The Abbey Hotel in Donegal is very large, very busy and has great staff but room service must be very slow since we didnt get our rooms until 5pm. It is a good job we werent wet through and needing a shower. The evening meal made up for it with good quality food and a pleasant waiter.
Leaving Sligo in the morning was pleasant enough under a blue sky alongside the river and wading birds. The hill Read on...
St Lucia is a tourist town famous for its wetland park declared a UNESCO world heritage site for biodiversity in 1999. iSimangaliso Wetland Park, as it is called today, is the largest estuary system in the world. Its waters are in average only 1.5m deep and they are home to 115 species of fish and 530 types of birds, including migrating birds from Europe, some of them flying over 18000km to reach Read on...
Saturday mornings are apparently family mornings at Fionas so we head there to share in the chaos and to meet her two grandchildren. Issys always been a sucker for babies, so I suspect Fionas daughter Sarah may struggle to reclaim seven week old from my beloveds firm grasp. Two year old Jerry has recently discovered the not so subtle art of Im not quite sure why his hands arent stinging; those b Read on...
This morning weve booked a mythological tour of Athens highlights. Im not sure exactly what this means, but Issys sensing a lot of ancient temples so elects to stay in bed. Im a bit surprised shes let me venture out on my own. She said last night that I shouldnt go out after dark by myself given that we seem to be staying in the middle of the red light district. I wasnt quite sure whether that was Read on...
While I recently posted a photo of me and my Dad for Fathers Day, there is a better one. You may have seen it before on my FB page. It was taken by a professional photographer from NY back in the Fifties. As I recall, it was published nationally, and may also have won some awards. The photo is my paternal Grandmother, Yuki Kataoka, and my youngest sister Carolyn. It was taken on the ranch next doo Read on...
The construction of the Avenue of Sphinxes began during the New Kingdom and finished during 30th Dynasty rule of Nectanebo I BC).
Around 1,200 sphinx statues are thought to have lined this road together with barque chapels stocked with offerings.
The Avenue is one of the most important archaeological and religious paths in Luxor, as it was the location of important religious ceremonies in ancie Read on...
Aprs un autre la chambre, nous quittons lhtel pour faire un petit tour de reconnaissance du quartier financier Nous rendons visite au clbre taureau de Wall Street et prenons lobligatoire photo avec la bte. Sur place, on se rend que nous ne sommes pas les seuls qubcois visiter lors du long cong de Pques. a grouille de qubcois au mtre carr! Nous allons ensuite attendre notre bus deux tages pour Read on...
I visited this shop on 30th May and found a number of highly valuable stamps, stamp albums and coins. Shop staff were wearing formal clothes.
As instructed by London Literary Walking guide, I started the course from Embankment station. I walked through small alleyways, gone past Embankment Gardens, the building where Samuel Pepsy used to live and the building has been used for Royal Society of Ar Read on...
Den Auftakt hatten wir uns ein wenig anders vorgestellt: eigentlich wollten wir bereits am Samstag in Richtung Seligenstadt gestartet sein und uns einen Tag mit Molly die Umgebung ansehen um dann mit den Rdern Richtung Mainz aufzubrechen und eine radeln. Daraus ist nichts geworden.
Nun aber auf an den Gardasee...na, ja - fast. Wir wollen noch kurz nach Ulm rein, einen Corona Test machen und die Read on...
of masked fans attending a football game at Georgia Tech in 1918, during the Spanish flu pandemic. This week, I wanted to see the same place as it confronted a new pandemic, just over a century later. As luck would have it, one of my favorite teams, the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, were playing at Georgia Tech on Halloween afternoon. This game was on the calendar before the pandemic, but originally Read on...