If you are in the neighborhood, as in anything less than 3000 miles, try to see the Tara Donovan show at the Boston ICA. It is over in mid Dec. 2008. My qualifications as an art critic are minimal - I carved a pumpkin once that received some attention but didn't quite make it to the finals - so you may not find yourself as captivated as I was but... We went to the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston (ICA). Nice new building right on Boston harbor. As we walked into the first gallery I started to grin, and at [View Full Entry]

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This is the second entry of a two-parter about my trip to the Galapagos. It picks up the story half way through the cruise - for the first half, see here. Day 5 Isabela (Punta Moreno and Elizabeth Bay) Day 5 dawned bright and clear - a first - and the volcanic landscape of Isabela met my gaze as I went up on deck for a pre-breakfast gawp. The Galapagos are volcanic islands in a similar fashion to Hawaii, i.e. never connected to the mainland and created by periodic releases of magma from u [View Full Entry]

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I feel shame and sadness in equal parts when I admit that this will be the 1st and only cycling blog of our trip... I was so looking forward to cycle the world!!... reading other cyclists' blogs I made a romantic and naive idea of live on the road... but experience has taught me that I am not as strong... maybe it was the heat, maybe the spiders, maybe the noises at night, but after 200 kms I had to retire from the race... It all started 5 days ago when, full of energy and as exited as a couple of [View Full Entry]

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Its kind of like apples without oranges, Santa without his scary little elves, the Lone Ranger without Tonto, or in some obscure way, God without El Diablo. The story of our time spent on the Indonesian island of Flores would not be complete without first mentioning the time we did on her neighbor, Sumbawa. Having spent just under twenty-four hours on the Island That Shade/Rain Forgot, I am hardly the expert, but when 21.5 hours starts to feel more like a month, you know that it is time to move on. On an island with a landmass larger than Bali and [View Full Entry]

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The sky is black. The water is blacker. Great walls of water, crashing all around us, lifting the boat high in the air, pushing it forward in powerful surges, then releasing us to fall back down again. The skies have opened up and rain is pouring down. The wind is howling in our ears. Where are we? Which direction are we going? How fast are we actually going? We are in the middle of the Indian Ocean, our course is 270 degrees (West), we are going directly downwind, and if there is still any doubt, we are moving very, very fast. [View Full Entry]

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I think the weather was probably the only thing France's king couldn't control in the late 1600's, even though his manicured gardens appear to be an attempt to control nature. The weather for our weekend visit was rainy and cold, but it didn't dampen our enthusiasm. The palace lived up to it's reputation for opulence! It is true expression of self-glorification and King Louis XIV set the standard of quality very high. During the French Revolution the palace was "emptied" of it's furnishings and abandoned. Standing in the Hall of Mirrors, I tried to imagine the drama and chaos of 1789, [View Full Entry]

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Any traveler that has ever considered a trip to Turkey has at least heard of Cappadocia. It is a famous place because of its strange, early Christian history and unique, subterranean architecture. It is a sparse landscape of unsurpassed beauty and boundless mystery located in central Turkey and it is the perfect place for any adventurous tourist to explore at a leisurely pace, provided that they are not too claustrophobic. Everything I had heard about Cappadocia excited me greatly. Being a troglodyte at heart, the stories of intricately decorated rock-cut churches, mysterious subterranean [View Full Entry]

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Morning's first rays lightened the dark streets. We were in Chiang Mai - a clear 700 km north of Bangkok - and looking for room and board. Oh, wait! Let's bring you up to speed. When you last checked in on us we were at the bus station in Phetchaburi just about to buy tickets for Bangkok when we got some 'good news'. A direct bus to Chiang Mai and yet another chance to skirt Thailand's chaotic capital was too good an opportunity to let slide. Chiang Mai's pull was its proximity to the green, relatively unspoilt highlands of north Thailand. [View Full Entry]

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