Atop a huge flat-top hill in Umbria sits the small town of Orvieto, a beautiful site full of medieval buildings still being used for public purposes. At the center of town glows the most magnificent…
She was giving us quite an attitude. Her long arms were arrayed in bracelets, her right hand defiantly planted on her hip, which jutted out sideways. She was all sassy, impertinent, take-no-nonsense, and - according…
Old stone buildings, knitted together by webs of electrical lines, crowd the lanes and back alleys near the New Delhi railroad station, as well as the broader Main Bazaar Road, in the district named Paharganj.…
In India, it is customary to use different hands for different important functions. Think right hand pure; left hand, impure. You pass an object over to another with the right. You eat with the right…
We awoke after our first night in India to the Muslim call to prayer, a high tenor voice chanting over loudspeakers somewhere nearby. Sunlight angled through three imposing stone domes , each with lotus decoration…
We had only planned to stay an hour or so, visiting with a Facebook friend in Tairua, a small town on the southeast coast of the Coromandel Peninsula. But it was seven hours and six…
Marcel Proust wrote a seven volume novel engendered, in a way, by the taste of a madeleine cookie: No sooner had the warm liquid [of tea] mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a…
In 1948, two scientists came to the coastal bluffs along the Tasman Sea just west of Auckland, and for the first time listened to the sounds of stars outside the Milky Way. It’s likely that…
The spiky stalks of rushes - large grassy rods - rose over our heads, densely packed throughout the long stretch in front of us. Even in the cool afternoon, we sweated with the effort of moving…
On a beautiful day Cape Reinga, the end of New Zealand, can feel so benign, if not at all peaceful. Busloads of tourists scurry about for a brief while, snapping pictures, huffing and puffing along…