Category Archives: travel

The water was cold.  It was thick, like slush ice.  Only it kind of lived.  One part of you knowed it was just water, the same thing that had been running under this same bridge for a long time, yet … Continue reading→

On the cab ride from the airport, the driver, Ali, was perplexed by my questions about the cemeteries we passed and my eagerness to visit them.  I mentioned the famously ornate style of New Orleans cemeteries and their above ground tombs, … Continue reading→

Arriving at night leaves the traveler with a skewed perspective.  Mid-City seemed dark and mysterious, dangerous even, the enormous granite elk in Greenwood cemetery portentous.  In the light of day, of course, things had changed.  All pigs look black at … Continue reading→

Driving down Karl Marx Allee in the former East Berlin seems to be a better indicator of life under Soviet rule than taking snapshots of men in uniform at Checkpoint Charlie.  The bland yet bombastic, monotonous buildings, which are now … Continue reading→

San Miguel de Allende, México, December 2006

We drove the quiet, wide-open two-lane, counting the other cars on one hand, passing family ranches with their names bent into iron and adorned with longhorns and wreaths.  The highway cut through nowhere, the place chosen for a Prada store … Continue reading→

The Texas state motto is “Friendship,” as advertised on their highways and sidewalks.  Strangers smiled and said hello as they passed.  We could hear music coming from every restaurant along South Congress. We pulled into the dusty fair grounds of … Continue reading→

What a strange, and alluring, and transporting, and wonderful feeling is in the word: road! Gogol, Dead Souls It always seems so desolate, driving along highway 5 in central California.  Signs of life abound—houses with no neighbors, orchards, billboards for … Continue reading→

Barcelona, te echo de menos.

These two walking down the aisle looked like newlyweds, carrying something heavy. They saw me snap a photo and winked. What I find most surprising about the Sagrada Familia is not its dripping nativity facade, like one of those candles … Continue reading→

Tibidabo, 11 September 2010

Those words, which I’ve often heard spoken with the fondness that memory lends, have always loomed large in my mind.  I grew up hearing stories of my mom’s travels to the Costa Brava, eating regional pastries with coffee from bowls … Continue reading→