Tag: travel
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A Love Lesson from a Moroccan Wall
“The love we give away is the only love we keep.” Elbert Hubbard On a salmon-pink back alleyway in Marrakech, Morocco, I discovered a tribute to love’s enduring nature. Its medium was white chalk. The hand that drew it undoubtedly belonged to a child. Its canvas was a rugged wall. That spring, as I explored…
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Fasching Festivities, German Style
For the ten years I called Heidelberg, Germany home, I was lucky to have a bird’s-eye view when Fasching festivities took the university town by storm, as I’m sure they did today.
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A Vietnamese New Year’s Reminiscence
When I unpacked the paper ox ornament last week, it reminded me why I love travel: serendipitous happenings, cultural immersion, and the opportunity to mingle with “citizen diplomats.” With today being the Lunar New Year (called Tết in Vietnamese), it seems fitting to reminisce on a special memory that I made while visiting Hanoi, Vietnam back in 2009.
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Angels, Busts, and Saints Dressed in Snow: A Wintry Visit to Oberammergau’s Cemetery
Perhaps it is a bit macabre, but I find cemeteries – particularly those in foreign locales – to be fascinating and fitting spots to reflect upon a place’s culture and history, and upon life itself. When my husband and I last visited Paris, we spent several hours strolling through the city’s famous Père Lachaise Cemetery, passing headstones of…
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Photo du Jour: A Bejeweled Horse – Angkor Wat, Cambodia
The magic of Angkor Wat and magnificent Cambodian temples like Ta Prohm and Bayon is all in the details: richly-carved female devata and apsara bas-relief figures, a visiting Buddhist monk clad in a tangerine-colored robe spotted amid the grey structures, a handsome horse wearing a bejeweled bridle in Angkor Wat’s fore.
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Photo du Jour: Hello, Sunshine! – Udine, Italy
“Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face.” Victor Hugo A shimmering sun greets passersby from the clock tower of the Loggia di San Giovanni. The graceful, 16th-century structure commands a prime spot on the Piazza della Libertà, in Udine, Italy.
