia in South America! Sailing ships from Europe have to pass the Otway Peninsula on their way to all the major cities along Australia’s east coast and, in former times, before modern navigation, it was a dangerous passage because of the treacherous currents.

The Twelve Apostles

The Ocean Road goes inland for a while at this point and we did a short diversion to visit a beautiful waterfall. When the road returns to the coast it reaches the most famous feature of this coast--the Twelve Apostles, a series of giant rocky outcrops just off shore. (Actually, you can only see seven.) Like all the other tourists lined up at the overlook, we took more than enough photos. Then we finished the trip with a stop for tea and scones in nearby Port Campbell and from there we circled back to Melbourne on a main inland highway.

Details: We organized this trip by ourselves and went by car using maps and brochures we had gotten from the RAC (Royal Auto Club), which has a cooperative relationship with the AAA. (Remember that in Australia people drive on the left.)

The Oakland Hills: Huckleberry Nature Trail

2012-01-16T12:01:00.000-08:00

A surprising amount of open space is found in the Oakland hills, making it possible to move in a short time from the densely urban sections of the city, to being totally immersed in nature. Sunday, January 1st, 2012, was one of those remarkable warm sunny days, when even though the calendar said that we were in the heart of winter, the air felt almost summery. Art and I decided to take hike on the Huckleberry Trail in the Huckleberry Botanic Nature Preserve, part of the extensive trail system running through the San Francisco Bay region.

This 1.7 mile loop winds its away along the side of forested hill, looking out toward the grassy slopes to the north and west. Although we did have some minor climbs and descents, it was basically easy walking. Along the way posts with numbered markers served as a guide. At number six we climbed to the top of a small knoll where there was a bench tucked among the manzanita bushes and a spectacular view. As we sat there, a hummingbird zipped by and systematically fed from the tiny manzanita blooms.

According to the trail guide, the Huckleberry Preserve is an ecological jewel, preserving plants found nowhere else in the East Bay. Besides the manzanitas, we passed towering California bay trees, patches of ferns, delicate lichens, and, of course, huckleberry plants. While we did see other people on the trail, after all it was a beautiful day and a holiday, we enjoyed the feeling of being alone in the great outdoors. The Huckleberry Trail is for walkers only–no bikers, joggers, or horseback riding, which helps ensure its peaceful and relaxing qualities. I continue to be amazed at how easy it is to enjoy nature close to home, as we continue to explore the area in and around San Francisco Bay.

To Reach The Park

From Highway 24 in Oakland, take the Fish Ranch Road exit immediately east of the Caldecott Tunnel. Continue 0.8 miles to Grizzly Peak Blvd. Turn left and go 2.4 miles on Grizzly Peak to Skyline Boulevard. Turn left and drive approximately one-half mile to the park entrance on the left, past Sibley Volcanic Regional Preserve.

The closest bus line, AC Transit #305, runs only on Tuesdays and Thursdays, from mid-morning to mid-afternoon. From Lake Merritt BART, 19th Street BART, or Rockridge BART take AC Transit bus 59 or 59A; these bus lines go to the Montclair Transit Center. From there, transfer to AC Transit bus 305 and exit at the stop on Colton Boulevard and Ridgewood Drive. Walk the short distance from Colton to Skyline Boulevard, turn left and proceed to the preserve. It is a mostly level, 0.5-mile walk. Please call AC Transit 511 (TDD/TTY: 1-800-448-9790) or visit www.transit.511.org to confirm transit information.

China: Around the World in 50 Days with Sara Kras, Fall 2011 (Guest Post)

2012-01-09T10:13:00.000-08:00

My friend Sara Kras and her husband went on an amazing journey this fall, circling the world with stops in the Middle East, India, China and the Pacific. I think you will enjoy reading the reports of her adventures! Sara is a children’s book author with books about animals and world cultures and geography. Find out more at www.saralouisekras.com .

We are now in China and it has been a real eye opener. The country is bustling with construction. Huge modern buildings are being built in the major cities and massive highways are being erected to connect the country. Beijing, Xian, and Chengdu all have very new roads. Some put in only a year ago. I was really surprised how modern some of the larger cities were and also how many people live in them. Beijing had about 30 million, Xian had about 8 million, and Chengdu about 18 million. We also visited Lijiang, high in the mountains. It is a small city at 1 million. Joe mentioned that the entire state of Wyoming has only about 500,000 people in it so that gives you an idea as to how huge these “small” cities are.

The traffic in Beijing was horrendous. It seemed heavy at any time of the day. In order to control the traffic and cars per family, everyone in Beijing must enter a lottery in order to be allowed to buy a new car. Also, each driver can only drive 4 days a week. It is regulated by the last number on their license plate which determines the day they cannot drive. Another thing to note is we saw many accidents in China probably because many of the drivers are new drivers.

Tourists are everywhere in China and I don’t mean foreign tourists. Instead, there are huge amounts of Chinese tourists visiting the popular sites of their country. While at the Forbidden City, I tried to look at the Emperor’s chair. I had to join in with a mass of humanity straining to get a look. I have never been so squished in my life. Thank goodness I’m not claustrophobic. Our guide told us it was like that on the subway every day during rush hour.

We also visited a Hutong on a rickshaw, which was very touristy but interesting. A hutong is an old neighborhood of Beijing. These neighborhoods are what it used to be like before the government tore most of these old neighborhoods down to build all the shiny new buildings, which are everywhere.

Hutongs have public toilets but what is considered a public toilet in the states is not the same in China. Everywhere you go in China the toilet facilities are rated. Five star includes western toilets, doors, toilet paper, sink, and soap. Three star includes a single western toilet and door. The rest are Chinese toilets. One star is only Chinese toilets (squatting on top of a porcelain bowl) with doors. (Unfortunately, urine splashes on the ground, so you have to roll your pants up to stay semi-clean.) Zero star is squatting over a concrete slit with no door, just out in the open where you can have a discussion with your potty neighbor. Zero star is the kind of toilet found in the Hutong for the local residents. On the same topic as toilets, we stayed at the Fairmont Hotel which had an amazing toilet. Just push a button and get a rinse front or back, blow dry, and even powder! I don’t mean to have a huge potty discussion, but the toilet facilities really made life awkward. You have to have really strong thighs to withstand the squatting. I can’t imagine going through this at the age of eighty. Fifty was hard enough! Anyway, enough potty talk.

While in Beijing, we visited Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City, and the Temple of Heaven, which was really a magical place. On the temple grounds, retired residents came daily to use the exercise equipment provided in the park, dance in groups, participate in a folk song sing-along, and play games. These games were games of physical skill such as twirling a long flag on a stick in figure 8s and balancing a ball on a paddle as you move it sideways, upwards and backwards. Groups of men played cards and women knitted in the park. It was truly a community social event. I got the hang of the flags, but I was terrible at the paddle balls.

We also visited the Summer Palace which had an outside corridor which went on for ¾ of a mile and painted on it were about 700 different pictures. It was truly amazing and beautiful.
But my all time favorite was the great wall. I hiked it for almost an hour. Even though there were many people on the wall with me, it was awe inspiring. You could just imagine the ancient Chinese soldiers marching up and down the “dragon’s back” and looking through the many parapets for invading Mongols.

After Beijing we flew to Xian to see the clay soldiers. My plan was to fly into Xian in the morning and have the day to see the clay soldiers and other areas of Xian and then fly onto Chengdu. We arrived at the Beijing airport at 7:00am and it was extremely foggy. Our guide told us that planes still fly when foggy at the Beijing airport, if only that had been true. Our flight was delayed by five hours! I couldn’t believe it. My hopes of seeing the clay soldiers at all were slipping away. What a waste of time and money to fly to Xian for nothing.

We finally arrived in Xian at 4:00pm after a 2 hour flight. Our guide was waiting for us and rushed us to the car. He said that the clay soldiers closed at 6:00pm but it would take us an hour and 15 minutes to get to them from the airport. He didn’t know if the ticket office would be closed. Our driver high tailed it to the soldiers and got us there in 45 minutes. We rushed to the ticket office and were able to get our tickets. After taking the tram we arrived at a building the size of a football stadium. Inside were rows and rows of clay soldiers all waiting for me and standing at attention. (Ha ha).
Even though we saw many whole soldiers, none of the clay soldiers found were whole except for the archer. They had all be smashed to bits and had to be meticulously pasted back together. It is really a massive project. At the other end of the stadium was the clay soldier hospital where the soldiers are pasted back together.

There is something to note about visiting the clay soldiers. The best time to visit is in the evening. Our guide was really surprised how empty the building was. He said everyone wants to go in the morning and there usually a line which continues outside the building. Tourists have only a few minutes at the front of the line to view the clay soldiers then they have to move on. We literally had the entire building to ourselves. We stood for the entire hour taking photos and walking around the entire building.

Immediately after seeing the clay soldiers, we had to grab something for dinner (KFC, which is very popular in China and just as greasy and disgusting there as it is in the states). We were then rushed back to the airport to catch our flight to Chengdu. We arrived at our hotel in Chengdu at around midnight. We stayed at BuddhaZen which is an old temple converted into a hotel.

The next day we had to get up at 6:30am to get ready to go to the Panda Research Center. Even though I was exhausted, the center was completely amazing. We saw baby pandas, one year old pandas, sub-adult pandas, and grown pandas. We also saw red pandas, which are related to the cat family and black swan floating in the manmade lake. I also paid too much money to sit with a baby panda. But it was totally worth it because he was so cute. His fur wasn’t soft like I thought it would be but rather rough. I also held his back paw which was warm. To placate the panda, he was fed honey on wooden sticks. He was very well behaved and let me stroke his ears, head, arms and feet.

Our guide then took us to experience hot pot, a local dish in Chengdu. We had the western hot pot which consists to two pots. The inner pot is hot spicy oil and the outer pot is a chicken broth. Meat, wontons, and vegetables are thrown in and cooked. It was very delicious.
The next day we departed for Lijiang, a beautiful town dominated by Snow Mountain. We stayed at the Banyan Tree and had a room with an amazing view of Snow Mountain. I spent hours staring at the mountain watching the world go by.

We visited Tiger Leaping Gorge where we were pulled by rickshaw drivers through a path blasted through the granite mountains side. We also visited Black Dragon Park , where snow mountain reflected in the lake; Old Lijiang (also known as the Venice of the Orient); and a Naxi village, local indigenous people. I got to learn a lot of about the Naxi from our guide as she was half Naxi. They are very similar to the American Indian as they worship nature and also have totem poles similar to the Eskimos.

We also attended the Impression Show at Snow Mountain. This show was produced by the same man who produced the opening show for the Olympics. The show was outside and had hundred of performers in native dress along with horseback riders. The music was amazing, along with the dancing and drumming.

We are now in Hong Kong at the Intercontinental Hotel. We have a room with a balcony and an incredible view of the harbor. Every night there is a laser show in the harbor and we have front row seats. We are headed to Bali tomorrow where I hope to have some true down time at the beach and Ubud area along with seeing the Komodo dragons.
(Look for Sara's reports on Egypt and Jordan, 11/28/11, and India, 12/5/11.)

Paris Weekend, August 1998

2012-01-02T12:20:00.000-08:00

Paris: Rodin Museum with the Thinker

Woody Allen’s recent movie Midnight in Paris brought back memories of my one and only visit to Paris in August, 1998, when Art and I spent a long weekend there during our three month stay in London. Here is the entry from my diary at the time:

It was the August Bank Holiday Monday in England and rather than fight the crowds at London’s traditional West Indian Carnival (the equivalent of Mardi Gras and touted as Europe’s biggest street festival) we decided to spend the weekend in Paris. We traveled via Eurostar, the high speed train that goes through the Chunnel. (The Chunnel part lasts about 20 minutes.) It is a remarkably easy way to get from the heart of London to the heart of Paris in just under three hours. Because we booked late we ended up going first class which cost more but meant that we were wined and dined both ways.

Toy boats for rent in the Tuileries Garden

We arrived midday on Saturday and after checking into our hotel (near the Place d’Italie on the Left Bank) we set out on foot to explore the city. Half the fun is just wandering through the narrower streets past sidewalk cafés, open air markets, art galleries, etc. Whenever we travel to Europe (which isn’t that often) we are on a perpetual search for a certain kind of leather key case Art likes and this gives us an excuse to go into shops. Much to my surprise, I remembered more of my high school and college French than I would have thought, and we managed to communicate quite well. (We never did find a key case.)

Notre Dame Cathedral, Rose Window

Our stroll eventually brought us to the Seine and to Notre Dame Cathedral, a must-see despite the crowds. We arrived as an afternoon service was just ending. The combination of the organ music reverberating through the lofty spaces, the waxy smell of hundreds of votive candles, and the brilliant stained glass rose windows makes one appreciate the power of the church. We had dinner at a tiny family run restaurant where the food was delicious even though we weren’t completely sure of what we were eating. (Menu items were not a staple of my high school French training.) Paris is a relatively small city and one can walk or take the Metro almost anywhere.

Eiffel Tower at Night

After dinner we walked to the Eiffel Tower which is brilliantly lit up at night. Art doesn't like heights so we didn’t go to the very top, but compromised on the middle level—which is still hundreds of feet off the ground. Needless to say, the view was impressive with the city and the river sparkling below. One historical tidbit explained at the tower is that after it was finished in 1889, it was used to test the physical principles of falling objects. Basically, they tossed things over the side and watched them fall!

Sacre Coeur

Sunday in Paris was devoted to museums and a visit to Montmartre and Sacre Coeur, a church on top of a hill in one of the more arty, and quaint parts of Paris. One climbs the steps to the church mainly for the view. Stationed around the base were a number of street performers dressed like clowns, mummies, etc. Each one stood motionless, like a statue, until a coin dropped into the hat; then the figure would change to a new position, a performance that especially entranced children. The mummies, which looked like King Tut wrapped in gold stretch fabric, were particularly bizarre.

Viewing a Degas Dancer in the Musee D'Orsay

Paris has too many museums to see anything but a sampling on a weekend visit. On Sunday we decided to go to the Musee D’Orsay, a former railway station that has been remodeled to display a large portion of the wonderful 19th Century and Impressionist paintings in the Louvre collection. We also went to the Rodin museum which displays his works in a lovely 18th century house and garden.

Louvre with I.M. Pei designed Pyramid in front.

We saved our trip to the Louvre until Monday and spent most of the day there. When we got tired of looking at art we walked in the Tuileries Gardens which stretch out in front of the museum and look toward the Arc de Triomphe. At the end of the afternoon we returned to the train station, got onto the train, and zipped through the French countryside as the sun was casting golden shadows over the fields. Altogether, it was a lovely weekend.

Au Revoir!

Muir Woods: California's Tallest Trees

2011-12-26T12:00:00.000-08:00

What is taller than the Statue of Liberty, weighs more than a big ship, and is the world’s tallest living thing? The answer: the coast redwood tree. Reaching heights of more than 350 feet, the coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) is taller than any other living plant. (The actual tallest tree, named Hyperion, in a remote forest in northern California, is 379.1 feet tall.) The largest redwood trees, some of which began growing more than 2000 years ago, are also some of Earth’s oldest living things. One of the best places to see redwoods is in Muir Woods, a National Monument in Marin County, California, just a 45 minute drive from San Francisco. Last December (2010), when we were in the Bay Area, we did an excursion to Muir Woods with our family.

I have been to Muir Woods many times, but I am always awed by the towering grandeur of the trees, which seem to go up, and up, and up, and are impossible to capture in a single photo. The damp wintry weather on the day of our visit lent a forest primeval sense to the air. And, despite the mass of cars in the parking lot, once we started walking on the trails marked through the park, it did not seem crowded by people.

Muir Woods is home not only to redwoods, but a wide variety of other plants and wildlife. On the day we visited, everyone was excited because, for the first time in several years, the salmon had returned to the creek to spawn. (Once hatched, salmon spend their adult life in the ocean, only returning to their home creek to mate and lay eggs.) As we stood on the bridge over Muir Creek and gazed into the shallow water, we could see the slippery fish churning their way upstream.

You have to look closely to see the salmon in the water

Entrance fees: The entrance fee to enter the park is $5 for adults and free for children under 15. However, a number of days in the year are free. Or, if you have a National Park Pass, as I do, everyone in your group is free.

Getting there: Muir Woods is located 11 miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge. Take Highway 101 to the Highway 1/ Stinson Beach Exit. Follow the signs to Muir Woods. Roads to the park are steep and winding. Vehicles over 35 feet long are prohibited. Parking space is very limited and fills quickly on most days. There are no RV parking facilities. For an interactive map, please visit http://maps.google.com/maps and type in Muir Woods National Monument. (My advice: On weekends and in summer, you may have to park up to a half a mile away, so it is best to drop off your passengers at the entrance so everyone doesn't have to walk from where you park your car.)

Book about the redwoods: For a wonderful children’s book about redwood trees, packed full of facts and illustrated with an imaginative twist, go to Redwoods by Jason Chin.

Christmas Creches from Around the World

2011-12-19T12:57:00.000-08:00

Gourd Creche from Chile

Over the years my family has collected a variety of Christmas creches from all over the world. Some of been souvenirs of our travel, others have been gifts, and some we have purchased at museum gift shops. We get them out each holiday season and are reminded of all the different cultures that celebrate Christmas. I'd like to share a few of them and send you best wishes for a VERY HAPPY HOLIDAY SEASON!

Knitted Creche from Chile

West African Nativity Figures

Haitian Nativity

Corn Husk Nativity from Mexico

Tin Nativity from Mexico

Ceramic Nativity from Mexico

Swedish cast iron Nativity

Russian Nesting Doll Nativity

Humboldt County: Redwoods, Seashore, and California History

2011-12-12T11:29:00.000-08:00

Sunset from Trinidad, Humboldt County, California

Vast forests, miles of beaches, rushing rivers, and abundant wildlife are some of the reasons I love going to Humboldt County. Every two years, in October, I participate in the Humboldt County Author Festival, and usually stay one or two extra days to spend time with friends and enjoy the beautiful scenery. This year, unlike some others, we were blessed with perfect weather, allowing us to enjoy the full glory of fall, culminating on the last night of the festival with a spectacular sunset over the ocean.
To read about my school visits and activities during the festival, go to my October 26, 2011post in my Art and Books blog. Here are some of the other things I enjoyed during my stay.

Humboldt Marina. Tsumanis are always a potential danger along the Pacific Coast.

On the day I arrived, after lunch at the Café Marina overlooking the docks of Humboldt Bay in Eureka, I drove with a friend out to the Samoa Dunes recreation area. Although this beach is designated as an off road vehicle area, it was midweek, and luckily for us there was almost nobody else there and the beach was empty except for us and the birds. As we walked along the shoreline, flocks of perky sanderlings (a type of sandpiper), ran along the edge of the water searching for tiny crabs and other food in order to refuel before resuming their migration south. Further up the shore, hungry vultures perched on a log near a rotting seal carcass.

Flock of Sanderlings on Samoa Beach

Earlier in the day, on our way to the dunes we had stopped to view the Fisherman Memorial on Woodley Island and marker honoring men who have been lost at sea. Fishing has always been a major industry in the area, so the opportunities to eat good seafood in Humboldt County are plentiful. For dinner we ate an excellent dinner at the Waterfront Restaurant in Eureka where they served the best crab cakes I’ve had in a long time.

View of Ferndale from Russ Park

Farming and logging are other major industries in Humboldt County. (Eighty percent of the county’s 2.3 million acres is forest.) When the festival was over, I went to visit friends in Ferndale, a charming small town with a Victorian main street, about 25 miles from Eureka surrounded by verdant pastures and contented Jersey cows that produce prize winning milk and cheese. In Russ Park at the edge of town we hiked to the top of the forest trail where we had a wonderful view of the valley and coast below.

Redwood grove, Rohner Park, Fortuna. Note stump surrounded by new growth.

The next day we went on another hike, through a patch of preserved redwood forest in Rohner Park in the nearby town of Fortuna. Humboldt County is famous for its redwood trees, which can be seen in various parks, and along the Avenue of the Giants in the southern part of the county. I never cease to be amazed at the size of the trees. As we walked through the forest at Rohner Park, watching the light filter down through the canopy onto the open forest floor, it truly felt as if we were in nature’s cathedral.

Book about the redwoods: For a wonderful children’s book about redwood trees, packed full of facts and illustrated with an imaginative twist, go to Redwoods by Jason Chin.

India: Around the World in 50 Days with Sara Kras, Fall 2011 (Guest Post)

2011-12-05T09:56:00.000-08:00

My friend Sara Kras and her husband went on an amazing journey this fall, circling the world with stops in the Middle East, India, China and the Pacific. I think you will enjoy reading the reports of her adventures! Sara is a children’s book author with books about animals and world cultures and geography. Find out more at www.saralouisekras.com .

India is a kaleidoscope of color and sensation. We arrived at the Imperial Hotel in Delhi early in the morning. When entering the hotel, a wonderful smell permeated the air of pleasant flowers. This hotel was one of my favorites. It is like staying in a palace with many beautiful museum pieces such as huge silver mirrors and desks. The walls are adorned with art from the colonial period. The rooms are filled with marble and large wood pieces.

For my first lunch, I ordered an Indian chicken dish. On the side were some onions, cucumbers, and a single green bean, which I thought was strange. I ate the entire green bean and within minutes my entire mouth was on fire. I felt like I was hyperventilating and the room started to spin. After fifteen minutes of trying to shove anything into my mouth to stop the burning, it started to calm down. That was no ordinary green bean. It was a hot chili pepper! A common one used in India. Welcome to India!

We didn’t spend much time in Delhi as we were using it as a hub. However while doing a bit of sightseeing, I saw a man with two monkeys on a leash. He was walking them just like you would walk a dog. As we traveled, I found monkeys were everywhere in India. They scampered up temple walls. They ran through villages where children threw things at them to make them go away. They sat by the roadside. Sometimes baby monkeys rolled and played in the road. One man had trained a monkey at a regular stop for drivers. When our driver stopped, the man came next to our window and had his monkey put on a show. The monkey flipped, bowed and even tipped his make-believe hat. We gave the man 50 rupees.

From Delhi we flew to Jaipur, which is in the province of Rajasthan, the land of the Rajas. We visited the Amber Palace and the City Palace. Both were filled with opulent rooms and courtyards. At the City Palace an entrance way had been painted as a colorful peacock with a head above the doorway. In the Amber Palace, a covered outdoor area had been decorated with convex mirrors. You could use your imagination of how this room looked in the days of the Maharajas. Torches were lit and dancing girls filled the area. Colors whirled and fire sparkled in the room.

When we arrived at Amber Palace the entire front entrance, about one mile, was lined with elephants with tourists riding to the top. I had declined this as I had read the elephants there were treated poorly. Once we got into the palace there were hawkers and snake charmers. I sat on the ground next to snake charmer. He told me to put on a weird looking hat and blow in a dirty looking wooden flute. I told him no for both. The last thing I needed was lice in my hair or a bizarre bacteria from the flute.
I also went into a temple located at the palace. Inside you are supposed to ring a bell which sparks the energy of the god in the temple. I was the only white tourist in the temple, but still I gave the bell a good solid ring.

In Jaipur we stayed at the Samode Haveli which is a palace converted into a hotel. The original Raja family still owns the property and stay on the top floor. I felt like an Indian princess as our room had a soaring ceiling. The entire suite was made of marble. It had a narrow walkway behind our bed with windows looking on the back courtyard. There was a wider longer hallway which had an antique desk and wardrobe. The ceiling going between the rooms was pretty low and Joe kept banging his head. (Yes. A lot of swearing ensued.) I managed to bang my toe pretty bad on the step up between the rooms. Marble is a really hard material! But even so, the room was so unusual. I loved it.

While exploring Jaipur and other parts of India, I saw any type of mode of transportation you can imagine. There were men pushing carts. There were donkeys, horses, and even camels pulling carts. In Jaipur there were also elephants with brightly painted trunks next to the road. Men were riding bicycles, some having a passenger carriage on the back (rickshaw drivers) or a cart on the back with massive loads. There were motorcycles and mopeds. We saw a family of five on one motorcycle. (Of course, no one wears helmets here.) There are tuk tuks filled with passengers. The most we counted was 12 men all squished into one, some hanging off the back. There are cars, vans, commercial trucks, and buses.

All modes of transportation mentioned above are all on the same road! It is total chaos. They love to honk their horn here too. It’s constant. In addition to all this confusion, people are walking through traffic or across traffic. There aren’t crosswalks really.
Many of the cities are also really filthy. They have a sanitation and garbage problem that is very offensive. Pigs and cows wander the streets scrounging through garbage. In some places, raw sewage spills through the ditches near the roads. I saw one dead animal in the ditch left to rot. If you go to India and want to walk around, don’t wear your nice shoes!

There are large slums in every city where homes are made of plastic bags and cardboard. There are quite a few beggars too that pound on your car window and can be very persistent. It is very sad and you want to help everyone. I hate to say this but at some point you just have to tune it out.
Given all the above, India is still an extremely colorful country, especially the women. They dress in bright saris of yellow, orange, and red, sometimes with elaborate beading. I’ve seen women clinging to male motorcyclists in beautiful saris which sparkle as they fly down the road. In the countryside, bright orange saris decorate the fields where women work. Women with yellow saris walk next to the road with large brass pots balanced on their heads. It makes me realize how conservative and boring American women dress (including myself!) The temples can also be quite colorful painted in peach, pink, light blue, and red.

While in Jaipur, we also went to a private elephant camp call Dera Amer. It’s owned and run by a man related to the Maharaja family. I had an elephant experience where you get to bath and paint the elephant. My elephant’s name was Rangmala. I did not get into the water with my elephant which was good given that there where volleyball size elephant droppings floated in the water. However, I did get to give the elephant a good scrub and got splashed when she sprayed water on her back. Her skin was extremely thick with deep crevasses. Bristly hair grew on the top of her head. After scrubbing her, we waited for her to dry. Then I got to paint her trunk with green, yellow, and bright pink colors. Joe and I then rode Rangmala through the forest and back to the main area for dinner. It was truly a unique experience.

We also saw a bhoba perform in Jaipur. They dress in elaborate red outfits and have handlebar moustaches. They play a small instrument like a violin dancing and twirling as they play.
Joe and I visited the Taj Mahal which is extremely beautiful and breathtaking, as you can imagine. The crowd there is similar to Disneyland, packed. We sat and watched the sunset on this romantic tomb. It was completely magical.

While there, two Indian boys asked Joe if they could take their picture with him (probably because of his beard and tattoes). Joe’s first response was “I will if you pay me 10 rupees”. He was joking, of course. But this is something we ran into when taking pictures of locals.
We stayed the Gateway Hotel which is one of the Taj Hotels and had a spectacular view of the Taj Mahal. I got up early the next morning and watched as the Taj Mahal appeared like a specter in the white morning mist.

We then flew to Japalbur (a 2 hour flight) and then drove to our camp 4 hours away at Bandhavgarh National Park where we were almost guaranteed to see a tiger. We spent three nights there and went on five game drives (a total of 15 hours in a jeep on extremely rough road) and there wasn’t one tiger to be seen. Some jeeps did see tiger, but we just couldn’t seem to make one appear. It was extremely frustrating and sad. We were happy to leave. While there we heard that another couple had gone on 8 game drives and hadn’t seen a tiger either. I would say your chances are from 0 to 25% that you will see a tiger. The promotion of this park is misleading.

We are now back in Delhi and preparing for our trip to China. Overall, everyone must come to India. India is one of the oldest continuous cultures in the world. It is also one of the new super powers and is extremely busy right now. Their economy is booming and there is an electric buzz in the air.
(Look for Sara's report on China, coming up in January.)

Egypt and Jordan: Around the World in 50 Days with Sara Kras, Fall 2011 (Guest Post)

2011-11-28T09:31:00.000-08:00

My friend Sara Kras and her husband went on an amazing journey this fall, circling the world with stops in the Middle East, India, China and the Pacific. I think you will enjoy reading the reports of her adventures! Sara is a children’s book author with books about animals and world cultures and geography. Find out more at www.saralouisekras.com .

Around the world in 50 days seems impossible. But here we are, half way around in India! I’m so glad I’ve been taking notes because you forget all the wonderful small incidents that happen.

In England one of my favorite moments was next to the National Museum where I found a small church. I walked inside the chapel which had a domed, white ceiling with golden chandeliers hanging down. A small orchestra was practicing The Four Seasons by Vivaldi for the evening show. Several people were sitting in the chapel enjoying the free show and I was one of them. It was totally magical.
We stayed at the St James Hotel and Club which is close to just about everything. The hotel was a very cute, boutique hotel, but our room was quite small. It overlooked a typical old-fashion courtyard where a small outdoor restaurant had been set up.

We arrived in Cairo, Egypt three days later. Even though we landed at 5:00pm, it took us two hours to get to our hotel. The traffic in Cairo is atrocious. Four lanes on the freeway become five and sometimes six. Everyone is honking their horn and hardly anyone is moving. Granted this was rush hour traffic. But our entire stay in Cairo was spent fighting the traffic. It was difficult to get to all the sites because of this issue.

We stayed at Mena House and were immediately upgraded to a one-bedroom suite because of my 50th birthday. I was given the option to have a room in the new garden wing or the palace wing. Even though the rooms are dated in the palace wing, the view of the pyramids is simply amazing. You feel as though you could literally reach out and touch them! I spent many hours on our two balconies staring at these ancient wonders.

While in Cairo we visited the great pyramids and rode a camel. I only recommend this if you, the tourist, understand that the camel drivers will try to get more money from you. We did not realize that our tour guide had already paid for the camels and my husband gave them too much money. Our guide called the tourist police and they tracked down the camel drivers and got the money back from them. It was a hassle at the time, but actually quite comical later. Joe had to go into a little wooden hut and was surrounded by all of these Arab men, some police, our guide, and one of them we called the “Fat Man”. He was in charge of all the camel drivers and was negotiating the deal.
I also climbed up inside the Great pyramid. I do not recommend this. The slated walkway goes up about 90 degrees with wooden slates as steps. The first set of stairs went up about three stories. You also have to bend over as you walk as the ceiling is too low. Needless to say, I made it up the first set up stairs but refused to go any further. The next set of stairs went another three stories at least. My legs were totally shaking once we emerged.

We also saw the Egyptian Museum, Tahrir Square (where the protest took place), the subway system, Ali Mosque on the hill (the most amazing view of Cairo), a local market before the tourist market and an ancient neighborhood mosque in the local market. The local market was divided into product sections: one section had all kitchenware, another fabrics, and another spices etc. Donkey carts loaded down with goods squeezed through narrow alleyways. Men pushing carts filled with lumber stopped traffic. I was able to buy some very soft Egyptian cotton scarves which the local women wear. It was really a scene and a little bit frightening as we were the only tourist there.

We then flew to Luxor and stayed at the Steigenberger Hotel. The rooms were similar to a Holiday Inn, but the views were amazing. We faced the Nile River and were able to watch the hot air balloons take off in the morning at 6:00am. While in Luxor, which means many palaces, we visited the amazing Karnak Temple and Luxor Temple. These are temples that are featured in a James Bond movie. The tall pillars are filled from top to bottom with hieroglyphs. A long walkway between the two temples is being restored. This original walkway was lined with sculptures of a lion body and ram head which is one of the representations of Amon-Ra, the main god.
We also saw Hatshepsut Temple, which seemed like a lot of walking with not much reward and Habu Temple, which had hieroglyphs still painted with original colors. It was very beautiful.
We also visited an alabaster factory (a usual tourist trap). I, of course, bought a couple of pieces. I then went to use the bathroom. While in there the handle broke and the door would not unlock. One of the boys in the shop had to climb a one story wall and jumped into the bathroom with me and began to use a crow bar to tear the door apart. Our guide rammed the door with his shoulder and the door busted through on the other side. It was very funny. When we left, the owner of the shop ran out to our car and gave me a very ugly necklace and asked me to forget about it. The necklace is now called the “forget about it necklace.” I wore it for the rest of the day.
The next day we saw the Valley of the Kings, which is pretty amazing, but it has a dearth of information. I would have loved to see display panels interpreting the hieroglyphs.

In Luxor we boarded the beautiful Dahabiya Lara. We were the only passengers on board, so were given the master suite which had a sliding door and private balcony to sit and watch as we floated down the Nile River. There was a crew of about ten men. The manager on board was a British woman. She took care of everything. Taking a cruise on the Dahabiya was like stepping back in time. It’s a “gentleman’s houseboat”.
One thing I must mention about Egypt or any Arab country, take ear plugs. The Muslim clerics call all Muslims to prayer starting at 5:00am in the morning, then three other times during the day. This is done via loud speaker (usually blown out and distorted) attached to a minaret. All the minaret callers start at different times so it is not a coordinated song, but rather a disjointed cacophony. When the donkeys start joining in with loud braying, it really becomes a mess.
We traveled through the Esna lock which was very interesting. But then we spent the night in Esna, which was not interesting but loud and extremely annoying. We were there on Thursday night, a very popular wedding night. All the brides wanted their photos taken down by the docks where the dahabiyas dock. So trucks with loud, blown-out speakers drove by. Some parked and yelled and screamed until about 11:00pm. Esna should be avoided on Thursdays, Tuesdays, and Sundays as these are the popular wedding days. I believe there were eight weddings going on the night we were there.
The next day we glided slowly down the Nile in the cool of the morning. Papyrus lined the river bank and beyond it was a lovely bucolic scene. Men in long dresses waved as our boat sailed by.
Once we reached Edfu, we got a horse and carriage to the temple. Most of the horses were in a deplorable state. Their hip bones and ribs poked out. The horse and carriage drivers are in line to take the next tourist. I refused to get on the carriage selected for us as the horse looked completely starved. I selected a later carriage with a healthy horse. This caused quite an argument between the booking agent and our guide, but eventually they gave us the carriage I selected. I gave the driver a very nice tip and motioned for him to feed his horse. When we emerged from the temple, he was feeding his horse fresh green grass.
The next day we proceeded to Kom Ombo. Because of the revolution, we practically had the temples to ourselves. It was really amazing as, I believe, before the revolution the temples could be as packed as Disneyland.
The next night we docked outside of Aswan near a herd of sheep. In the morning, the shepherd took the sheep somewhere to graze and in the evening, he brought them back. One evening, he was carrying a newly-born black lamb.

While in Aswan we flew to Abu Simbel. This temple was quite small, but very interesting. Ramses II basically was sending a message to anyone entering Egyptian territory “Don’t mess with me or I will mess you up!” The temple was filled with battle scenes and huge statues of himself.
A side note: if you want to shop in Egypt, you have to bargain. When given a price cut it down to ¼ of the price and go up from there. Joe asked how much a mask was and was told 350 Egyptian pounds. I got it down to 120 Egyptian pounds with something else thrown in. However I stared the bargaining at 50 Egyptian pounds.
While in Aswan we visited the Philae Temple, the new Sofitel Cataract Hotel, and a large Coptic Church. Our guide had trouble at the Coptic Church as the day before there was a Coptic protest in Cairo and about 25 people were killed and over 200 injured.
Later that night, we had a special dinner on the banks of the river. The staff played drums and sang for us. Even though the dahabiya is not as modern as a cruise boat, it is the only way to see the Nile. Our room was air-conditioned, but the water and electricity was run by a generator. The generator was turned off every night at around 11:00pm and turned on in the morning at around 7:00am. Because of the plumbing, you cannot put toilet paper in the toilet, but rather in a trash can. Our room was cleaned every day and amazing towel “sculptures” were created on our bed. These comprised of cobras, a camel with a rider, and even the Nile River with our dahabiya floating down. Our house man was very talented. Also, the service and food were amazing.

The next morning we flew to Cairo and caught our flight to Amman, Jordan. While waiting to board, several severely injured men were loaded onto the plane. I asked what had happened to them and was told they had been fighting in Libya against Gaddafi. One injured man in front of me showed me videos on his cell phone of a person being beaten by Gaddafi’s soldiers. He was very animated about what happened, but unfortunately, I could hardly understand anything he said.
Once we arrived, we were picked up at the airport and driven to Petra and stayed at the Movenpick. This hotel is very modern and literally steps away from the entrance. We went to Petra at 7:00 am and arranged for a horse and carriage to carry Joe’s camera equipment. Many tourists took pictures of us as we rode through the narrow canyons to Petra. The Treasury was just like the Indian Jones movie. I hiked with our guide all around the area while Joe stayed behind to take photos. I thought it was pretty funny when a boy riding a donkey said taxi̧ basically asking if I wanted a ride.
After Petra we had to go back to the airport for our flight to Delhi. We left on the Desert Highway. Half the way to Madaba, the traffic completely stopped as there was a protest on the highway. Our driver had to cross a gravel area and headed back towards King’s Highway, a much longer route. We stopped at a Bedouin rest stop called “Sunshine” which had pit toilets (totally gross). We drank tea and looked at the amazing view of Wadi Mujib.
We were able to see the famous tiles and the ancient Coptic Church in Madaba, but it was getting close to our flight time. While trying to leave Madaba, the King’s Highway was also blocked off by a rope and a tractor. There was a protest immediately in front of our car. Some of the men with guns. I have to admit I was really scared. We were lucky as within about 15 minutes the rope was dropped and we were able to get the heck out of there.

Overall, the two countries we visited have very few tourists (for obvious reasons). The Middle East seems to be a big fat mess right now. But I do consider ourselves to be lucky as we had many of these amazing treasures all to ourselves and we are still here to tell the tale.

We have since visited Jaipur, India where we have ridden elephants, rubbed shoulders with snake charmers, and tromped through glittering palaces. We just returned from the Taj Mahal this evening. But India is a completely different tale to tell.
(Look for Sara's report on India next week.)

Berlin in Winter

2011-11-21T12:04:00.000-08:00

Friedrichstrasse at night outside our hotel

[Diary of my trip to Berlin in November 2010] It was the last Thursday in November and we were in Berlin, where Art was attending a conference. We were staying at the Maritim Hotel, on Friedrichstrasse, the main shopping street of the former East Berlin, now a bustling center of commerce with huge department stores, hotels, and other businesses. That evening we attended an elaborate buffet at the hotel with dozens of dishes and artfully prepared appetizers, many in little glass containers. Main courses included venison and roast goose–the closest we came to a real Thanksgiving dinner. After dinner we walked a few blocks to the intersection with Unter den Linden, a wide boulevard leading to the Brandenburg Gate, which was decked out for Christmas with sparkling lights. The temperature was around 0 degrees Centigrade and it felt like it was going to snow. In the morning, as I looked out our hotel window, I saw a light dusting of snow on the rooftops.

View from our hotel window

The next day while Art was attending meetings, I ate at the hotel again. Dessert came on a plate shaped like an artist’s palette with cake, ice cream, and chocolate sauce in three “paint” compartments. Everywhere in the hotel, walls were decorated with modern paintings, some of them huge. Finally, on the last day of our stay I realized that the concept of the hotel was a giant art gallery! (Hence, the palette for my dessert!) One thing that puzzled me when I got on the elevator to go to our room was that each floor had a name on it. I now understood that these were the names of painters and each floor was dedicated to the work of a single artist. Our floor (the 5th) displayed paintings by German artist Bernd Zimmer.

Carved Christmas Pyramid

On Saturday afternoon, after the meeting was over, we went out shopping, stopping at a Christmas store filled with pyramids (elaborately carved wooden holiday decorations that turn from the heat of lighted candles), as well as many other kinds of other wooden objects, plus holiday table cloths, ceramics, etc.

Entrance to the Christmas Market at Gendarmensmarkt

Our real destination, though, was the Christmas market at the Gendarmenmarkt, a few blocks away, where we paid one Euro each to get in. This huge outdoor fair had dozens of booths selling food and crafts. On one side was a stage where entertainers danced and sang. There was also a semi-indoor section tented off from the chilly air where there were more booths. We toured the booths and bought cookies and poppyseed cake to take home, puppets for the grandkids, and a Thuringer sausage on a bun for my lunch. We also took a photo by a large decorated Berlin bear. (Bears are the symbol of Berlin. They are all over the city, something like the cows in Chicago.) That evening, German friends took us to the Berlin Opera where we saw Mozart's The Magic Flute. The staging–lots of smoke and lights–was dramatic and creative. It didn’t matter that I didn’t understand the German lyrics. It was all wonderful. Afterward, we ate in the opera restaurant where Art had smoked eel and I had gnocchi.

Booth selling stollen, cookies and other baked goods

On Sunday morning we bundled up and walked to the Brandenburg Gate and from there to the New National Art Museum, a large glass box not far from the symphony hall. The main collection is German art of the early to mid-twentieth century. From the outside, the building seems unlikely to have wall space for much art, but the inside is surprisingly spacious. In one room, they were screening a 1927 film called Symphony of Berlin, a black and white visual homage to life in the city as it was then, bustling with industry and commerce. (You can rent the film on Netflix.) Later, we met our friends again for a traditional German Christmas tea with wonderful homemade stollen, fruit bread, cookies, and marzipan, followed by more German food for dinner at a restaurant near our hotel. The next morning we got on a plane to go back to LA.

Caroline at the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin

Note: We have been to Berlin numerous times, usually during warmer seasons. This was my first trip in winter. The short days and freezing temperatures, along with the sounds of Christmas music in the streets, brought back memories of winters in Minneapolis when I was growing up. As a child, one of the highlights of the Christmas season was going downtown to look at the displays in the department store windows. Even though I have lived in California for most of my adult life, and have gotten used to trees being green year round and t-shirt weather in January, Christmas still never seems quite the same without snow underfoot and the air so cold you can see your breath. In Berlin, we could definitely see our breath in the night air!

Prague: Old World Food and Culture

2011-11-14T11:41:00.000-08:00

Prague, view from our hotel window of Prague Castle and St. Vitus Cathedral

In November of 2010, we spent five days in Prague and, as I look over my trip diary, it seems as if we spent most of our time eating! We did, in fact, enjoy many of the main tourist sites, guided one day by a Czech friend, but as you’ll see, the focus is on food. So, here is my mostly culinary tour of Prague.

Day 1: We checked into our hotel, The Royal Palace, just as the sun was setting. Our room looked over the large enclosed gardens of the Wallenstein Palace to the Castle (actually St. Vitus Cathedral) high on the hill above. After a short walk, we ate a traditional Czech dinner at a nearby restaurant, Pod Vezi, where Art got duck and I chose fallow (deer) with what they called dumplings but tasted like the bread dressing of a typical American Thanksgiving.

Deer and Dumplings for dinner at Restaurant Pod Vezi

Day 2: After breakfast at the hotel, a buffet they call a Swedish table (meat, cheese, bacon, bread, pastries, fruit) which filled us up for the day, we set out to explore. We walked across the Charles Bridge (for pedestrians only and filled with vendors despite the freezing weather) from Mala Strana (the town below the castle) to Stare Mesto (old town) on the other side of the river, and walked along the twisty cobblestone streets, filled mainly with tourist shops featuring puppets, jewelry made from local amber (actually from Poland), art glass, Russian nesting dolls, etc.

Toy and Ceramic Shop

After visiting the Spanish Synagogue, beautifully decorated and turned into a museum of pre-War Jewish history and culture in Prague, we stopped for coffee and delicious pastries at a Bake Shop on Bikova Street. For dinner, we picked a restaurant called Herzetova, on the river below the Kafka Museum. At 6:00, we were the only people there, but it began to fill up as we left. I had pork piccata with gnocchi and Art had veal and potato dumplings in a rich sauce. Servings were huge and I only ate half of mine.

Stained Glass window at St. Vitus Cathedral

Day 3: After breakfast, we walked up the hill to the castle and went into St. Vitus Cathedral, a Gothic masterpiece with flying buttresses and giant stained glass windows. We then visited the Prague Castle Picture Gallery, a small museum with selected pictures from the royal collection, mostly minor portraits and landscapes, but also some notable paintings by Tintoretto, Titian, Veronese, and others. An unusual Tintoretto features the Christ Child off center in the lower left with everything else in the painting sliding toward him.

Fred and Ginger building, is an example of deconstructionist architecture

After lunch of goulash and potato soup in a small café, we walked along the river to the Fred and Ginger building, co-designed by Frank Gehry and a Czech architect. In stark contrast to the ornate, old stone buildings of central Prague, the two parts of the modern Fred and Ginger building lean toward one another like dancers. It is used as an office building. Dinner that night was at Gitanes, a gypsy themed Serbian restaurant, just down the hill from the American Embassy. The first course was a bowl of fried donut-like cakes served with two kinds of creamy cheese, one pink, one white. I then had cheese stuffed fried peppers (a very distant cousin of chiles rellenos) and Art had swarma (cabbage wrapped around meat) over mashed potatoes.

Afternoon Snack

Day 4: We spent the day visiting several churches, buying tickets for a concert that night in Dvorak Hall at the Rudolfinium (a mixture of traditional and modern music), and stopping for tea and honey cakes at a small café. For dinner before the concert we ate moules (mussels) at a restaurant in Josefov, the Jewish Quarter, which lies between the right bank of the Vltava River and the Old Town Square. Jewish history in Prague goes back 1000 years and the Jewish Museum there has one of the most extensive collections of Jewish art, textiles and silver in the world.

Dvorak Hall

Day 5: In the morning we took a tour to Terezin, about an hour’s drive from Prague. The walled town, originally built as a fortress by the Prussians, was used by the Nazis as a prison and concentration camp during the Second World War. The weather had turned raw and windy with swirling snow, making us conscious as we toured the prison how stark conditions had been for prisoners who lived in buildings with no heat and with insufficient clothing. After we returned to Prague, we visited the Kafka Museum, an exhibit of his life arranged, appropriately, in twisting corridors with mirrors and surprise turns. That evening, for our last dinner in Prague, we went to U Patrona, a small but charming restaurant near the Charles Bridge. Art ordered bream (fish) and I had duck and Greek salad. For dessert we had panna cotta with fruit. Everything was good and artfully presented. We thought it the best restaurant of our visit.

Unlike many other European cities, central Prague was not bombed during WW II, so the heart of the city, which goes back ten centuries or more, retains its historic character. It is best seen by walking, and although the weather was chilly, we wore warm coats and were quite comfortable walking around. A few days after we left, a huge storm blanketed Europe with more than a foot of snow, making it almost impossible to get around. We were lucky that we had mostly clear weather for our trip.

Typical street in the castle area of Prague

Getting around: The best way to get around central Prague is by walking, which was what we did. You do not need to know Czech to visit Prague. We found that almost everyone speaks English.
Getting there: We flew directly to Prague (via Paris) from Los Angeles. From Prague, we took a train to Berlin (a beautiful ride along the river), and flew back to Los Angeles (via Paris) from there.

Uppsala, Sweden

2011-11-07T09:53:00.000-08:00

Uppsala Castle, built in 1549: The Governor's Residence and Site of Several Museums

Last month, my husband Art spent a week in Uppsala, Sweden. He was there for work, but he also did a little sightseeing and has agreed to share a few of his photos here. Although I did not accompany him on this trip, I did go with him on a trip to Sweden several years ago. I remember that as we drove from the airport to Stockholm past pine forests and rolling farmland, it was highly reminiscent of my home state of Minnesota. Perhaps that’s why so many Scandinavians emigrated to the American upper Midwest! Art’s photos from this trip focus on the historic center of Uppsala, a university town of 140,000 people about an hour north of Stockholm.

A University Town

The Carolina Rediviva University Library

Uppsala University, founded in 1477, is the oldest university in Scandinavia and one of the most distinguished universities in northern Europe. During Art’s visit, he was taken on a tour of the Museum Gustavianum and of the old books and map collection at the university’s Carolina Rediviva Library. From early anatomical textbooks, to globes of the world made before much of the world had been explored, his photos show a room packed with historic books and documents. My favorite picture is of a globe of the constellations showing a realistic drawing of a bear around what we usually call the Big and Little Dippers. I’ve always thought it took a great deal of imagination to see those constellations (Ursa Major and Ursa Minor) as bears!

Globe of the Constellations, Carolina Rediviva Library

The Uppsala Cathedral

Uppsala Cathedral. Seat of the Archbishop of the Church of Sweden

Since 1164, Uppsala has been the ecclesiastical center of Sweden. Its most prominent building is the Cathedral, whose twin towers, nearly four hundred feet high, dominate the skyline. The Cathedral, with its soaring nave and stained glass windows, is Gothic in design. When it was inaugurated in 1435 it was part of the Roman Catholic Church. Since the Reformation, it has been part of the Lutheran Church of Sweden. In addition to its architectural interest, the Cathedral is the burial site of many of Sweden’s kings and luminaries, including botanist Carl Linnaeus.

Uppsala Cathedral Stained Glass Window with Angels Above

Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778), Father of ModernTaxonomy
As I looked at Art’s photos of Uppsala, I tried to imagine that it might have been somewhat similar when Linnaeus was alive and students flocked to his lectures at the university. Carl Linnaeus (also known as Carl von Linne) was a scientist, lecturer, writer, and passionate collector and explorer. In his time, there was no comprehensive system for identifying and classifying plants and animals. Linnaeus' study of plants and the need to name them in an organized way motivated him to develop a two part system for naming all living things, the first part being the genus name and the second the species, as in Homo sapiens, Felis domesticus, or Tyrannosaurus rex. The universal language of science in Linnaeus’ time was Latin. Today, English is the universal scientific language, but we still use Latin and Linnaeus' system for scientific names.

Stora Torget, the main square in Uppsala, for pedestrians only

Flatbread
While in Uppsala, Art became enamored of the many varieties of flatbread that were served on the breakfast smorgasbord at his hotel. Made from rye, wheat, whole grain, and in various degrees of thickness, this crisp bread is perfect with butter, cheese, meat or by itself as a healthy snack. Of course, you don’t have to fly to Sweden to buy or eat Swedish food. Just go to your nearest IKEA! [For an interesting article on the history and culture of IKEA, go to the October 3, 2011 issue of the New Yorker.]

Thanks to Art for sharing his photos!

Dome of Museum Gustavianum of Uppsala University

September in Sardinia, Part III: Giants' Tombs, Sassari, and the Sinis Peninsula

2011-10-31T12:07:00.000-07:00

(A Week in Sardinia, September 2011, Continued)

Arzachena, Tomb of the Giants "Coddu Vecchiu"

Arzachena and Tombs of the Giants

After leaving Su Gologone, we headed north to the town of Arzachena, the center of a half-dozen Nuragic sites. Besides the towers, the other distinctive structures of the Nuraghic culture are the so-called “giants' tombs”, large stone sepulchers, often fronted by a huge stone “door”. In fact, the graves were not for giants, (the ancient Sardinians were of relatively small stature) but intended for multiple burials. At first I thought that the tiny opening at the bottom of the center stone was meant for people to crawl through, but then learned that it was symbolic, intended as a door for the spirits.

Sassari, Sardinia’s University Town

Sassari Cathedral, Gargoyle

Our next three nights were spent in Sassari, at the Leonardo da Vinci hotel, in the center of town not far from the university where my husband, Art, was attending a conference for two days. While he was at meetings, I explored the town, visiting the main square and the Cathedral, the Museum Sanna, which displays both costumes and artifacts discovered in the area, and wandering along the narrow side streets.

Cactus fruit, eggplant, olives

I also did a little shopping, buying torrone (almond candy) and some orange flavored cookies to take home as souvenirs. I also bought a package of carasau bread to bring home. The bread, so thin that it is almost a cracker, had its origin in the days when shepherds spent weeks alone in the hills with their sheep and needed a food that would stay fresh. We are still enjoying the bread I bought, weeks later!

Bay of Nymphs

Lighthouse, Porto Conte

On the last afternoon in Sassari, we drove about half hour to the coast for a 4.5 mile walk through a nature preserve at Porto Conte, known in ancient times as Port of the Nymphs. We followed a track through a scrub forest to Punto Giglio (Lily Point) where there are the remains of barracks and gun emplacements from World War II. On the way, we were surprised to hear the noise of vehicles behind us. Soon a policeman appeared on a motorcycle, leading a convoy of jeeps, motorcycles, trucks, and other army vehicles, all decorated with American and Italian flags and filled with men and women in U.S. military uniforms. At first we thought it was some sort of military exercise, but then we noticed that the uniforms were fifty years old! Perhaps, we thought, we had landed in the middle of a movie reenacting the American liberation of Italy. It turned out to be a club of people who collect World War II memorabilia and have excursions like this in “costume” to historic sites. (As it turns out, the war never actually came to Sardinia. The Americans bypassed Sardinia on their march into Europe from Africa, entering Italy via Sicily.)

Punto Giglio (Porto Conte)

Roman Ruins and Flamingos

Tharros, Roman Ruins

For our final day in Sardinia, we headed to the Sinis Peninsula, near the town of Oristano, to see the remains of an ancient Roman settlement at Tharros which sit on a narrow spit of land protruding into the bay. Sardinia became a Roman province in 238 B.C. after the defeat of the Cathaginians in the first Punic War and Tharros developed into a major religious center. The buildings are mostly collapsed, but the basalt slabs of the original Roman road remain, making it easy to imagine toga clad citizens making their way to the baths and temples.

Flamingos, Stagno Ena Arrubia

After lunch on the beach and visiting the nearby paleochristian church of San Giovanni di Sinis, we drove south to Stagno Ena Arrubia, a seaside lagoon declared by our guidebook to be a “birdwatcher’s paradise.” It was. From the edge of the road, we were thrilled to see hundreds of flamingoes, as well as coots, gulls, egrets, herons and other birds in the shallow water.

Off the Beaten Track for Americans

Our trip to Sardinia was timed for September to take advantage of the good weather (not too hot, not too cold) and to avoid the summer tourist crowds. Sardinia is a popular tourist destination for Europeans, especially in summer when they flock to the beaches. However, few Americans go to Sardinia. During our week there, we did not encounter any and we only met a few native English speakers including one generous Englishman who helped us navigate our way through Cagliari when we got lost. Earlier that day, when we asked the hotel clerk for directions into the city, she had asked rather incredulously, “You didn’t get GPS with your rental car?” We didn’t opt for GPS because of the expense, and although we did manage without it, there were a few times when it might have come in handy. Much of Sardinia IS off the beaten track. One of the things we liked best, is that in many places we visited, we were the only ones there.

Arzachena: Nuraghic Complex "La Prisgiona", entrance to the tower

Getting there: Sardinia has airports in Cagliari, Olbia and Alghero. You can fly to Sardinia from several cities in Italy on Alitalia, or from Paris on Meridiana. I flew from Los Angeles to Paris, and then to Cagliari via Rome.

Shopping: Most shops, except in tourist areas, are closed on Sundays. During the week they close for lunch between 1:00 and 4:00 and then stay open until dinner time at 8:00 or 9:00. So, if you need to buy anything, plan to shop when they stores are open!
ATMs: Only the larger towns have banks with ATMs and even then, there may be just one or two. It helps to ask at the local tourist office for directions to one.

(Look for Sardinia, Part I: Ancient Crossroads of the Mediterranean posted October 17 and Sardinia, Part II: The Supramonte posted October 24.)

September in Sardinia: Part II, The Supramonte

2011-10-24T12:04:00.000-07:00

(Trip to Sardinia, September 2011, Continued)

Valley below the Supramonte, near Su Gologone

Su Gologone

Entrance to Hotel Su Gologone

After leaving Barumini, we headed north for the town of Oliena, located at the foot of the mountains of the Supramonte, and Su Gologone, the large, upscale country hotel where we would spend three nights. (Su Gologone gets its name from the ancient spring across the road from the hotel. “Su” is a Sardinian word meaning “the” and “gologone” means “spring”.) The hotel is reputed to have the best restaurant in Sardinia and the food was excellent. Dinners feature suckling pig roasted on spits in a huge fireplace in the dining room. Breakfasts are a smorgasboard of fresh fruits, breads, meats, yogurt, muesli, cheeses, pastries, eggs, juice, plus tea or caffe latte.

Breakfast is eaten on a screened in terrace

The rooms and hallways of the hotel are filled with the art collection of the owner, displaying colorful costumes, masks, paintings, pottery, rugs, and other typical Sardinian crafts. From the balcony of our bright and airy room we could hear the tinkle of sheep bells on the nearby hillside and glimpse the top of the stony massif beyond. To orient ourselves, we signed up for an excursion the next day.

To the Top of Mount Corrasi

Climbing to the top of Mount Corrasi, nearly 5000 feet high

In the morning we met our guide, Antonello, who escorted us to a Land Rover, pointing to the top of the massif and indicating that we were going there. He only spoke Italian so we didn’t get details. We assumed that we’d drive part way and hike the rest. We didn’t realize that he planned to drive nearly all the way to the top! After zigzagging through the narrow streets of Oliena, he turned off the highway onto a dirt track, passing first through a forest, then along the rock face, one hairpin turn after the next, on the narrow boulder strewn road which had no guard rail and dropped precipitously on one side. Finally, he reached a small parking area. From there we scrambled on foot over rocky terrain between the thistle and other low growing plants to the summit of Mount Corrasi. The view was, indeed, breathtaking and worth the rock jolting trip up.

The Lanaitho Valley

Nuraghic Stone basin and Ram's head water spouts at Sa Sedda e Sos Carros

The second half of our excursion with Antonello was to the Lanaitho Valley, a long secluded river valley within the Supramonte. At the far end, after passing through olive groves, horse meadows, and along a tree lined avenue, we came to the grotto of Sa Ohe e Su Bentu and the Nuraghic village Sa Sedda e Sos Carros. After paying our entrance fee for the village, we got a private tour in English from an extremely knowledgeable young woman who pointed out, among other things, the elaborate plumbing system–still in place! Like many prehistoric sites in Sardinia, the village was completely buried and unknown until just a few years ago. It is still being excavated. When we returned from the village, Antonello took us on a tour of the cave, one of the many limestone caverns throughout the Supramonte.

A Day at the Beach

Cala Fuili Beach, near Cala Gonone

The next day we drove to the coast, about an hour away, winding our way down the mountain to the town of Cala Gonone on the Gulf of Orosei. Our plan was to take a boat to the grotto and beach of Cala Luna a few miles to the south. However, because of expected high winds (which never appeared while we were there) all boat trips for the day were canceled. Instead, we hiked to a closer beach, Cala Fuili, about 2.5 miles away at the end of the road from Cala Gonone. By this time it was noon and warm in the full sun (the temperature was in the low 80's), making a swim in the sea even more attractive. As we arrived at Cala Fuili, we discovered dozens of rock climbers scaling the walls of the canyon. For ourselves, we walked down the steps to the beach!

At the end of the day we returned to Su Gologone to enjoy a glass of Sardinian red wine on the terrace and watch the sun set over the valley below.

(Look for Sardinia, Part I: Ancient Crossroads of the Mediterranean posted October 17 and Sardinia, Part III: Giants' Tombs, Sassari, and the Sinis Peninsula posted October 31.)

Ruins of an early church near Su Gologone

September in Sardinia, Part I: Ancient Crossroads of the Mediterranean

2011-10-17T12:01:00.000-07:00

A Week in Sardinia, September 2011

Su Nuraxi: Bronze Age tower and village built about 1500 B.C.

Grazing sheep, olive groves, and ancient vineyards stretched on either side of the road as we drove through the rolling Sardinian countryside. Then, as we rounded a curve, the ruins of a huge, beehive-shaped tower loomed over the landscape. We had arrived at Su Nuraxi, the remains of a neolithic settlement that had been a center of Sardinian life more than 3000 years ago. Huge stone towers, called nuraghi, are unique to Sardinia and give the Bronze Age culture that built them its name. The Sardinian landscape is littered with Nuraghic ruins (more than 7,000 sites have been documented) as well as the remains of Etruscan, Greek, Carthaginian, Roman, and other civilizations that have put their stamp on the island. The richness of Sardinia's ancient history was one of the reasons we wanted to visit.
My husband and I spent a week in Sardinia in September, visiting ancient ruins, hiking in the mountains and along the coast, going to museums, birdwatching, and enjoying the rich and delicious Sardinian cuisine. With blue skies and comfortable temperatures (in the 70's), it had all the elements of a ideal vacation.

Cagliari, the Provincial Capital

Cagliari: Gate to the Citadel, location of Museum of Archeology

Sardinia is the second largest island in the Mediterranean (after Sicily). We arrived in Cagliari, the capital, in the southern part of the island. After a night at the Holiday Inn, chosen because it was near the airport and theoretically easy to get to (we got hopelessly lost trying to find it), we headed for the center of town to visit the museums in the Citadella, or citadel, the old fortified part of the city at the top of the hill above the port. The Archeology Museum in Cagliari is the largest and most complete collection of ancient artifacts on the island. With four floors chock full of pottery, masks, clay, bronze and iron figures, jewelry, projectile points, mosaics and more, representing Sardinia from prehistoric times through the Roman period, it was the perfect introduction to the mix of cultural influences that have created Sardinia and a clue to the wealth of ancient artifacts that have been found there. Luckily, the introductory panels in each room, which often included maps and diagrams, were in both Italian and English.

Archeology Museum: Wrestlers, Bronze Age figures for votive offering

Sardinia has been part of modern Italy since 1861 and Italian is the official language. Children learn to speak Italian in school, but their first language is Sardi, a Latin-based language, but with words and word forms from earlier times and other cultures. Before the trip, I took a short course in Italian for travelers. It helped a LOT because, with few exceptions, most people do not speak English in Sardinia. If they do speak another language other than Sardi or Italian, it is most likely to be French. (The island of Corsica, which is French, is directly north of Sardinia.)

Agriturismo–Farm Stays in Italy

Throughout Sardinia and the Italian countryside, you see signs offering Agriturismo, which is basically a bed and breakfast stay at a working farm. For our second night, we stayed at Su Boschettu, a typical agriturismo hotel about an hour’s drive from Cagliari, located in the midst of an olive grove. It also offered dinner, advertising that everything on the menu was organic and locally grown. The first course, antipasti, included the typical Sardinian green olives (perhaps from their own orchard), which have a delicious, slightly sharp, nutty taste, and the classic crisp Sardinian flat bread, carasau, brushed with olive oil, sprinkled with salt, and toasted. (Throughout our stay in Sardinia, every meal began with olives and carasau.)

Olives

The bread and olives also came with a roasted eggplant dish, sauteed onions and cabbage, and a type of seafood ceviche. This could have been enough, but was followed by ravioli filled with ricotta (the primi piatti) and salad with a plate of cold meats– sausage, duck and ribs– (the secundi piatti). Dessert was fruit, grapes and super-sweet melon, and a small cup of thick Italian coffee. (I always asked for caffe decaffienato because, at full strength, I knew that the coffee would definitely keep me awake all night.) We went to bed stuffed, leaving our window open to the fresh country air and perfect silence.

View of the village of Pauli Arbarei from Su Boschettu

Su Nuraxi–A World Heritage Site

View from the walkway at the top of the Su Nuraxi Tower; stone walls were built without mortar

Our destination the next morning was the town of Barumini and the ancient site of Su Nuraxi, a UNESCO World Heritage site. At Su Nuraxi one can see the ruins of a large central tower, surrounded by four smaller towers and the remains of a large village. It is the largest and most complete Nuraghic excavation in Sardinia. From about 1500 BC onwards, villages were built around the tower-fortresses called nuraghi (Northern Sardinians call them nuraghes, Southern Sardinian call them nuraxis, plurals of nuraghe and nuraxi respectively), which were often reinforced and enlarged with battlements. The boundaries of tribal territories were guarded by smaller lookout nuraghi erected on strategic hills commanding a view of other territories.

Nuraghic model of a tower showing the flared upper story

We bought our tickets for the tour of Su Nuraxi (the only way to visit the site), and although the tour was supposed to be only in Italian, the guide generously translated everything into English for us and several other English speaking tourists. We followed our guide up the stairs of a scaffold on the outside of the tower so we could descend the steep stone steps within the wall to the inner courtyard to enter the lower rooms and see the well. (Many nuraghi were built around wells. Water has always been a valuable resource in Sardinia.) Only two levels of the tower remain, but originally it rose to 65 feet! Given the size of the huge stone blocks used for building, one has to marvel at the engineering.
Our ticket also got us in to several museums in Barumini. One displayed artifacts discovered in the excavation of Su Nuraxi; another displayed farm implements and Sardinian cultural items, including the many different forms of Sardinian bread; and another explained the making and playing of a flute-like instrument called launeddas.

Maps and Guidebooks: We relied on our Michelin map to get us around Sardinia. You can order it online. Our main guidebooks for sites, hotels, restaurants, etc., were the Lonely Planet Sardinia and Rough Guide Sardinia. We also made good use of Sardinia: Car Tours and Walks by Andreas Stieglitz, which has very specific instructions for walks and driving routes.

(Look for Sardinia Part II: The Supramonte and Sardinia Part III: Giants' Tombs, Sassari, and Sinis Peninsula to be posted October 24 and 31.)

Cagliari, Sardinia, view from below the Citadel

UC Botanical Garden, Berkeley: A Plant Lover's Paradise

2011-10-10T00:00:00.000-07:00

Oak Knoll in the California Section

Research and Conservation
Nestled in the Berkeley hills, just above the Cal campus, more than 13,000 different species of plants on 34 acres grow in the University of California Botanical Garden, a scientific collection of plants from around the world and a wonderful place to spend the morning or afternoon. I recently went there for the first time. The garden is a living museum, created as a research garden but open to the public.

Old Rose Garden with view of Berkeley and San Francisco Bay

A network of paths takes you through the garden, which is arranged according to the plants’ geographic origin. These include Mediterranean, South America, Mexico/Central America, Eastern North America, Australasia, Asia, Southern Africa, New World Desert, and California. The garden’s website cautions visitors that it is virtually impossible to see everything on one visit. It says that to see every plant in one two-hour visit, one would have to see one hundred different plants a minute!

Edible Plants
One of my favorites parts of the garden was the section on crops of the world. In one corner was the “Three Sisters Garden” so-called by Native Americans referring to the interplanting of beans, corn, and squash. The beans fix nitrogen in the soil, which feeds the corn so it will be tall and healthy. The corn provides a structure for the beans to climb on. The squash plants provide ground cover to keep the soil moist and free of weeds. Recent studies have shown that this method produces higher yields than the typical planting of a single crop (monoculture).

Tomatillos in the World Crops Section

Changes With the Seasons
Every season has its highlights, making the garden a worthwhile visit at any time of year. We visited the garden in August, when late summer flowers were blooming, while earlier blooming varieties were reaching maturity. In the garden of old roses, bushes were lush with old-fashioned varieties. It was a warm afternoon, but paths through shady groves and along ponds and streams provided welcome places to stop and rest.

Japanese Pool in the Asia Section

The garden is also a haven for wildlife. As we meandered through the various zones, lizards skittered across the path, hummingbirds hovered over the flowers, and bees and butterflies were abundant. Throughout the garden, helpful signs identify plants, sometimes with additional information. But, even if you don’t want to know the plants’ names, you can enjoy them for their natural beauty. It’s better not to try to see one hundred plants a minute, but to enjoy a few at a time. I plan to go back in several months and explore some new paths and see what is growing at a different time of year.

Directions: The garden is located at 200 Centennial Drive, Berkeley, CA 94720 (midway between the UC Berkeley Memorial Stadium and the Lawrence Hall of Science.) Phone: 510-643-2755. For directions and more information, go to the garden's website.
Tours: Docent tours of the garden are offered at 1:30 on Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays.

Smelling the Roses in the Old Rose Garden

Puppet Parade, Hillsborough, NC

2011-10-03T12:00:00.000-07:00

Giant puppets are animated with large sticks.

Picture giant handmade puppets, rollicking ragtime bands, performers on stilts, dancing troupes, and hundreds of children and adults marching through the streets of a small North Carolina town celebrating the diversity of their community. In October 2010, when we were in North Carolina visiting family, we went to the handmade puppet parade to watch our granddaughter’s Girl Scout troop carry their giant caterpillar “puppet” through the streets of Hillsborough, a historic town not far from where they live in Chapel Hill.

Caterpillar created by the Girl Scouts

The girls had spent weeks assembling their caterpillar with cloth, paint, and hula hoops. It resembled a giant Chinese New Year dragon and required several girls to carry it. The girls took turns and we followed along, marveling at the ingenuity of the “puppets” which, in some cases, towered over our heads and required teams to adults to move them along and to operate their limbs and other moving parts with long sticks. The theme was wildlife found along the Eno River, which runs through the town. We saw various bird puppets, including a great blue heron, a woodpecker and an egret, a giant decorative snake created by a local school class, bugs of all sorts, and some imaginative creatures. It was a perfect fall day and a wonderful low-key entertainment. While many spectators lining the parade route were friends and relatives of the participants, it was truly an event that anyone could enjoy.

Everyone who participates in the parade must wear a costume!

The Hillsborough Handmade Parade was conceived in 2007 as an annual community participation celebration by Mark Donley and Tinka Jordy. In the spring of 2008 a series of workshops both public and private were initiated that led to the First Annual Handmade Parade in October 2008. Parades were also held in 2009 and 2010. The next parade will be in 2012. Check the Arts Council website for the date and details on how to register and participate.

This large puppet reverses to have a smiling face and yellow costume on the other side.

The Taj Mahal

2011-09-26T12:00:00.000-07:00

The Taj Mahal, Agra, India

The Taj Mahal: One of the Eight Wonders of the World (February 2000)

In the spring of 2000, when I went to India for an author visit at a school in New Delhi, my hosts arranged to take me to Agra to see the Taj Mahal. I knew it was a famous tomb memorializing the love between a great emperor and his wife, but I was unprepared for its stunning beauty. As I stepped through the gate and saw the shining white domes framed against the sky, I was amazed by the elegance of the design and the perfect placement of the building in its surroundings. I stayed until sunset and returned again at dawn.

Gardens around the Taj Mahal are filled with flowers and birds

As I walked through the gardens, I tried to imagine what it had been like more than 300 years ago when the emperor of India walked these same paths. Did they bring back memories of his beloved wife Mumtaz Mahal? Was is what he had imagined in his dreams? (According to legend the inspiration for building the Taj Mahal came to Emperor Shah Jahan in a dream.) I knew that the Taj Mahal would be the perfect subject for a book because of the love story that inspired it, the artistic and technical achievement of its architecture, and for what it tells us about Mughal culture in India.

Inlaid stones decorate every surface of this column

Craftsmen today continue the tradition of stone-inlay work

The Taj Mahal is the tomb of Mumtaz Mahal, beloved wife of Shah Jahan, who had the Taj built as a memorial to their love. White marble quarried in Jodhpur was transported to Agra and cut into blocks to build the tomb. The walls were inlaid with jewels and precious stones. Gardens and reflecting pools were built on the grounds surrounding the tomb. Construction of the Taj Mahal began in 1632 and was virtually complete by 1643. After the Shah's death, he was entombed there as well.

View of the Taj Mahal from the Mosque

Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal first met when he was fifteen and still a prince and she was the daughter of one of his father's advisors. My favorite part of their story is their encounter of at the New Year's festival. Despite the difference in time of more than 300 years and a culture unlike our own, it is easy to imagine how a handsome prince could fall in love with a beautiful girl. It is a timeless story that could happen anywhere, anytime.
The love story of the Taj Mahal is based largely on legend, for little has been recorded of the personal lives of Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal together, as this would have been a sensitive topic, especially in an Islamic culture and society.
The Taj Mahal is one of the supreme accomplishments of the Mughal Empire. It has become a symbol to the rest of the world of the craftsmanship and artistic achievements of all of India. It is also a symbol of universal love.
My book, Taj Mahal, which chronicles the love story and the building of the Taj Mahal, is a collaboration with Madeleine Comora and illustrated by her husband Rahul Bhushan with beautiful paintings in the style of Mughal miniatures of the time. It was published by Carolrhoda Books in 2007. You can read about our collaborative process at my September 2l, 2011 Art and Books blog.

London: Highgate Cemetery, Victorian Splendor for the Departed

2011-09-19T12:00:00.000-07:00

Final Resting Place for the Famous
(Excerpt from my diary of our three month stay in London in the fall of 1998.)

Entrance to Highgate Cemetery

On Sunday afternoon, we visited Highgate Cemetery, the burial site of Karl Marx and many other famous people. We got there in time to see both sides (east and west) and take the tour. The cemetery, which covers 800 acres of hillside and has something like 80,000 graves, had its heydey in the Victorian era. The average age of death at the time was 35! The cemetery was opened in 1839 and was operated by a private company until the 1970’s, by which time all the plots had been sold and they were no longer able to make any money. The company then abandoned the cemetery, and it became derelict. Highgate Cemetery is now operated by a the Friends of Highgate Cemetery Trust and it is the ladies of this charity that run the tours. The west side, which contains the oldest section and most elaborate tombs, can only be visited on a tour. The east side is still a functional cemetery.

Angels and Obelisks

Gravestones Amidst Undergrowth

We started on the east side where we wandered about on our own. Graves are topped by stone crosses, urns, broken columns (symbolizing a life cut short), but my favorites are those with angels on top. A forest and tangle of ivy and bushes has grown up around the graves over the last hundred years, so the angels often look like they might take off into the trees. Egyptian themes were also popular in Victorian times, so we saw obelisks of various sizes, some of them tilted rakishly as if they were drunk, and even a sizeable pyramid. We were surprised at the length and variety of inscriptions on the tombs which often told the occupation of the person as well as when the deceased had “gone to sleep”, a Victorian euphemism for death.

The Notable Dead

Karl Marx's Grave

To us the cemetery seemed parklike and peaceful, but I can imagine that on a rainy or foggy day, it would have a suitably creepy atmosphere. Apparently, before it was locked up in the 1970’s, several horror films were shot there. On our tour of the west side, we saw the grave of a stage coach driver carved with the whip and bugle of his trade and two upsidedown horseshoes to show that his luck had turned. Other graves that we saw included one of the man who invented of the toothbrush; of George Williams, the founder of the YMCA, (significant to me because my father went to George Williams College in Chicago); and the crypt of a general in the Crimean War, built to look like the Crimean peninsula.

The Menagerist

Grave of George Wombwell "Menagerist"

My favorite tomb, topped by a huge lion, was the final resting place of George Wombwell, a man described as a “menagerist.” He started life as a shoemaker. One day, he went down to the London docks, where he bought two large boa constrictors. His plan was to turn them into shoes, but he found that people were so fascinated by the living snakes that he started touring the country and showing them off. He gradually acquired more animals (including the lion--named Nero--depicted on the top of his grave) and launched a new career as a “menagerist.”

Mussels at the End of the Day
After leaving Highgate, we took the tube to Camden Town and emerged onto the street into a seething mob of teenagers. This is apparently THE spot to be if you are under eighteen. Music was blaring and I’ve never seen so many shoe shops with those giant sneakers with oversize soles. Our goal was Belgo, a restaurant that features mussels, french fries, and 100 different kinds of Belgian beer. Luckily, by the time we reached Belgo, we had left the teenagers behind. Art ordered a kilo of mussels, which came in a big tin bucket, and I got a platter of mussels cooked in butter and garlic. They were great! The waiter wanted to know if we wanted an order of rockets on the side. We had no idea what rockets were. A salad, he explained, and drew a picture of something that looked like dandelion greens. It turns out that rockets are what the British call arugula. The salad was excellent. Belgo also gets my vote for the world’s best cappucino.

A few of the famous people buried at Highgate Cemetery:
George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)
Karl Marx
Sir Ralph Richardson
Jacob Bronowski
Christina Rossetti
John Galsworthy

Where is Highgate Cemetery?
The cemetery is located on both sides of Swain's Lane in Highgate, N6, next to Waterlow Park. The Main Gate is located just north of Oakshott Avenue. To get there by tube from London, take the Northern Line (High Barnet branch) to Archway (not Highgate). On leaving the station, you can take a short bus ride up to Highgate village or turn left and walk up Highgate Hill (which is very steep), past the Whittington Hospital until you get to St Joseph’s Church (obvious by its large green copper dome). Enter Waterlow Park on your left and go downhill across the park (past the duck ponds) to the Swain's Lane exit (below the tennis courts). The walk can take up to 40 minutes depending on your speed.

Highgate Cemetery

London: Day Trip to Greenwich

2011-09-12T15:36:00.000-07:00

Boat Trip on the Thames
(Excerpt from my diary of our three month stay in London in the fall of 1998.)

Tower Bridge, London

Our excursion on Saturday was a trip to Greenwich to see the Maritime Museum and Royal Observatory. The most scenic way to get there is by boat, which is what we did, leaving from the Charing Cross pier, and traveling past the Tower of London, London Bridge, the new Globe theater, and the Docklands development to Greenwich.

The Prime Meridian, Where Time Begins and East Meets West

Caroline Straddling the Prime Meridian

Our interest in going to Greenwich was to see for ourselves the Prime Meridian, the exact division between the eastern and western hemispheres, and to take a photo of ourselves astride the line. (This is be a companion piece to our photo of us on the Equator that we took in Africa in 1971!) The location of the line is at the Royal Observatory, on top of a hill overlooking the river. The Observatory is no longer used to look at the stars because the sky in London is too smoggy, so it has been turned into a museum detailing its history as an observatory and its involvement in the search for longitude.

Finding Longitude

The Royal Observatory, Now a Museum

The problem of longitude became acute in the age of sea exploration. Although ships at sea could fairly easily calculate their latitude, by measuring the angle to the north star or southern cross, they had no way of measuring how far they were to the east or west. As a result, countless ships were wrecked because they weren’t where they thought they were. The solution to the problem involved both accurate measurements of the stars and the development of a clock that would keep accurate time even on a boat rolling and pitching in heavy seas. If you knew the time and your position under the stars, you could figure your distance east or west from a predetermined line. And where should that line be? Of course, in England! For over a hundred years the rest of the world has used this as the standard as well.

The Millennium Dome
Greenwich is advertising itself as the place where the Millennium begins and is building a giant dome, called the Millennium Dome, that will be a sort of world’s fair celebrating the year 2000. It’s true that the world’s time zones are all based on Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), which is calculated from the Prime Meridian, and to that extent the Millennium starts here, but it seems to me that when the year 2000 arrives, it’s actually going to be at the international date line. This doesn’t seem to bother the people building the dome though.

Atlas of the Stars

Royal Observatory, Greenwich

Among the more interesting historical tidbits at the museum was the account of the first Royal Astronomer, Sir John Flamsteed, who worked for years to compile an atlas of the stars. It was a tedious job and people got tired of waiting for him to finish. So, Sir Isaac Newton, without getting Flamsteed’s permission, published his incomplete results. Flamsteed was so infuriated that when the book was published he bought 300 of the 400 copies and burned them! I wonder how many other authors have wished they could do that when they weren’t happy with the way their book was published?

Ruler of the Seas

The Cutty Sark, Docked in Greenwich. The world's last tea clipper ship. Currently closed for conservation, it will reopen to the public in the Spring of 2012

The town of Greenwich is devoted to boats and maritime themes and has shops displaying ships in bottles and tea towels printed with the explanation of why ships are called “she.” And if you didn’t think the Lord Nelson was an important figure in British history, then a trip to the Maritime Museum will convince you otherwise. A whole floor is devoted to Nelson and features a giant painting of the battle of Trafalgar by William Turner. Nelson’s death is treated with religious reverence.

Sun and Rain

Geese in Regent's Park, London

The day of our trip to Greenwich was sunny and nice and we picnicked on sausage rolls and ginger beer in the park, but when we woke up back in London on Sunday morning, our nice weather had disappeared. It has been rainy and cool the last two days. It stopped for a while yesterday morning, so we walked through Regents Park (not far from our flat in St. John's Wood) and fed the ducks and geese. Thousands of waterbirds live in the park, both wild birds and some exotic species that are bred there, and they are all well trained to beg for food. It’s a good demonstration of the pecking order in nature. There is also a nest of blue herons in the park, and even they will come quite close.

Recommended Reading: After I returned from Greenwich, I read Dava Sobel's book, Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time, a fascinating account of John Harrison, a clockmaker, who solved the problem of finding longitude but reaped only part of the reward for his work.

Tasmania, Part II: Cradle Mountain

2011-09-05T12:00:00.000-07:00

Cradle Mountain Lodge (March 1999)
{Continuation of my August 22nd post.}

Cradle Mountain gets its name from the distinctive "cradle" between its peaks.

[Excerpt from my diary of our three month trip to Australia in 1999.] The next morning we drove north from Queenstown to Cradle Mountain National Park, where we stayed for two nights in a pencil pine cabin at the edge of the park. The cabin was part of the Cradle Mountain Lodge complex, which has activities and places to eat. Most people come to Cradle Mountain to hike and the track that goes across the park is one of the world’s most famous backpacking trails. We did day walks which included portions along rushing rainforest streams, as well as stretches across open heathlands and up mountain trails. We are slow walkers because we are always stopping to take pictures, but my calves still ache from the climb we did on Monday.

A Haven for Wildlife

Silversword, a spiky plant, is unique to Cradle Mountain

Cradle Mountain is a World Heritage site and has plants and animals that are found no where else in the world. Most of the large animal life is nocturnal so one night we went on a night spotting tour where we drove slowly along the road with a spotlight looking for animals. We saw lots of possums, wallabies, wombats, and even a little Tasmanian devil.

A Paradise for Hikers

Our picnic spot beside the trail provided a spectacular view.

Cradle Mountain is a wonderful place to go walking. There are a variety of trails--some level, some steep--and all with interesting scenery. The park people are very eco conscious and concerned about minimizing the damage to the environment so all the trails (at least all the day walk trails) are constructed of wooden planks or stone steps. This keeps people from straying from the path and it also helps keep your feet dry as you walk across marshy areas.

Day Life and Night Life

Pademelons, a medium sized member of the kangaroo family, are common in the park.

    On one day that we were there we heard that someone saw three tiger snakes on one trail. Apparently they are common but I'm glad I never saw one. (They are deadly poisonous.) The vast majority of the wildlife only comes out at night although some of the possums and wallabies hang around the lodge and cabins--hoping for a handout. We were sitting on our porch one afternoon having tea and, as we unwrapped a cookie, a wallaby hopped out of the bush. I think it has learned to listen for the crinkle of cookie wrapping! Instead we gave it some apple.

Local Food
    Several times while in Australia we've tried what is billed on the menu as scones with Devonshire cream but they have never been quite the same as we had in England--neither the scones nor the cream. But when we were in Cradle Mountain I had a delicious apple crumble (made from fresh Tasmanian apples) with what they call King Island Cream. The cream was thick and delicious and the closest we've come to Cornish clotted cream in Australia.

Honey and Glow Worms

Inside the wildlife park, we saw real Tasmanian devils racing around their enclosure.

On Tuesday we took a somewhat leisurely drive back to Hobart stopping at a wild animal park, a honey factory to see leatherwood honey being processed (it is whirled in a giant centrifuge) and at a cave where we saw amazing rock formations and glow worms. The glow worms, which are actually the larva of a kind of fly, attach themselves to the ceiling of a large chamber in the cave and then wait to catch insects that are attracted to their lights. When the guide turned off her light it was like being in a planetarium except that instead of looking at constellations, the ceiling was dotted with the lights of hundreds of glow worms.

Back to Melbourne

Waterfall at Cradle Mountain

I decided that I needed to read something by an Australian author on the plane trip to Tasmania so I bought a book called Mallawindy by Joy Dettman. It's a page turner and is the same kind of sweeping family saga as The Thornbirds. I predict that we'll see it soon as a miniseries. One of the interesting things about the book is that the main character has a double personality.
Everyone told us after we came back that our trip to Tasmania was too short, and we agreed. We could easily have spent much more time at Cradle Mountain and we never had time to explore the coast along the east side of the island. Someday, we’ll have to go back.
Making Reservations: For this trip I made all our reservations through the travel service at the RAC (Royal Auto Club) in Melbourne, which has a reciprocal arrangement with the AAA, of which we are members.

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA)

2011-08-29T12:00:00.001-07:00

The Steins Collect

Entrance to SFMOMA San Francisco with Calder Sculpture above

Imagine being a personal friend of Picasso, Matisse, Juan Gris and other avant garde Parisian artists of the early twentieth century AND helping to establish their reputations by buying their art. That is the story of Gertrude Stein and her family. The current exhibit at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Steins Collect, which I went to see last weekend, is an amazing assembly of much of the art collected by Gertrude Stein, her brothers Leo and Michael, and Michael’s wife Sarah. Together with photos and other artifacts (such as African sculptures that influenced the artists) the exhibit functions as a survey of the birth of modern art and insight into the keen artistic sensibility of the Stein family.

The Steins in the courtyard at 27 rue de Fleurus, Paris, ca. 1905. From left: Leo Stein, Allan Stein, Gertrude Stein, Theresa Ehrman, Sarah Stein, Michael Stein.

Roots in California

One thing I didn’t realize about the Stein family was their connection to California and the Bay Area. As a child, Gertrude and her family lived in Oakland (it’s amazing to think they might have been neighbors!) When she came back as an adult and looked for her childhood home, she couldn’t find it, producing one of her most famous out-of-context quotes, “There is no there there”, “there” referring to the missing house in Oakland. Most of Gertrude Stein’s adult life was spent in Europe, mainly France but also Italy. Her apartment in Paris, first shared with her brother Leo and then with Alice Toklas, became a center of Parisian cultural life. Photos of the apartment walls, stacked high with the paintings they collected, are part of the MOMA museum exhibit, allowing one to match the actual paintings on the museum walls to those in the photographs.

Although I was familiar with many of the paintings in the show, such as Picasso’s Boy Leading a Horse (from the NY MOMA) and his famous Portrait of Gertrude Stein (which she claimed to have required 80 or 90 sittings) I learned a lot that I didn’t know before, or forgotten. I didn’t realize that Sarah and Michael had funded an art school in Paris for Matisse to teach at and that they themselves had ambitions as artists. (Two of their paintings are in the exhibit.) Much of the Stein collection was dispersed after their deaths. The current exhibit was assembled from collections all over the world.

Ending Soon

The Steins Collect exhibit ends September 5^th, so if you want to see it in San Francisco, you must go soon! (It will tour to Paris and New York from there.). Entry to the show is timed to control crowding and included in the price of museum entry. We bought our tickets online. We also got the audio tour.

Much, Much More

The Flower Carrier, Painting by Diego Rivera

With five floors of art, plus a roof garden, there is plenty to see at SFMOMA and worth a visit at any time. One of the other current exhibits that we also visited was Selected Histories: Twentieth-Century Art from the SFMOMA Collection, highlighting many of the key moments in the history of twentieth century art, including Diego Rivera’s painting of a man with a basket of flowers, which always reminds me of practicing the piano because a print of it hung above our piano when I was growing up. Seeing it in real life was like meeting an old friend.

Lunch and the Gift Shop

SFMOMA has an excellent café on the first floor, so you can go early, as we did, take a break for lunch, and then see more. There is also a huge gift shop with many tempting items, including many with a French theme to go with the current show.

Tasmania, Part I: Hobart to Queenstown

2011-08-22T12:00:00.001-07:00

A Trip Back in Time (March 1999)

Cradle Mountain National Park, Tasmania

[Excerpt from my diary of our three month stay in Australia in 1999.] Last night we returned from a long weekend in Tasmania. The trip was filled with beautiful scenery, outdoor experiences, interesting accommodation, a little history, and all enjoyed in perfect weather. According to our friends in Melbourne, visiting Tasmania is like going back thirty years in time. Since we already view Australia as a bit of a throwback, it was like going back almost fifty years for us. The island has almost no freeways, and practically no traffic on the two lane roads. The rural areas reminded me of visiting northern Wisconsin when I was a child. It was quite refreshing!

Hobart

Salamanca Market, Hobart

We flew from Melbourne to Hobart (the capital of Tasmania) on Friday night. Our bed and breakfast hosts had offered to pick us up at the airport, for which we were grateful, and gave us a tour of the city on the way to their hilltop home called the Crow’s Nest. The night was crystal clear and we looked out over the bay and the sparkling city below. In the morning, we picked up our rental car and before leaving Hobart did a brief walking tour along the wharves, visiting the Salamanca Place Saturday market, which features stalls of fresh produce, unbelievable flowers, and beautiful crafts--many of them made of wood. We bought some wooden spoons and, on impulse, a metal sculpture of a flying fox at an art gallery.

From Farmland to Forest

Fields of Hops in the agricultural central valley of Tasmania

We then made our way north through rolling farmland and stopped for a picnic lunch at Mount Field National Park, where we took a short walk through the rainforest to a waterfall. The forest floor was covered with giant tree ferns (a plant form that has been around since dinosaur times) and towering above us were 300 foot tall swamp gums--among the tallest trees in the world. It reminded us a bit of Muir Woods in California.

As we continued our way to the northwest, the landscape changed to rugged mountains and dense pine forest. Most of western Tasmania is either National Park or National Forest and we drove through miles of breathtaking scenery along twisty two lane roads without encountering much traffic. The only signs of civilization were the occasional clearings stacked with beehives. We later discovered that these were for collecting the rare leatherwood honey found only in these forests of Tasmania.

Queenstown

Denuded landscape near Queenstown

We finally arrived at our destination, Queenstown, a town almost exclusively dependent on the local mine, one of the largest copper mines in Australia and in the world. We stayed in the elegant former home of the mine manager, which has recently been turned into a bed and breakfast. One of the other couples staying there had just sailed their 40 foot yacht from Sydney to Hobart. They told us they had been stuck in a little town on the mainland coast for three weeks while waiting for good weather to cross the Bass Strait. (The Bass Strait is where all those people died a few months ago in the Sydney to Hobart race and this couple didn't want to take any chances.) The weather is quite changeable across the strait and they needed three days of good weather in a row. At night, during the crossing, they slept in four hour shifts so that one person was always awake to sail the boat. I don't think I'd like to be all alone and responsible for a tiny boat in the middle of the ocean!
Queenstown’s claim to fame, besides the mine, is that the surrounding landscape--hills totally denuded of all vegetation and scoured down to the bare rock--are a dramatic example of the harmful effects of environmental pollution. Although the hills were once covered with forest, the trees were cut down to feed the smelting furnaces and the rest burned in forest fires. Normally forests recover after being cut or burned, but between torrential winter rains that washed away the topsoil and the sulphur fumes emitted from the smelting process, nothing grew. Although the ore is no longer processed locally and people are much more eco-conscious, the land has still not recovered and probably won’t for centuries. We could have had a tour of the mine (including a look at the tunnels) but didn't have time.
Making Reservations: For this trip I made all our reservations through the travel service at the RAC (Royal Auto Club) in Melbourne, which has a reciprocal arrangement with the AAA, of which we are members.

More on Tasmania and Cradle Mountain Park in my September 5 post.

Tasmania, located at Latitude 42 degrees South, is the southernmost part of Australia

Stone Mountain, Georgia: The Mount Rushmore of the South

2011-08-15T12:00:00.001-07:00

Stone Mountain State Park (August 2011)
History, Nature, and Family Fun

View of Stone Mountain and the Confederate Memorial Carving from terrace of Visitor Center

Fifteen miles east of downtown Atlanta, a monolithic granite dome rises out of the Georgia landscape. Surrounded by woods, streams, and a large, man-made lake, Stone Mountain and the Confederate Memorial Carving on its surface are the center of a popular state park featuring hiking trails; boat, train, and cable-car rides; a ropes course for kids and adventurous adults; miniature and regular golf; two hotels, a campground, and more. We recently returned from a family reunion in Stone Mountain State Park. With family members ranging in from ages three to ninety, there was something in the park for everyone.

A Giant Carving

Confederate Memorial Carving on Stone Mountain (L to R: Davis, Lee, Jackson)

The most famous feature of Stone Mountain is the giant carving on the side of the rock depicting three heroes of the Civil War Confederacy: General Robert E. Lee, General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson (so-named because he was said to stand as firm as a stone wall in battle), and Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States. The entire carved surface, the size of three football fields, makes it the largest bas-relief carving in the world. The three men are shown astride their favorite horses, Blackjack (Davis), Traveller (Lee), and Little Sorrel (Jackson). The horses are so big that during the construction of the monument, workers could take shelter from rainstorms in the horses’ open mouths.

A Long History

Reproduction of the head of Blackjack, one of the horses on the monument

The idea for a monument to Southern heroes of the Civil War was launched in 1916 by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, who bought the side of the mountain and hired sculptor Gutzon Borglum to do the carving. However, after eight years, he abandoned the project and left to carve Mount Rushmore in South Dakota. Meanwhile, the Great Depression and World War II halted further work. It was not until 1958, after the state of Georgia bought Stone Mountain and the surrounding land and turned it into a state park, that the project was resumed and completed by two other sculptors, Walter Hancock and Roy Faulkner. (The work previously done by Borglum’s team was blasted off the mountain and the new carvers started over!) The monument was finished and dedicated in 1970 by Vice President Spiro Agnew.

Fireworks on the Mountain

Lasershow Spectacular at Stone Mountain

Directly in front of the mountain, the terrace of the visitor center provides the best view of the carving. Inside the visitor center, we watched a video about the history of making the memorial, got an overview of the impact of the Civil War on the communities around Stone Mountain, and found out about various aspects of the mountain’s human, natural and geologic history. A large lawn slopes down from the visitor center to the base of the rock. Terraces on either side are dedicated to the states that were members of the confederacy. In summer, and on weekend evenings, a laser show with fireworks draws thousands of picnickers to the lawn. While one can rent chairs on the terraces for the evening, we sat on blankets on the grass to watch the performance.

Sky Hike and Other Activities

Traversing a beam at the Sky Hike

For the kids in our group, the highlight of the trip was the Sky Hike, a three level ropes and balancing course. My personal role was to stay on the ground and take pictures! Safety harnesses insured that everyone stayed safe as they made their way across various ropes, ladders and narrow plank bridges. It is not an activity for anyone who doesn’t like heights! [Note: closed toe shoes are required for the Sky Hike. This prompted a quick trip to Target for the kids to buy appropriate shoes since they had only brought sandals.] We also played miniature golf and watched a glass-blowing demonstration. Other members of the group took the train ride around the base of the mountain, went on the “Duck” (an amphibious vehicle tour of the park), rode the cable car to the top of the mountain, and did driving tours. And everyone enjoyed the swimming pool at the hotel! It was August, and with temperatures in the nineties and high humidity, the pool was the perfect place to be at the end of the afternoon.

Glass blowing demonstration

Practicalities: A vehicle fee of $10 is required for entrance to the park. Most attractions in the park (except for the laser show) require a ticket. If you plan to do two or more, it is better to buy a one-day pass (adults $27 plus tax, child $21 plus tax). If you buy the pass at the hotel, you get two days for the price of one.
We were there on a weekend. We noticed that lines to get into attractions were much shorter on Sunday than on Saturday, when the kids had to wait nearly an hour to get onto the ropes course. On Sunday morning, there was almost no wait.
We stayed at the Stone Mountain Inn (a Marriott Hotel), which is close to the Visitor Center and attractions. At the other end of the park near the golf course is the Evergreen Marriott Resort and Conference Center.

Historic grist mill at the picnic area

The Carrizo Plain: A Glimpse of California's Past

2011-08-08T11:56:00.000-07:00

A Day Exploring California's Grasslands (May 2011)

Beginning in the early 1800's Spanish Missions used the land of the Carrizo Plain for grazing cattle.

In the mid’1800's, when pioneers descended the foothills surrounding California’s Central Valley, they found hundreds of thousands of elk, deer, and antelope grazing on the valley floor. In some places, there were so many animals that they darkened the plain as far as the eye could see. Today, the valley is no longer a haven for wildlife. Instead of animals, there are ranches, roads, and towns spread across the plain. To get a glimpse of what California’s Central Valley was like before it was developed, you can go to the Carrizo Plain, a little known valley where designation as a National Monument is helping to preserve California wildlife in its natural habitat. Both pronghorn antelope and Tule elk have been reintroduced to the area and the herds are growing. It is also home to the endangered San Joaquin Valley kit fox, giant kangaroo rat, which hops around at night collecting seeds, and a variety of other small mammals, reptiles, and birds.

A Haven for Wildlife

Herds of Pronghorn Antelope can be seen on the Carrizo Plain, usually in the morning or evening. They typically rest during the middle of the day.

Hidden behind the Temblor range to the northeast and the Caliente Range to the southwest, the Carrizo plain is a flat valley that follows the San Andreas Fault as it heads north toward San Francisco. (You can pick up a self-guided geologic auto tour at the Visitor Center. You can see where past earthquakes have actually rearranged fencelines and creek beds!) A visit to the Carrizo Plain is a day’s trip from Bakersfield or, if you want to get up early, from Los Angeles. We went there recently from our house on Mount Pinos. We have been to the Carrizo Plain three times, each time in a different season. Our first trip was in March, and the valley floor was lush with green grass, yellow spring flowers and thousands of migrating and nesting birds. Our second visit was in November, after the sandhill cranes had arrived for their winter stay in the shallow soda lake at the far end of the valley. At the end of the day we watched them take off, flapping their wide wings and honking like geese. On this trip, in May, the spring flowers were gone and the grass had turned golden, but the wild mustard was in bloom and meadowlarks and other birds were busy nesting. Red tailed hawks perched on poles along the side of the road in between bouts of circling in search of prey.

Springtime is Nesting Time

Bullock's Oriole

Historically, the Carrizo plain has been ranch land, and it is still crisscrossed by fences, and roads are punctuated by cattle guards to keep the cattle that still graze there where they belong. We entered the Monument from the east end, north of Maricopa on CA 166/33. The narrow road is paved at first, but quickly turns to dirt. You can’t drive very fast, but that is fine if you want to look for wildlife or appreciate the scenery. Absolutely no services are available along the 30 mile road to the visitor center. We brought a picnic lunch and stopped at one of the two campgrounds to eat it. Only one other campsite was occupied. To our delight, a pair of yellow and orange Bullock’s orioles, who had a nest hanging in the eucalyptus tree over our heads, were busy collecting insects for their hungry babies.

Rock Art and a Dry Lake Bed

Soda Lake on the Carrizo Plain is dries up in summer leaving behind crystals of sulphate and carbonate salts.

At the northwest end of the monument is the Goodwin Education Center, which is small, but filled with interesting exhibits and helpful park staff. On previous visits, we had walked from the parking lot not far from there to Painted Rock, once one of California’s most spectacular examples of Native American rock art, but now badly damaged by vandals. In the past, Painted Rock was open to the public. Now, in order to see it, you have to go online and make a reservation for a guided or self-guided tour. On the weekend we were there, it was closed to protect the native raptors which were nesting in the rocks.

Before we left, we stopped at Soda Lake and walked along the boardwalk. The drainage of the valley is such that the water collects and evaporates, leaving mineral deposits behind. In winter, Soda Lake is filled with water and provides a home for sandhill cranes and other birds. In summer, it is a dry lake bed. After leaving Soda Lake, we headed northwest and left the Monument. As we passed through farmland on our way back to highway 58, we saw a lone pronghorn antelope standing in a field. Perhaps on another day, we would come back and see a whole herd.

The Carrizo Plain became a National Monument in 2000.

Getting there: The Carrizo Plain National Monument can be accessed either from Highway 33/166 north of Maricopa, or from Highway 58 west of McKittrick. At Traver Ranch, about ten miles from the east entrance you can stop and pick up a map and get other information. Be sure to have plenty of gas and bring your own water and food. As we drove along the road through the Monument, we stopped frequently to look at birds and take photos, and rarely met other cars. That is the attraction of the Carrizo Plain. While it is not that far from civilization, not many people go there.

California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco

2011-08-01T12:00:00.000-07:00

Jellyfish

Where can you see live sharks, colorful coral reefs, an albino alligator, a tropical rainforest, and a penguin colony all under one roof? At the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. AND, there is much more. The CAS, newly remodeled, is definitely not “off the beaten track” but is a major tourist destination in San Francisco that attracts thousands of visitors every day. It is a world-class natural history museum, planetarium, and aquarium, all rolled into one. We went there with our grandchildren last December. It was the perfect family outing, with something for everyone.

Inside the Planetarium before the show

After entering the museum and getting our tickets for a plantetarium show later in the day, we headed for the rainforest. This four-story exhibit houses birds, butterflies, lizards, bats, fish, and lush rainforest plants from all over the world in a giant glass dome. Following the circular ramp we climbed from the forest floor to the canopy at the top, stopping as butterflies flitted around our heads. Exiting on the top floor, we made a quick trip up to the living roof of the museum, a vast undulating garden of native plants that keeps the building cool and sends oxygen back into the air. I’m sure it is a great place to relax during warmer weather, but on the day we visited the wind and chilly air made us scurry back inside where we took the elevator down to the ground floor of the museum to see the fish.

Corals

One of the main attractions of the museum is the Steinhart Aquarium with its many tanks of fish, corals, jellyfish, and other sea life. I sat on a ledge at the edge of one huge tank with my granddaughter, who watched with wonder as fish swam by on the other side of the glass just inches away from her face. As you walk through a "tunnel" in the tank fish swim over your head and you feel as if you are really under the sea. There were also hands-on exhibits where the kids could touch sea urchins and other tidepool creatures and talk with museum staff.

Live penguins in the Africa Hall

The museum is a mix of the old and the new. I remember my first visit to the old building more than forty years ago, with its taxidermy dioramas and other traditional museum exhibits. Many of those exhibits (like the Foucault Pendulum which knocks down pegs in a pit as the Earth turns) are still there, but spruced up. One of our favorites is the African Hall, with its stuffed animal dioramas, always impressive and realistic in their posed arrangements. But at the end of the room, one is taken by surprise because the animals in the exhibit move! A live penguin exhibit occupies the end of the room, where African jackass penguins (they sound like donkeys when they call) make their home among giant rocks designed to look like their natural home along the South African coast.

We ran out of energy before we had explored every corner of the museum. But that is okay. It gives us a reason to go back another day.

Travel Tip: After being closed for several years for remodeling, the CAS reopened in 2008 and is immensely popular, which means it can get extremely crowded on weekends and during holiday periods. Here’s my advice for maximizing the enjoyment of your visit. 1. Buy your tickets online. That way you avoid having to stand in line for tickets outside when you arrive. Better yet, go with a friend who is a member. (Every third Wednesday of the month, admission is free.) 2. Go early. Lines for everything get longer as the day goes by. 3. If you want to see a planetarium show, get your tickets as soon as you go into the museum. They are free, but you have to stand in line and the tickets go fast. 4. Plan your day. There is lots to see!
Lunch: The cafeteria in the museum has a good variety of international and healthy food. The tables inside were crowded, so we ate outside under a heat lamp. The fresh air was nice, but it was a good thing we had kept our jackets with us.

Japan Alps, Nagoya, Gifu: Part III

2011-07-25T12:25:00.000-07:00

Gifu. Statue of Cormorant fisherman wearing traditional clothing.

Gifu and Nagoya (Trip to Japan, September 2008)
After our visit to the Japan Alps, we took a train back to Gifu from Takayama and arrived in Gifu by 11:30. We bought food for lunch at a market in Gifu station and pastries at a French bakery for my breakfast the next morning, and got a taxi to the Miyako Hotel, a 15 minute ride from the center of town. Our room the 10th floor overlooked the river and was the perfect spot to watch herons, kites and the cormorant boats at night.

View of river and Mount Kinka from our room at the Miyako Hotel

Tuesday, September 9
Got up at 5:00 for a taxi to Gifu station for a 5:58 train to Nagoya. I changed there at Kanayama station for Kosoji Station. All went like clockwork; the trains were not crowded and left precisely on schedule. While Art attended his conference, I spent the day doing an author visit at the Nagoya International School. After school, my hosts took me to the 100 yen store (like a dollar store) where I picked up a basket full of toys and souvenirs.

Sidebar on Japanese toilets: Japanese toilets never cease to amaze. In public places, such as the airport, one has a choice of traditional–a hole in the floor over which you squat–or western style. The western style seat in the airport was 3-way: a regular seat for adults, a smaller flip-down seat for a child, and a baby seat, on a hook on the wall, which could be inserted for a very small child. Many toilet seats, including the ones at the Best Western, come with a console that allows you to heat the seat and/or the water. Another button triggers a spray of water on your bottom or converts the toilet to a bidet. My hosts had a further addition to their toilet. A small basin mounted on top of the toilet tank has a spout that gushes water when you flush the toilet. You can use the water to rinse your hands. The water runs until the tank is refilled. Apparently another teacher at the school had a toilet with an electric eye that lifts the lid when you open the bathroom door!

Coffee in a Can

Typical vending machine.

Wednesday, September 10
Got up early for another day's school visit and had bacon, eggs, fruit, yogurt and coffee from a can. You can buy canned coffee (and almost any other kind of drink) in vending machines, which are ubiquitous. You pour the coffee into your cup and heat it in the microwave. It is surprisingly good!

Fish Cookies, an Insect Museum, and Tame Squirrels

The Nawa Insect Museum displays insects collected from all over the world.

Thursday, September 11
I spent the morning walking with a friend along the river by the hotel and shopping and sightseeing on the other side. We bought some fish shaped cookies (fish are a theme throughout Gifu) and peeked in at a temple with a giant golden lacquer Buddha. At the park, we went to the insect museum. After lunch I returned to the park and rode the “ropeway” (a cable car) to the top of Mount Kinka to see the view and tour the Shogun era castle, now a museum. Before leaving, I stopped at the featured squirrel village where I was given a glove and food so I could feed the squirrels, who scampered about in their enclosed "village". Apparently Japanese people think that squirrels are exotic and feeding them is a treat! Perhaps they don’t have squirrels being a nuisance in their yards and stealing food from their bird feeders.

Traditional Cormorant Fishing

Cormorant fishing. (Itai) The fish are attracted to the surface of the water by a fire suspended from a basket at the front of the fisherman’s boat.

In the evening, Art’s host at the conference took us on a boat to see the traditional cormorant fishing. As in the children’s book Ping (one of my favorites as a child), the cormorants are trained to catch fish for their master. A ring around the cormorant’s neck prevents it from swallowing the fish it catches. One at a time, the birds are hauled in to disgorge their fish into a basket.

Bakery in Gifu. Colorful sweet cakes are filled with bean paste.

Friday, September 12
In the morning, Art and I toured the cormorant fishermen’s village and then went shopping for souvenirs at a bakery across the river. Then I left for the airport to return to Los Angeles and Art left for Kyoto and Fukuoka, where he attended another conference.

Japan Alps, Nagoya, Gifu: Part II

2011-07-18T11:33:00.000-07:00

(Trip to Japan, September 2008; continuation of Part I)

Kamikochi, Gateway to the Japan Alps

Japan Alps National Park

Saturday, September 6
The bus route to Kamikochi went up into the mountains from Takayama, winding its way along a river valley, stopping at a ski resort where people were walking among the fields of cosmos. From the parking lot at Kamikochi we pulled our suitcases along the rocky path to the bashi (bridge), where hundreds of tourists milled around the concession stands eating and taking photos. The weather was slightly misty and the peaks on either side came in and out of the clouds. We crossed the bridge and went another .3 km to the Alpen Hotel and checked into our ten tatami mat room.
We then walked along the river to a picnic area called the Weston Relief marked by a plaque explaining that Weston was a European who promoted the Alps as a national park. The air was fresh and slightly cool, a nice change from the sticky weather in Takayama and Nagoya. The forest on either side of the river was lush and open with ferns and other plants on the forest floor. Quite a few people were walking on the river path, although by the end of the day, most day trippers had left. We returned to our room to wait for dinner. We decided not to use the public baths until after dinner, when we hoped they would be less crowded.

Colorful Meals

We arrived at dinner to find our table--marked by our room number on a stand--already set with a variety of dishes and two little burners each--one to fry our Hida beef steak, and the other with a salmon soup. Hida beef is lesser known but supposedly just as good as Kobe beef. It was definitely tender and heavily marbled with fat. Upon arrival at the dining room we realized that we made the mistake of wearing our shoes to dinner. Everyone else had on slippers. Some of the men wore yukatas (cotton robes). We were the only gaijin (foreigners), and, in the whole weekend, we only saw four other westerners in the park. The waiter brought additional dishes, ending with rice and miso soup.

When we returned to our room, we found that our futons had been prepared for the night.

A Hot Bath
Since there was no shower in the room, we decided to try out the baths. Trudging down the hall in only our yukatas (supplied in the closet) and slippers, we went to the second floor where the red curtain signified the door to the women's bath and blue curtains marked the men's bath. For some reason, they switch sides every day, so you have to remember which color is which. In the dressing room we put our clothes in a basket and then went naked into the bath area. Following the example of another woman, I chose a plastic stool and basin and went to the washing area to lather up. Only after being thoroughly clean and rinsed does one go into the hot bath. The semi-circular tub, big enough for about six people, was heated to 40 degrees Celsius. I lowered myself to the first bench and then into the tub which was about two feet deep. It felt good, but after a few minutes, it was too hot and I got out. Meanwhile, the other woman, who had been washing herself when I came in, was still washing. Art had no one else in his bath. Back in the room we turned on the TV where they were showing the classic Kurosawa movie, The Seven Samurai, but even though we knew the story, the movie wasn't enough to keep us awake.

A Walk Along the River

Bashi (bridge)

Sunday, September 7
We slept well on our futons with the cool fresh air coming through the screen and the total quiet except for the sound of rushing water from a small stream in the back of the hotel. At breakfast (wearing our slippers this time) we found our table set with an array of dishes including salad, soup, salmon and boiled eggs. We took the eggs for lunch, but found them barely cooked.
After breakfast we set out to walk up the right side of the river along the mostly level path for a supposedly four hour walk. (By the time we stopped for pictures it took us much longer.) It was a perfect day, sunny, blue sky, not too warm. Most of the path went through forest--primeval tall trees--moist forest floor covered with mushrooms, ferns, asters, various plants, but offered occasional stunning views of the river and distant mountains. Although we could hear birds, we had a hard time seeing any. We had brief glimpses of what looked like a nuthatch and a chickadee but were something else.

The Myojin Shrine

Islet at the Myojin Shrine

After about 3 km we came to a bridge leading across the river to the Myojin Shrine. We paid 300 yen (about $3) to get in to see two mirror-like pools, which were, indeed, beautiful. From what we could read in English, they are considered to be home of the gods. We could see fish swimming in the clear water and a heron flew across. In October, a festival is held at the pond and two boats with a dragon and a chicken head on the front are rowed across the water.
Beyond the Myojin Shrine, far fewer people were on the path. Those we passed were dressed as serious hikers and appeared to have camped overnight. Almost everyone we passed nodded and said o-hi-o gozi mas (good day) or konichiwa. This section of path passed a natural hot spring where we could see bubbles coming up from the bottom. (On our way back, when it was raining, steam formed in the cooler air over the hot pond.) Three kilometers from Myojin we arrived at our destination, a campground called Tasagawa. We ate our picnic lunch by the river and just as we were finishing, it began to rain.

Afternoon Rain

Approaching Storm

On our entire walk back it rained on and off, although never hard enough to soak us. Just after we got back to the hotel, it began to come down harder, but by then it didn't matter. We had some tea (green) with the hot water and tea set provided in our room. Then we ate another huge meal and bathed before bed. The Sunday dinner featured Shabu Shabu, cooked at the table in little paper pots, and beef sashimi. We also were served a whole fish on a stick and numerous little dishes. After dinner the only entertainment on tv was a golf tournament, so again we went to bed early.

Back to Takayama and On to Gifu

Monday, September 8
The morning was misty, but not actually raining. We went downstairs for breakfast and found scrambled eggs and ham at our table–some others had Japanese style breakfast. We checked out and pulled our suitcases to the bus stop. We were the only passengers on the shuttle bus to Hirayu Onsen. Cars are not permitted in Kamikochi so everyone must go in and out either by bus or taxi. We got right on our next bus and a few minutes after it arrived in Takayama, we caught a train for Gifu, where, for the remainder of the week, Art was attending a conference and I would be doing a school visit.
(To be continued.)

Part III will cover our stay in Gifu and Nagoya.

The Japan Alps, Nagoya, Gifu: Part I

2011-07-11T10:09:00.000-07:00

Nagoya and Takayama (Trip to Japan, September, 2008)

Welcome Cats (Hello Kitties)

Thursday, September 4 (Notes from my trip diary)
Arrived in Nagoya, Japan, and, with the help of an attendant at the ticket machine in the airport, we got train tickets to the Nagoya JR station. Then we got a taxi, complete with white lace seat covers, a white-gloved driver, video screen, and automated recorded instructions in English admonishing us to wear seat belts, for a short ride to the Hilton Hotel. There, on advice from the super helpful, somewhat English speaking desk clerk, we went to a travel agent to buy our train tickets for the next morning to Takayama. There, another super helpful, impeccably uniformed young woman helped us, and spent an extra ten minutes just to find out what track we needed to go to for our train. For dinner we went to a small sushi restaurant nearby, pointing to pictures on the menu for our meal.

Takayama, the Little Kyoto of the North

Lunch of Soba (buckwheat) noodles

Friday, September 5
Checked out of hotel and went to train station. Rode backwards to Gifu and then the train reversed direction to go toward Takayama. Nagoya and Gifu are both on a flat coastal plain, but after leaving Gifu, the train climbed into the mountains, mainly following river valleys. Saw ospreys and white and gray herons fishing in the shallow, swift flowing rocky rivers. Also, human fishermen.
After two hours we arrived at Takayama, known as the little Kyoto of the north. We walked one block to the Best Western hotel, left our bags, and went to a nearby restaurant for soba (buckwheat) noodles, a local specialty. They came cold, on a bamboo tray, with a soy dipping sauce. A side dish, something like runny farina with a raw egg yolk in the middle, was impossible to eat with chopsticks. Art’s meal also included an excellent roasted fish and rice mixed with vegetables. Then we caught a local bus to Hida Village.

Hida Village

Hida Village. Farmhouse roof made of thatch is steep to withstand winters with up to 6 feet of snow. Thatch is lashed onto roof supports with rope. An opening in the roof lets in light.

In the old part of Takayama and at Hida Village, one feels plopped into a Kurosawa movie, half-expecting a samurai to appear around the next corner. (In fact, one can rent costumes in Takayama to wear for the day.) The Hida Village, about a mile uphill from the center of town, is a collection of farmhouses and other buildings from the Edo period, moved there as a “living history” park. (You can see buildings of the same era in the movie “Silk” which was filmed at a similarly preserved mountain village.) Signs admonished us to “stay on the course”, presumably for traffic control, and follow the prescribed route through the village. The huge parking lots outside the gate, almost empty, suggested that at peak times the place is packed, but we found it almost empty.
The village of about six large houses/barns and various outbuildings is organized around a pond–with carp you can feed, a swan, and a water wheel. Except for one house, not from the local area, all the houses had roofs designed to withstand heavy snow, up to two meters, with shingles held down by rocks or thick thatch lashed onto logs. A small fire burned in each house, filling it with smoke and making it almost impossible to breathe. In all buildings we had to take off our shoes to go inside (slippers were provided). At the charcoal burning shed a sign warned us to “Bee careful.” Few signs in the village were in English. We did have a brochure with brief English explanations. Some people were demonstrating local crafts–woodcarving, lacquerware, doll making and textile stitchery. We bought a set of six cloth coasters.

River Walk

Tori Gate, Takayama

Instead of waiting for the bus, we walked downhill to the art museum. On the way, we bought three little brooms, another local craft, at a shop. The art museum is a huge modern building with a shallow reflecting pool on one side and an English tea garden overlooking the city on the other. It specializes in glass art. We didn’t pay to go in and instead, caught the free bus (a red double decker) back to town.
For about an hour we wandered the streets near the river where the old buildings have been preserved, many converted into shops. We went to the red bridge (bashi) for a picture and then walked along the river. For dinner we went to a restaurant we found in the guidebook, Suzuya, where the menu was in English. We saw more non-Japanese (gaijin) there than we had all day. I had sukiyaki and Art had beef cooked on a large leaf, a local specialty, both cooked over small burners at the table.

Woman selling mushrooms at farmer's market

Farmers' Market and A Walk in the Park
Saturday, September 6
After an American breakfast at the hotel–the buffet offered both American and Japanese foods– we walked to the morning market by the Civic Center where farm women sold apples, peaches, grapes, pears, all kinds of vegetables, leaves like we had seen at the restaurant, pickles, and handcrafts. We bought two girl’s cloth purses shaped like fish. We then climbed the hill to walk in the wooded park above the town. Each time we passed someone, they would bow and greet us with O-hi-o Go-zi-mas (good morning) or ko-neechi-wa and we would reply. On top of the hill were the ruins of the shogun’s castle and a lot of mosquitoes. The day had started out with comfortable weather, but became steadily hotter and more humid.

Festival Carts, Shrines, and Lion Masks

Festival carts and manikins wearing traditional clothing

We returned to town to see festival carts on display at the museum next to the Shinto shrine and Tori arch. There a polite young woman apologized that no one could take us on an English language tour; instead, she handed us a tape recorder with English explanations. The elaborately carved and painted carts (two stories high) are similar to those used at the Gion festival in Kyoto except that they have wheels. The carts are used for festivals in the spring and fall; the one held in the fall is a harvest festival, similar to American Thanksgiving. Our ticket also got us in to the museum next door in which the shrine complex at Nikko had been recreated in miniature–it felt a little like going to see the tiny Taj Mahal in Florida.
Next to shrine museum was the Lion Mask museum where we went in to see lion masks and the “puppet show.” The puppets, which were similar to those on some of the festival carts, were more like robots or automatons and did acrobatics, served tea, or wrote. Art was selected from the audience and given a scroll written by the puppet scribe.

On to Kamikochi
We walked back to the hotel to pick up our luggage, stopping on the way at an ATM and the convenience store for some boxed lunches (a sandwich and "bento"). We ate them at the bus station while waiting for the bus to Hirayu Onsen where we caught a shuttle to Kamikochi.

For more detailed information about Takayama from other travelers, click here and here.

Part II will be about our visit to Japan Alps National Park.

Australia's Red Center: Alice Springs

2011-07-04T12:11:00.000-07:00

Tropic of Capricorn marker just north of Alice Springs

A Town Called Alice
(Diary entry from our visit to Alice Springs in April 1999)
On Sunday morning we flew from Ayers Rock to Alice Springs, a distance of about 300 miles. Although it was Easter, there wasn’t much celebration. We noticed that some people are trying to promote the bilby, a marsupial with long, rabbit-like ears, as an Easter Bunny alternative--eg, the Easter Bilby--but it doesn't seem to be catching on. At the Desert Park in Alice Springs (where we actually saw a bilby in the night exhibit) they had a special exhibit of eggs to celebrate the rebirth of life. They showed all kinds of eggs--birds, reptiles, insects and even mammals (the echidna.) We got nabbed by a ranger on our way in who needed an audience to talk about the eggs but who managed to get sidetracked into telling us about his Aboriginal heritage and how he is part of the emu clan.

A Working Ranch (Station) and Bed and Breakfast

Flock of budgies seen at water hole at Bond Springs Station

In Alice Springs we visited the shops and art galleries in the center of town and were tempted to buy some of the carvings and paintings but the ones we really liked were both too big and too expensive. We then drove north of town about fifteen miles to the Tropic of Capricorn marker (to take a companion photo for our Equator shot from 1971 and the more recent Greenwich Meridian) en route to the Bond Springs Station, a working cattle ranch that was also our bed and breakfast. We had our own small cottage and arranged to have dinner there which we ate on our own verandah as we watched the stars come out.
In the morning we went out for a bird walk along a dry creek bed and saw parrots, cockatoos, budgies, zebra finches as well as some kangaroos who seemed as surprised to see us as we were to see them. Later in the day we had a tour of the station and got some insight into the challenges of grazing cattle over millions of acres in the outback. I always had a romantic image of cowboys on horseback rounding up the cattle, but on modern stations like this one the cattle are mustered with airplanes, helicopters and motorbikes because it is quicker and more cost effective. That evening we went to a barbecue and were served beef steaks from the station’s own cattle. At both Ayers Rock and Alice Springs we had terrific views of the night sky. For the first time we saw the Magellanic clouds--which Magellan apparently used to figure out where south was.

The Telegraph Station

Sign at Old Telegraph Station, restored at site of original Alice Springs

Our outings in Alice Springs included a tour of the old telegraph station (now a museum) which is at the site of the original Alice Springs. The “spring” is actually a pool in a river bed and was named after the wife of the Superintendent of Telegraphs. The telegraph station, constructed in the 1870's, was the beginning of the town of Alice Springs and the line, which went between Adelaide in the south and Darwin in the north, provided, for the first time, a direct connection (via an undersea cable between Darwin and Java) between Australia and the rest of the world. We got to talking with the managers of the Telegraph Station Museum and they showed us the three joeys (baby kangaroos) that they were taking care of after their mothers had been killed by cars. One was so small that they kept it tucked into a purse sized cloth pouch.

The Flying Doctor

Our other tourist destinations in Alice Springs were to the Desert Park (an exhibit of desert wildlife), the Royal Flying Doctor Service, the School of the Air, and finally a date grove where we had afternoon coffee and date cake before returning to Melbourne.
The Flying Doctor Service was started by a Presbyterian missionary in 1928 as a way of providing health care to people in remote areas. Communication to the center in Alice Springs was by radio and when a call came in a pilot and a doctor would head out hoping that when they got there they would find a suitable place to land. The radio service is also used to give medical advice for immediate treatment while the patient is waiting for the doctor to arrive. When we toured the center in the early afternoon, the log on the wall showed five emergencies had already been dealt with that day. In the 1950's someone had the idea of using the same radio service to provide schooling to children who live on remote cattle stations and that became the School of the Air.

School of the Air

Studio at School of the Air where classes are broadcast

The School of the Air now has its own facility and teaches about 200 children, some of them living as far as 1000 kilometers from Alice Springs. We listened in as a teacher gave a lesson to a six year old student. Kids get group lessons by grade level each morning for an hour and then once a week each child gets an individual lesson. The kids get lesson packets every two weeks in the mail and the work is supervised either by a parent or a governess. We saw samples of work on display at the school headquarters and it was well done. In many ways these kids have all the advantages of individual attention in their home schooling and at the same time they are able to grow up on their cattle stations and be part of that life too.
School of the Air goes to grade 7 and after that the kids go to boarding school. Our tour guide on the cattle ranch where we stayed had grown up there and went to School of the Air with his brother and two sisters. (We saw the room that they had used for their lessons.) Although we had driven into the ranch on a dirt road that was in bumpy but reasonable condition, until recently there was no road at all. Getting into town was an ordeal, especially if it rained and the creeks filled with water, so School of the Air was the best option.

A Self-Sufficient Life

Sunset, Bond Springs Station

    It is hard for us to realize how self-sufficient people have to be in the outback.   At Bond Springs they have maintained the original homestead buildings as part of the National Trust so you can see how people really lived when they first came to the outback. The first house was one tiny room with dirt floors and a canvas bed. Later a slightly larger house was built. (I had always thought that quilts were a uniquely American craft but when we visited the homestead we saw on the bed a wedding quilt that had been made for the couple by the bride and groom's mothers.)
The current family home was built in the 1930's and has at its heart a high ceilinged kitchen with a giant table where we ate breakfast.. Even at Bond Springs, which now seems quite modern, it has only been recently that the station has had telephone service and they still have to produce all their own electricity. Despite the obvious hardships, the people who live in the outback love it and can't imagine why anyone would want to live anywhere else. When we told one of the staff at Bond Springs that our home was in Los Angeles, she seemed genuinely sorry that we had to live in a city.

Vacation Reading
    I am reading a book called We of the Never-Never, a memoir of Jeannie Gunn, a woman at a cattle station in the early part of the century. During the rainy season they would be cut off for weeks when rain swollen rivers became impassable and then it would take weeks after it dried for wagons to travel from Darwin. Her solution to the perpetual fly problem was to construct a net that enclosed the entire dining room--table, chairs and all! The book was made into a movie that we saw the last time we were in Australia. (The outback is the Never-Never because once you live there, you never-never want to return to city life.) Art is reading another classic, A Fortunate Life, about a man whose life would seem to be anything but fortunate.

Window Seat
    I always take several books to read on vacations and never read any of them partly because I always buy books on the trip (like We of the Never-Never) and start reading them and partly because when I'm on the airplane I find it much more interesting to look out the window than to read. Our flight to Uluru (from Melbourne via Sydney) took us over miles and miles of desolate desert where you could see the patterns of salt deposited across the bottom of enormous dry lake beds. It is hard to imagine that there are times when these lakes actually have water in them.

Desert on a Grand Scale
    Our trip was so full that I have just touched on the highlights. At moments the Australian desert reminded us of experiences we’ve had in American deserts such as at Joshua Tree National Monument, in the Mojave, or in Borrego Springs, east of San Diego, but the scale and distances in Australia are so much grander. There is also the sense with the Aborigines that they are part of a really distant past--in a time long before there was any human life in the Americas. The Red Center is definitely the most foreign place we've visited in Australia and it’s a long way from anywhere. Its like flying from LA to Denver and realizing that there is nothing in between.
[Our trip to Alice Springs was during a three month stay in Australia in 1999 when Art was working in Melbourne. I have been to Australia a total of five times. We returned to the Red Center on our trip in 2002.]

Australia's Red Center: Uluru

2011-06-27T11:39:00.000-07:00

Uluru and Kata Tjuta National Park
(My journal entry from our visit in April 1999)

Uluru, formerly known as Ayers Rock

We have just returned from our Easter vacation trip with a week’s worth of clothes covered in fine red dust acquired in Australia’s “Red Center” where we visited Uluru (formerly known as Ayers Rock), in Uluru and Kata Tjuta National Park, and Alice Springs, the largest town in the heart of Australia’s enormous desert interior and the center of life in the outback. In the desert, daytime temperatures can easily rise to 110 degrees or more and in winter it goes below freezing at night, but we were lucky to have beautiful weather in the seventies. In the morning, though, it was so cold that I had to put on my thermal underwear!
A Desert Oasis

Thorny Devil Lizard

As in most deserts, one would think that nothing could live in such a harsh environment, but we saw a surprising variety of plant and animal life, especially near sources of water. Actually, the land around Uluru was green and flowering due to rains several weeks ago. This trip was also our first real exposure to Aboriginal life and we learned how people have lived and survived in this region for 70,000 years. About half of the land in the Northern Territory belongs to the Aboriginal Land Trust, the equivalent of America’s Indian Reservations, and most of Australia’s Aborigines live in this region.
Uluru as a Tourist Destination

Spinifex, typical grass of the Australian desert

We flew to Uluru on Thursday, arriving about noon at our hotel in the resort village of Yulara. Until the 1970's the only way to visit Uluru (then called Ayers Rock) was to drive there and camp or stay at a small motel, both located right at the base of the rock. (You may have seen a movie called Cry in the Dark starring Meryl Streep. It was based on the true story of a couple camping at the rock whose baby was supposedly stolen by a dingo.) As Uluru became an increasingly popular tourist destination (currently 400,000 people visit each year) it was decided to move all the accommodation facilities outside the park boundary and Yulara was built. About the same time the government was under increasing pressure from the Aborigines, who regard Uluru as a sacred site, to return the national park to them. The Hand Back, as it is called, finally happened in 1985 with the agreement that tourists would continue to be allowed to visit.
Mingi

Sand dune with Uluru in the distance

We didn't climb Uluru. The Aborigines don't like having people climb it although they don't stop them. The Aborigines call the people who climb the rock Mingi, which means "ants" and that's exactly what they look like when you see them from a distance. The more eco-minded tour companies discourage climbing Uluru. Not only is it disrespectful for the Aborigines who consider the rock sacred but it is wearing down the rock. In any case, Art doesn't like high places so he was easily convinced that we didn't want to climb. We decided that we'd much more enjoy a walk around the base of the rock.
Sunrise Walk Around the Rock

View of Uluru from walk around the base of the rock

    The next morning we got up at 5:30 to meet our tour guide for a sunrise breakfast walk around the base of the rock, a distance of about ten kilometers. This was a small group eco-tour and this time we were nearly alone to enjoy the lighting of the rock at dawn. At the same time we had the double pleasure of seeing the moon set behind the rock.
    In the course of the walk we were introduced to desert plants, saw lots of birds (including our first sighting of zebra finches in the wild) and heard some of the aboriginal stories associated with the Rock. We had chances to try “bush tucker” (native edible foods) including a tiny red fruit called the bush plum and the so-called bush banana, which is banana shaped but more like eating the inside of a milkweed pod.
Kata Tjuta
    Our outing the next day was a hike and sunset barbecue at Kata Tjuta, an equally impressive but less well known rocky outcrop nearby. The Aboriginal name, Kata Tjuta, means stone heads and they do look like giant heads piled on the horizon. As we returned after dark, we saw an owl and a dingo in the headlights of the bus. Overhead, the sky was brilliant with the moon and Southern constellations.
    On Sunday morning, after five days in the park, we flew from Ayers Rock to Alice Springs, a distance of about 300 miles.

[We were so inspired by this visit to Uluru that we returned three years later to take more photos and to research my book Uluru: Australia’s Aboriginal Heart (Clarion, 2003.)]
Accommodations at Yulara: On this trip we stayed at the Desert Gardens Hotel. On our subsequent trip, when we researched my book, we stayed at the Emu Walk Apartments.

Patagonian Penguins

2011-06-20T12:00:00.000-07:00

Visiting a Penguin Colony in Southern Chile (December 1995)

The Otway Sound in southern Chile is the summer home of thousands of Magellanic penguins. These "warm weather" penguins are recognized by white rings around the face and chest.

Penguins were everywhere. Some rested on the beach, cleaning themselves after a day at sea. Others marched like teams of tuxedoed soldiers across the short grass. Parent penguins and their chicks peeked out of their underground burrows. We were in southern Chile visiting a nesting colony of Magellanic penguins at the edge of the Otway Sound (Seno Otway) on the Magellan Strait. Each spring more than 1000 of these plump seabirds come ashore to this windswept plain to mate, lay eggs, and bring up their young. Although we were bundled in warm coats to protect us from the chilly wind, the penguins seemed to be enjoying the long hours of summer sunshine.

On the Beach

Penguins rest on shore after spending the day at sea.

As we watched the penguins waddle across the grass they reminded us of comical waiters. Unruffled by the constant winds that sweep across the southern tip of South America, penguins are well equipped to withstand the harsh weather of this region. Luckily for us, the weather on the day we visited was mild and sunny. Because we were so far south and it was near the summer solstice, the sun remained high into the sky until well into the evening.

Don't Touch the Penguins!

Magellanic penguins stand about two feet tall and weigh about seven pounds. They live along the coasts of Chile, Argentina and the Falkland Islands. They are named after the explorer, Ferdinand Magellan, who saw them on his historic trip around the world between 1519 and 1522.

Obeying the sign that warned us not to touch the penguins, we followed the winding path through the colony. A fence separated us from the nesting area. The birds paid little attention to us and went about their business cleaning their nests, tending their chicks, or making their way to and from the water.

The Southern Hemisphere spring begins in September and that is when the penguins begin to arrive at their nesting colonies. Waddling up the shore on sturdy webbed feet the penguins search for good nest sites. Digging in the soft ground, they make a nesting burrow. Once a penguin pair has mated they stay together for their whole lives. Older pairs usually return to the same nest hole that they used the year before.

Penguin Chicks

Penguins preen their feathers to keep them clean and waterproof. The fluffy chick on the right will get its adult feathers in a few weeks.

Six weeks after eggs have been laid, they are ready to hatch. The newly hatched chicks weigh about three ounces and look something like furry gray tennis balls. Like all baby birds, penguin chicks are always hungry. For the rest of the summer, their parents take turns going to sea to catch fish to feed them. When the adult bird returns to the burrow, it coughs up partly digested food and feeds the chicks.

Young penguins come out of the burrow for the first time when they are about six weeks old. As we walked through the colony we could see some of the young birds peering cautiously out of their nest holes. Others stood by the entrance with their parents. By the time young penguins are eight weeks old they are completely covered with smooth, oily feathers. Then they are ready to join their parents in the water.

Penguin parents watch over their chicks closely. They have to protect them from foxes, large seabirds and other animals that might harm them. We saw a Patagonian fox, or zorro, bound across the shore with a conger eel in its mouth.

A Memorable Visit
We visited the penguin colony in December when it was bustling with activity. But by March all the penguins would go back to sea for the winter. Then all would be quiet on the shores of Otway Sound until the next nesting season. We were lucky to visit during the few months that the penguins spend on land.

Getting there: We flew from Santiago, Chile, to Punta Arenas, Chile’s most southern port city. We were on our way to Torres del Paine National Park. After renting a car (actually a small Toyota truck) at the airport, we stopped at the penguin colony on our way from the airport to Punta Arenas where we spent our first night before heading north. A sign on the highway marked the dirt road that led to the penguin colony.

Penguins at the Zoo: You don’t have to travel to South America to see a breeding colony of Magellanic penguins. Instead, go to the San Francisco Zoo. Every spring, you can see penguin parents and their fluffy chicks standing outside their nest holes. I wrote about these penguins in my book Penguin (Morrow Junior Books, 1988), illustrated with photos by Richard Hewett. It is out of print but you may be able to find it in the library. It inspired my visit to the colony at Seno Otway when I went to Patagonia with my family several years later.

Oakland Rose Garden: A Hidden Gem

2011-06-13T12:01:00.000-07:00

While Oakland, California, may not be on the top of your list as a tourist destination, it has become a second home for me. On each visit, I discover something new. I had passed the sign that said “Rose Garden” many times on my way to the hardware store, but never stopped. Finally, on a recent May weekend, I made a point to park and take a stroll and see what was beyond the sign. I found hundreds of flower beds, filled with rose bushes bursting with blooms.

Tucked into a wooded glen in a residential neighborhood of Oakland, California, the Morcom Rose Garden is a refreshing retreat. Built in the 1930's, it features formal gardens, a pool and fountain, winding paths, and a walkway honoring the Mother of the Year. (The ceremony is held each year on Mother’s Day and honors a woman who has contributed to the community.) As I wandered among the flowers, I felt like I had traveled back in time, when life moved at a slower pace. Indeed, the garden appears used mainly by local residents. I saw people walking dogs and babies, sitting on benches drinking coffee and reading the newspaper, or just strolling along the flower beds. It was calm and peaceful, hidden from the noise of the surrounding city. The garden is also a haven for wildlife, especially wild turkeys who wander freely along the paths and appear to have the right of way!

The garden is maintained by the Friends of the Morcom Rose Garden. At their website you can see an amazing slide show of hundreds of gorgeous roses, with names to match.
Where is it? The Morcom Rose Garden is located on Jean Street, one block off of Grand Avenue in Oakland, CA.

Abu Dhabi

2011-06-06T09:11:00.000-07:00

ARABIAN NIGHTS AND DAYS: A Week in the United Arab Emirates (February 2011)

Entrance to Palace Museum, Al Ain, Ancestral Home of the Ruling Family of Abu Dhabi

Camels and Skyscrapers
As the plane descended, I looked down onto the aquamarine waters of the Arabian Sea and desert along the shore. Then, as we circled toward the airport, buildings, roads, and neatly planted date orchards came into view. At one point we appeared to fly over a camel market. Soon the roads and buildings became more and more dense and we passed over housing developments and shopping malls. In the distance, I could see skyscrapers. We were getting ready to land in the United Arab Emirates, a country that in just fifty years has transformed itself from a tiny desert outpost to a land of gleaming modern metropolises.

I had never been to the Middle East before, and the plane trip, from LAX to Dubai, was the longest I had ever experienced (16 hours). When we landed, we were half-way around the world. The twelve hour time difference meant that I didn’t even have to change my watch! We were met by a representative from the conference my husband was attending, escorted through the super-sized terminal and then driven to Abu Dhabi, the other major city in the U.A.E. (In the UAE, it is preferable to be driven than to drive yourself.)

View from our room of the entrance to the Emirates Palace Hotel, with the Etihad Towers, a new hotel and business complex under construction in the background

The Most Expensive Hotel in the World
In Abu Dhabi, the conference was held at the luxurious Emirates Palace Hotel, by far, the most lavish hotel I have ever seen. It made me feel as if I had landed in a chapter of the Arabian Nights by mistake. (Luckily for us, our rooms were paid for as part of the conference.) Featuring gold covered ceilings, multiple five star restaurants, high-end shops, a private beach, two giant swimming pools, and more, it was so big, that one day after lunch I got lost on the way back to our room. For photos and more details about the over the top luxury at the Emirates Palace, read this article in the Sydney Morning Herald.

Camels on the beach in front of the Emirates Palace Hotel

But I didn’t really want to feel as if I’d flown half way around the world to spend a week in a fancy, land-bound cruise ship. I wanted to see what the U.A.E. was like outside the hotel. In preparation for the trip, I had read Diamond in the Desert: Behind the Scenes in Abu Dhabi, the World’s Richest City by Jo Tatchell, who had lived in Abu Dhabi as a child, when it was still largely undeveloped. It helped me to get a sense of where the UAE had come from and where it is today. I highly recommend it.

Heritage Village

"Hinna" was and still is the most elegant traditional cosmetic used by women in the UAE. The UAE motifs can be distinguished from decorations of other regions in the gulf. The process includes drying the leaves, crushing and making the paste. Special containers were used to keep the mixture. (Exhibit in museum at Heritage Village)

Most of Abu Dhabi’s past has been bulldozed over. However, one place you can get a sense of local history is at the Heritage Village where there are reconstructions of typical Bedouin tents and houses, live camels, and a small museum displaying traditional clothing, jewelry, household items, etc.

A Country of Superlatives

Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque, Abu Dhabi. Can accommodate 22,000 worshipers. It is the largest mosque in the world.

Financed by the oil industry, development in the U.A.E. has proceeded at a frenetic pace (the country feels like one huge building site.) Everything is over the top. The country boasts the tallest building, the largest mosque, the biggest shopping mall, the largest dancing fountains, the most expensive hotels. A whole museum complex is being built that will include a satellite Louvre and Guggenheim plus two other museums. (Models are displayed at the Emirates Palace Hotel.)

Al Ain, the Garden City

Majlis, or meeting room, at the Palace Museum in Al Ain, where most decisions were made when the palace was the center of government. Here was where the Sheikh received local and foreign dignitaries.

The UAE is a federation of seven emirates, (each originally a tribal or family based unit) that banded together after oil was discovered in 1958. Although they function as a political unit, they also retain some independence. On a MAP you can see that there are three major cities, Abu Dhabi and Dubai, both on the coast and Al Ain, which is inland and the ancestral home of the ruling family. After five nights in Abu Dhabi, we spent two days with friends in Al Ain.
Al Ain is a desert oasis and promotes itself as a garden city. Before the discovery of oil, fresh water was in short supply. Now, oil powered electricity plants provide the energy for desalination, and water is pumped everywhere. For a desert country, the landscape is surprisingly green.

The Palace Museum

Interior courtyard of Palace Museum, Al Ain.

My favorite part of the trip was visiting the Palace Museum and Jalil Fort in Al Ain. Here one gets a glimpse of traditional life (bedrooms on the second floor taking advantage of cool breezes for natural air conditioning, meeting areas for men, separate areas for women and children.)

Jalil Fort, Al Ain

Ramparts of Al Jalil Fort, Al Ain

A Trip to the Zoo

Marabou stork (native to Africa) at the Wildlife Park, Al Ain

Whenever I travel, I always like to go to the zoo. The zoo in Al Ain, recently remodeled, features the usual suspects (lions, tigers, giraffes, etc.) but also displays animals unique to the Arabian peninsula. On the day we visited (in February), the weather was sunny and cool. The animals were active and seemed to enjoy being out-of-doors.

Shopping

In food court of shopping mall, Al Ain. Note that "Subway" is spelled backward in Arabic.

Shopping malls and supermarkets provide most of the same kinds of things you can buy in Europe or the United States. We visited Carrefours, part of the French supermarket chain, and the associated mall, complete with an American style food court.

The Weather
Our trip, in February, was made during a time when the weather in the UAE is optimal–warm during the day and cool at night. (I actually wished I had brought a warmer sweater for the evenings.) In summer, temperatures in the UAE apparently climb to 118 or more! Before there was air conditioning, people went to Al Ain from Abu Dhabi and Dubai in summer to get away from the damp sea air. It was better to be hot and dry than hot and humid.

Dubai skyline with Burj Khalifa (at 2,716.5 feet), the tallest building in the world. The Burj was designed by the architectural firm of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill in Chicago.

Heading Home
Our last night was at the Premier Inn hotel near the airport in Dubai, chosen because of an early flight the next morning. The week felt like a whirlwind and there are still plenty of things I’d like to do if I go back again. I’d like to take a tour of the mosque (appropriate clothing is provided for women), go to one of the camel markets and/or camel races, do more birdwatching (actually, I saw quite a few birds on the hotel grounds), find out about local crafts, visit the falcon hospital, take a trip out into the desert. Nevertheless, for a first visit I felt I saw a lot and got a glimpse of life in the UAE. It is developing fast and, no doubt, will have even more to see in the future.

Road construction, Abu Dhabi. Note aquamarine water of the Arabian Gulf.

Chile's Atacama Desert: Part II

2011-05-30T02:31:00.000-07:00

(Continuation of our trip to Chile, December 2009)

Ancient Rock Art, Llamas, and Geysers

Pregnant Llama Petroglyph

The focus of our second day’s trip was an ancient petroglyph site in the foothills of the Andes. This turned out to be a private tour, as no one else from the hotel wanted to go there that day. About an hour’s drive north of San Pedro, we approached an open valley surrounding a semi-circular rock outcrop. Even from a distance I could see the outline of a llama on the first boulder. Deeply incised on the vertical surface, it was nearly life size. The surprise, as we got closer, was that there was another smaller llama drawn inside the larger one, perhaps to indicate fertility. Although it is difficult to date rock art, it is believed that some of the images are thousands of years old. Scrambling up the boulders we saw more llamas big and small, as well foxes, pumas, jaguars, snakes, flamingos, and human figures with feather headdresses. As we stood there in the shadow of these ancient images, it was easy to imagine prehistoric hunters resting here on their way to the next oasis. The extremely dry climate is ideal for preserving rock art, and in many cases the drawings appear as fresh as if they were made yesterday.

Terraced Farms and Llamas

Llama with decorative ear tassels near Machuca

For our picnic lunch we went to Rainbow Canyon, named for the unusual variety of colorful rock formations. Shade was in short supply, but we found a large rock whose shadow was just big enough to set up our table. For our final stop we drove to the remote village of Rio Grande for another example of terraced farming. The contrast between the small but lush fields at the base of the river canyon and the stark, steep walls that contained them was huge. On the way back to the highway, we spotted a group of guanacos, wild relatives of llamas and alpacas, domestic animals that are kept for their wool and meat. The following day we had a chance to see llamas with their colorful ear tassels in the tiny village of Machuca and to try barbecued llama meat. But the main event of our last day was a visit to the Tatio geysers.

The Highest Geyser Field in the World

Tatio Geysers

At 14,000 feet, the Tatio geyser field in the Andes is the highest geyser field in the world. Recently, it was declared a protected area and helpful signs in both Spanish and English are being installed. The optimal time to visit is at sunrise when the cold air condenses the rising steam into small dense clouds. Since the drive from San Pedro is about an hour and forty minutes, we met at 5:15 a.m. for our departure. Fortified with a cup of coca tea (which tastes just like any herb tea and is said to combat altitude sickness) we dozed in the van for the ride up. It was pitch dark when we left, but by the time we arrived the sun was beginning to shimmer through the mist. I was worried about being light-headed at the high elevation, but, as long as I didn’t move too fast, I found I had no trouble walking around the geyser field. We had been advised to wear warm clothes because dawn temperatures are often below freezing, so I bundled up. All around us geysers spurted, hot pools bubbled, and steam puffed dramatically out of dozens of vents. Near a spring, a pool had been excavated that mixes cold spring water with the nearly boiling geyser water to make a giant hot tub. It was filled with bathers, although we didn’t try it ourselves. Instead, our guide set up our breakfast overlooking the geysers. By the time we finished, most other people were gone, and a group of vicunas moved in to graze on the tough grasses that grow at the edge of the geyser field. Vicunas, valued for their unusually fine wool, are the delicate and extremely endangered other wild relative of the llama. We left and they had the mountains all to themselves.

Reliving History in Books

Church, Machuca

In preparation for the trip to Chile, I read two books: Ariel Dorfman's fascinating account of his personal journey to the Atacama in his book Desert Memories and Isabel Allende’s book Ines of My Soul, the dramatic retelling of Chile’s history from the point of view of the woman who accompanied the Spanish explorers as they made their way south in the mid-1500's. Much of the book details their arduous journey across the Atacama. Now, having been there, I can begin to appreciate the hardships they faced, but unlike those early explorers, we returned each day to the comfort of our very gracious hotel.

Heading South
That evening we boarded a plane for our return flight to Santiago. The combination of dramatic landscape, extreme climate, exotic wildlife, ancient history, and rich local culture had made for a unique vacation. Now we were on our way to meet family and to spend the rest of the trip immersed in contemporary Chilean life. As we neared the capitol, I looked out the window at lush green fields below, and was struck anew that I had just left the driest place on earth. Although the paper showed no rain in the immediate forecast, there was a chance that I might need the umbrella packed at the bottom of my suitcase.

Getting there: After flying from the U.S. to Santiago, the capitol of Chile, we took a local flight on Sky Airlines to Calama. Lan Chile also flies there. (Calama is 1225 kilometers from Santiago.) Our ground transportation to and around San Pedro was provided by our hotel, the Tierra Atacama, but it is possible to rent a car and drive yourself. (The main road is paved but most other roads are dirt.) Click here for a MAP of Chile. (Calama and San Pedro de Atacama are east of Antofagasta near the Bolivia border.)
Did we need to speak Spanish? Although we can get along in basic Spanish, almost everyone at the hotel spoke English. English was the international language for us and the other international tourists, many from Brazil and Europe. Except for one person, there were no other Americans at our hotel.
When did we go to Chile? Art and I made this trip to the Atacama in December 2009. We also spent time in Santiago, Rancagua, and the beach town of Iloca (later greatly damaged by the earthquake and tsunami.)

Chile's Atacama Desert: Part I

2011-05-23T12:00:00.000-07:00

Flamingos, Oases, and Volcanoes (December 2009)

Flamingos in the Salar de Atacama

Like a bevy of pink ballerinas, the flamingos tip-toed across the salty lagoon, sweeping their wide bills through the shallow water in search of food. Then, with a burst of wide wings they launched themselves into the sky, and became silhouetted against the sunset and the towering mountains of northern Chile. We were in the Atacama desert, a land of stark beauty and surprising wildlife. With less than an inch of rainfall each year, the Atacama is the driest desert in the world. And yet, it has been home to people and wildlife for thousands of years.

At the Foot of the Andes
To get to the Atacama, we had flown north from Santiago to the mining town of Calama. As the plane descended into the airport we circled over a giant hole in the earth, the largest open pit copper mine in the world. Trucks loaded with copper ore looked like toys as they wound their way up its steep sides. At the airport we were met by Juan, our driver from the Tierra Atacama, our hotel in San Pedro de Atacama, the oasis town 75 miles away that would be our base. It was December, early summer in the southern hemisphere. Technically we were in the tropics, but the altitude, about 8,500 feet, meant that the temperatures were comfortable.

View of the volcano Licancabur from our room at the Tierra Atacama

At the hotel we were escorted through a garden of newly planted flowers and fig trees to our spacious room. We had a direct view of the volcano Licancabur, which at 19,400 feet high dominates the skyline and has been imbued with religious significance since ancient times.
Our all inclusive plan meant that everything for our stay was taken care of–meals, transportation, guides, entertainment. So, before relaxing with our pisco sours (the classic Chilean cocktail), we met with the trip planner who wanted to make sure that our three days would be filled with the activities we desired.

San Pedro and Toconao, Oases in the Desert
For day one, we chose a morning trip to the Valley of the Moon, spectacular rock formations just to the north of San Pedro.

View of the Valley of the Moon

After lunch, on bicycles provided by the hotel, we rode over the bumpy dirt road about a mile into the center of town. Fed by water flowing down from the mountains, San Pedro de Atacama has long been an agricultural center and was a stopping place for Pedro de Valdivia, one of the founders of Chile, as he made his way south from Peru in 1540. Near the main plaza there is a church and small museum containing ancient artifacts. A covered arcade nearby has souvenir stalls with blankets, pottery, jewelry, and other crafts, mostly from Peru (to the north) or Bolivia (a few miles to the east, on the back side of Licancabur.)

At 5:00 we met our guide and fellow travelers for a trip to the National Flamingo Reserve. En route we stopped at the small oasis town of Toconao where we toured terraced gardens filled with apricot, quince, fig, and other fruit trees. We also went into the historic church to see an elaborate Christmas manger scene, complete with llamas, a volcano, and tiny glass flamingos.

Flamingos and Giant Salt Flats
We then climbed back into the van and drove along a road of finely crushed salt through the sea of jagged crystals that form the giant salt flat of the Salar de Atacama, once an ancient inland sea. Before following the walkway to the lagoons, we toured the small visitor center to see exhibits of the flamingo life cycle. Three species of flamingos can be seen feeding in the lagoons, the Chilean, Andean and James flamingos. Periodically the birds launch themselves into the air, flapping their wide wings and honking like geese as they rearrange themselves for the night. As we watched the birds, the sun slowly sank in the west, turning the hills first orange, then pink, and finally the sky grew dark, revealing the unfamiliar southern constellations, sparkling in the clear, dry air. It was a spectacular end to our first day.

Sunset and Flamingos

Part II will cover our visits to ancient petroglyphs and the Tatio Geysers.

Getting there: After flying from the U.S. to Santiago, the capitol of Chile, we took a local flight on Sky Airlines to Calama. Lan Chile also flies there. (Calama is 1225 kilometers from Santiago.) Our ground transportation to and around San Pedro was provided by our hotel, the Tierra Atacama, but it is possible to rent a car and drive yourself. (The main road is paved but most other roads are dirt.) Click here for a MAP of Chile. (Calama and San Pedro de Atacama are east of Antofagasta near the Bolivia border.)
Did we need to speak Spanish? Although we can get along in basic Spanish, almost everyone at the hotel spoke English. English was the international language for us and the other international tourists, many from Brazil and Europe. Except for one person, there were no other Americans at our hotel.
When did we go to Chile? Art and I made this trip to the Atacama in December 2009. We also spent time in Santiago, Rancagua, and the beach town of Iloca (later greatly damaged by the earthquake and tsunami.)

The Africa Trip, 40th Anniversary

2011-05-16T13:00:00.000-07:00

Caroline and Jennifer (age 18 months), Uganda, 1971

Trip of a Lifetime, East Africa, 1971
In 1971, my husband, Art, along with four other graduate students at Rockefeller University in New York, embarked on a four month field course in animal behavior in western Uganda. I didn’t want to miss out on a chance to go to Africa, even with a year-old baby (our daughter, Jennifer) to look after. One other student wife, Mary Sue, went along on the trip and we became traveling companions. During the first six weeks of the course, while our husbands were working in a forest near Fort Portal, Mary Sue, Jennifer, and I traveled by ourselves to Kenya and Tanzania. Then, for the second half of the course, which was conducted in a savannah environment in Queen Elizabeth National Park, we were able to join our husbands.

This year, 2011, marks the 40th anniversary of the Africa trip, a key life event for everyone who participated. The following reminiscences were part of a collection of memories compiled to mark the occasion and to honor of Peter Marler, who conceived of and organized the trip. The Africa trip experience can never be repeated. Africa, and we, have changed greatly in the last forty years. This blog post is strictly a trip down memory lane. I hope you will enjoy reading it.

Impact on My Life
As a wife, I was not involved with the course itself, but without it I would never have had the opportunity to go to Africa. At the time, I had not yet begun to write books for children, but my experiences seeing wildlife, meeting people who lived and worked in Africa, and just being there has been important for many of the books I’ve written since then. In a larger sense, the trip also greatly impacted my world view. Before then, I had never traveled outside the United States and had no idea what it was like to live in a third world country or in a place so rich with wildlife. From the time I was a child, I had always dreamed of travel and adventure. The trip to Africa certainly fulfilled that dream. When I do school presentations and kids ask me what was the most exciting place I’ve ever been, the answer is always the same–Africa.

My memories of the three months in Africa are vivid, reinforced by the hundreds of photos we took (some appear in my books) and by letters and diary entries. My parents eagerly awaited my weekly letters, vicariously traveling Africa with me. My father typed all the letters, making them legible, and put them into a book. I have put a few excerpts below. I used my diary mostly to record animal sightings, brief reports of the events of the day, and our dinner menus. One entry says we ate stewed waterbuck, from meat given to us by a park ranger! The diary also documents the arrival of the Marler family at QE, a greatly anticipated event.

Thank You, Peter Marler

Dr. Peter Marler and Jameson's Wattle in the Kibale Forest near Fort Portal

I remember that Peter Marler had accompanied us on the trip from New York to Uganda, herding us through the airport like a troupe of wayward Cub Scouts. He had made this trip before, and I was grateful for his expertise both in the larger organization and in the details. In the Amsterdam airport, he introduced us to smoked eel sandwiches. In Kampala he took us to an Indian restaurant to try the delicious East African style samosas. He also pointed out the “bat tree” along the main road, where hundreds of fruit bats hung like small black umbrellas during the day. After helping the students set up at Kanyawara, Peter went back to New York, returning a month later with Judith and the kids. They camped out not far from us at QE and I remember being glad to have them nearby.

Only now do I realize the scope of the Field Course and how Peter’s vision for it made it happen. Now, on the fortieth anniversary of the Africa trip, I would like to thank Peter for creating the Field Course and for allowing me and Jennifer to tag along, providing us with the opportunity to have our own African experience and to share a bit of Art’s. Together with Art’s experiences during the course, and our travel together afterward in southern Uganda, this period still ranks as the most outstanding in our lives.

The following entries are from my diary (in italics) and letters to my parents in California:

Queen Elizabeth National Park

The Students Camp: Our accommodation at Queen Elizabeth (our room is the open door)

June 23, 1971
Arrived at Queen Elizabeth Park.

June 27, 1971

Mweya is an open, almost stark bluff above a large lake and channel which are filled with fish and hippos. At night the hippos come out of the water and up here to feed on the bushes, so one cannot step out of doors after dark. There are also elephants, bush pigs, and marabou storks, which wander in and out the camp area day and night. The windows of our room face the “Canteen”–the local native hotspot–and at night we hear loud music from that side, while from the other side we hear snorts of the hippos and elephants. I was under the impression that someone came in the night to empty our garbage can until I realized that the elephants and marabou storks were removing it all.

I am quickly reviving all my Girl Scout talents. We aren’t actually “camping” in that we have a room with three cots in it, but I am cooking all our food over a wood fire (which is tricky since we have a bare minimum of equipment.) The biggest problem besides obtaining food is water since it all must be boiled. At Mweya the only foods available are eggs, milk, and bread from the local Indian shop, tomatoes, bananas and matoke from the very small market, and you can buy fish from the Canteen.

Jennifer pointing to the eye of one of the tilapia (to be our evening's dinner)

July 4, 1971
Food supply here is very erratic. For the last three days there haven’t been any eggs and one day we had trouble getting fish. Tilapia–a tender, sweet fish–is the mainstay of our diet. It costs about 10 cents for two large fish. Pineapples, 10 cents each and bananas, 2 cents for four, are the main fruits. Vegetables vary but tomatoes and onions are always available.
Dad, it’s a good thing I used to watch you fillet fish when I was little, because that’s what I have to do every day. I’ve become quite an expert! We throw the remains to the marabou storks who hang around expectantly while we work. The dominant stork in group is apparent by the puffed pouch under its throat.

There are little lizards all over and the other day a four foot snake crawled into my shower as I left. I didn’t wait to see if it was poisonous. Apparently there are some really deadly snakes in the park and I don’t care to run into any of them!

July 5, 1971
Invasion of “dudus”–a small lake fly–in swarms of millions which clung to walls, food, people, and made the air thick.

July 7, 1971
Mary Sue found a baby bat.
Marlers arrived.

Euphorbia and Canteen, Mweya, Queen Elizabeth National Park

July 8, 1971
Showed Judith Marler local shopping spots–duka, market, and canteen–and got chased by a mad elephant twice and accosted by an incoherent drunk in canteen.
Had tea at Lodge.
Art out all night.

July 9, 1971
For excitement lately we have had an earthquake (a small one), an invasion of millions of lake flies (which just as suddenly vanished two days after they arrived), and I was charged by a mad elephant. We were walking to the market and making a wide path around an elephant when suddenly he trumpeted, started flapping his ears, and rushed toward us. Luckily it was only a bluff.

Last night Art and his study partner stayed out all night watching kob with an image intensifier. It is a telescope like thing developed by the army which magnifies any available light so you can see things at night. What Art wanted to find out was whether the animals mate at night like they do in the day and he discovered they did.

Two male Uganda kob sparring on the lek (mating ground)

July 10, 1971
Trip to Katwe to get our lump of beef at 4/50 shillings per kilo.

July 16, 1971
Awakened in night by violent thunderstorm. Next morning discovered Waser’s tent had blown down and everything got drenched so they spent the night in the VW. Marler’s tent also blew down but they were gone.

July 17, 1971
The other day we had a hard rain, which apparently signals the male termites to come out of the ground. So, in the middle of the night we were awakened by a din, caused by the Africans going out to collect the termites around the lights. In the morning, we saw bowls of them and discarded wings all over the ground. They fry the termites and it is a great delicacy!

July 19, 1971
In evening, Art and Beverly’s seminar on ants.

July 21, 1971
Vast colonies of army ants have made trails across the ground. They are the same ones Art and Beverly studied in the Kibale forest. They go out in a column five to twenty ants wide and throw up dirt on either side forming a trench. On either side “guard”ants stand with their pincers raised, seemingly against potential predators. [One day, Jennifer dropped her teddy bear onto an ant column, and the ants hung on so tight, that I had to cut out patches of the bear’s “fur” to remove them.]

July 24, 1971
In morning, took car trip with Marlers and Mary Sue around Royal Circuit hoping to see lions, but saw only lots of waterbuck and kob, a group of elephants with two babies and hippos at hippo pool.

July 25, 1971
Spent most of afternoon at swimming pool and treated ourselves to ice cream.

Mary Sue's Python

July 30, 1971
Last week Mary Sue and I found a nine foot long baby python. It had been speared through the head and left dead on the side of the road. I didn’t really want to touch it, but Mary Sue wanted to bring it back and skin it, so she did. The skin is really beautiful and will be a great souvenir to hang on her wall. We created quite a sensation by bringing it in and there was a whole crowd of people watching the skinning procedure. Afterwards it was rubbed down with salt, scraped, and dried.

Caroline and Jennifer with baby hippo that was being hand raised by park staff

We are at the end of our stay here. This week Jennifer and I and Mary Sue went on two major sightseeing expeditions. Our first was hiring a Land Rover to take us to the craters, which turned out to be absolutely beautiful in the late afternoon sun. On the way we had two special treats. First, a group of elephants, which included a tiny baby nursing from its mother. The second was a pride of lions on a buffalo they had recently killed. This was the first time I’d seen lions doing anything but sleep (like house cats, they are basically rather lazy.) On Wednesday morning we took a boat trip up the channel. We saw all sorts of birds, lots of hippos, giant monitor lizards, plus elephant, buffalo, and bushbuck. It was a beautiful day and what made the trip most enjoyable was that Jennifer behaved well for the entire three hour ride.

July 30, 1971
Punch party at 6:00 in hostel with field course and NUTAE people.

(When the course was over, Art, Jennifer and I spent a week traveling in our rented VW through southwestern Uganda, up to but not across the borders to Burundi and Rwanda, and then back to Kampala. In all, we spent nearly four months in East Africa.)

Update: My friend Pat has traveled to Africa numerous times in recent years, sometimes staying at a private game reserve in South Africa called Leopard Hills. Look at their blog for some amazing video of wildlife (lions, leopards, and more!) seen close up.