Category: Cities

PRAGUE'S ORLOJ DELIVERS A GOOD TIME

4/5/2017

Clockmaker Mikulas of Kadan & mathematician Jan Sindel get the credit for this magnificent timepiece.

Leave it to Orloj to show us a good time in Prague.

With nothing but time on his hands (my bad!), the oldest working clock of its kind in the world took center stage to do what he does best time and time again; mark the passage of time with uncharacteristic flair.

Indeed, Orloj was quite the charmer; downright heavenly!

ROMANIA'S SIGHISOARA'S CITADEL: A BLISSFUL UNION OF PAST AND PRESENT

1/2/2017

Marry the woman, marry the family; especially in Eastern Europe.

My motto?

Life’s a party. Let’s crash it!

Ok, so maybe Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn get credit for being the Wedding Crashers, but hey, this is 2016, a decade and then some beyond their 2005 antics. Somebody has to continue the tradition.

Crashing the party in Romania was easy.

BRASOV, ROMANIA: TIME IN A BOTTLE

11/9/2016

Brasov's Council Square sparkled with mystery and history.

So, this is where legend has it the Pied Piper reemerged after his Hamelin visit.

I could see it. There was certainly something whimsically enchanting about Romania’s medieval city of Brasov. Dusk did wonders for adding just the right touch of magic.

SHOES ON THE DANUBE BANK

10/28/2016

Thank you, film director Can Togay and sculptor Gyula Pauer, for honoring those so senselessly lost.

The most terrible of atrocities had been memoralized simply and poignantly.

Sixty pairs of rusted period shoes in all styles and sizes had been cast in iron. Different sizes and styles suggested no one had been spared - rich, poor, young, old, mother, child, peasant, professional - all had been forced at gunpoint, usually in the middle of the night, to march to the banks of the Danube River just south of Budapest's grand Parliament building; all had been instructed to remove their shoes; thereafter, all had been shot before falling into the river that carried them away.

7 THINGS YOU MIGHT NOT KNOW ABOUT ROMANIA

10/20/2016

Our bus headed north from Bucharest on highway A3 through Romania's Carpathian Mountains, away from the bustling capital city; away from the indelible stamp of communism on drab buildings housing 2.5 million residents now looking to democracy for a brighter future.

Grey seemed the prevailing color for all the socialist architectural statements.

History has not always been kind to Romania, to her "citizens of the Roman Empire," but that's another post altogether. History aside, I discovered the largest country in Southeastern Europe has much more than Transylvania and Count Dracula to offer the world, thank you very much Bram Stoker.

You can thank yours truly via the comments for today's highlights, 7 Things You Might Not Know About Romania. And to think a few months ago I couldn't even find Romania on a world map. It's wonderful what travel does for one's view of the world.

SEATTLE & A LESSON ON LESS IS MORE

8/11/2016

The entire Columbia Center experience left me feeling a bit dizzy.

So this is what “the most obscene erection of ego edifice on the Pacific Coast” looks like.

Eat your heart out Trump!

Alas, even the late Victor Steinbrueck, former dean of the University of Washington School of Architecture, couldn’t save Seattle from this “flat-out symbol of greed and egoism.”

Would it be gauche of me to report that from the top of Seattle’s ‘obscene’ Columbia Center the views of Puget Sound, Elliott Bay, and Mount Rainier were to die-for?

Okay, so sophistication isn’t my strong suit; but I do have a knack for composition when it comes to photography.

And I do have some obscenely scenic pictures to share!

DREAMERS, SCHEMERS & A VISIT TO A GOLD RUSH CEMETERY

8/4/2016

It used to be my dance card was filled with weddings, baby showers and graduations; wonderful dance partners full of life and love and hope for the future. And then a few decades ago, funerals tapped me on the shoulder, wanting a spin around the dance floor.

Feet, don’t fail me now!

I need a younger group of friends! Not much I can do about family members putting on the years as quickly as the pounds. Guilty as charged.

Needless to say, I’ve done my fair share of wandering cemeteries over the past few years.

In fact, my latest foray into Woodlawn Cemetery was just yesterday. May Jimmy’s cousin, Alice, rest in peace. She was laid to rest surrounded by family, both the living and the dead; plenty of love and history to go around.

No, this is not Woodlawn Cemetery! This one belongs to Alaska's Gold Rush period!

Indeed, there’s plenty of history to be had in any cemetery; rich or rogue, young and old, famous and infamous, all offer a spiritual link to the past.

Few had a past with as much 'spirit' as Jefferson Randolph Smith (no relation).

SKAGWAY, ALASKA: GATEWAY TO THE KLONDIKE

7/29/2016

Okay, let’s just put it out there.

There was very little that was charming or quaint about Skagway, Alaska.

Violet was a most unusual and beguiling hood ornament for her Skagway Streetcar.

Well, there was Violet. I’ll get back to her in a minute.

Vast rugged wilderness and natural beauty is what Alaska is all about, although for a brief period, just before the turn of the 20th century, Alaska was all about GOLD!

Tens of thousands of dreamers and schemers passed through the virtually uninhabited Glacial Valley the native Tlingit called Skgagwei; all contributed to the raw and raucous two-year period from 1898 to 1900 at the core of much of Skagway’s history; at least the bulk of history Violet shared during our one hour tour of Alaska’s first incorporated city.

HUNGRY FOR MORE ALASKA

7/7/2016

Johns Hopkins Glacier emerges from the misty waters of Alaska's Glacier Bay.

Mile after mile after magnificent mile (6,600 miles of coastline) was unimaginably beautiful; and serene; and remote. Only 20% of Alaska can be reached by road; which is why we chose to come by boat. Most visitors do.

HISTORY & HANNIBAL OFFER A UNIQUE VIEW OF AN AMERICAN TREASURE

6/23/2016

Mark Twain and 'The Unsinkable Molly Brown' (she survived the Titanic) both hail from Hannibal, Missouri.

It was all interstate driving from Chicago to Springfield, three hours of nondescript farmland laid bare by winter’s chilly disposition. A right turn just south of Springfield put Hannibal, Missouri, America’s self-proclaimed Hometown, within easy reach. Jimmy and I had the boyhood home of Samuel Clemens (yes that would be none other than Mark Twain) in our sights.

The dusty, quiet riverboat town of Hannibal, settled in the early 1800s on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River, had an uncanny resemblance to Twain’s fictitious hometown of St. Petersburg, right down to protagonist Tom Sawyer’s infamous white-washed picket fence;

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