Curated Fernweh
Gibraltar is 95% a huge slab of rock, sticking up from the Mediterranean in one direction and out from Spain in the other direction. As soon as I saw the behemoth rock I knew I would forsake the cable car and climb up it instead, forgetting yet again that walking uphill in the [sub]tropics is... Continue Reading →
What not to do as Americans in Europe: Christmas edition
A deep inhalation spurred by exertion brought crisp alpine air into my lungs, and I used it as fuel to continue on up the Via Alpina, a 2,000-kilometer-long hiking trail that curls from one end of the Alps to the other.
We went to China's Fujian province to look at trees, and ended up also seeing tulou and tigers and geoparks and...
You are presented with an endless series of open doorways. One will lead you into a slot canyon of carved walls and gnarled trunks. The next leads into a tumbledown courtyard filled with beehive temples. The next has you following the taffy-like trunk and roots of a single behemoth tree.
The perfectly-square Old Town of Chiang Mai is a compact 1.5 miles on each side, yet the density of temples apparently rivals the concentration of churches in Rome.
I'm a firm believer in letting myself be surprised by a destination rather than doing too much research beforehand, which can have either disastrous or amazing results depending on whether I happen to miss or find the highlights.
If I had to summarize my impression of Japan after my ten-day visit using only one sentence, it might be this: “I imagine Japan emerged from ancient East Asian culture in a similar way to how shibas somehow evolved from wolves.”
Window Seat Odyssey 