Category: Day 0 trip
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Day 890 – Winchester, England – The original capital of England
Honestly I didn’t know anything about Winchester, I didn’t even know it existed. We were waiting out our two weeks after our covid boosters and looking for a place a bit less expensive than London with access to hiking and Katy suggested visiting. It turned out to be a lovely city with an interesting…
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Day 880 – El Puerto de Santa María, Spain – The Sherry Triangle (part 3)
According to Homer’s Odyssey, after the Trojan War, Menestheus escaped through the Straits of Gibraltar to the mouth of the Guadalete River (modern day El Puerto de Santa María) where he established Menesthei Portus (Menestheus’s port). The port was famous for an ancient oracle, the Oracle of Menestheus and to whom the inhabitants of…
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Day 875 – Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Spain – The Sherry Triangle (part 2)
The habitation of the area around the mouth of the Guadalquivir river can be traced back to the semi-mythical city of Tartessos and the lost Tartessians culture which had its own written language, contemporaries of the Phoenicians who later built their own port city in nearby Cádiz. The city rich in silver and bronze…
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Day 871 – Jerez de la Frontera – The Sherry Triangle (part 1)
Jerez de la Frontera is a town of just over 200 thousand best known as the production capitol of sherry wines. Here along with the two coastal towns of El Puerto de Santa María and Sanlúcar de Barrameda (until very recently the only three towns where sherry could be legally produced) form a triangle…
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Day 869 – Cádiz, Spain – One of the oldest cities in western Europe.
Cádiz is a peninsular port city located in the south of Spain and is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in western Europe. Founded around 1104 BC by the Phoenicians, this city has a very long history of conquest and reinvention, destruction and rebirth. Columbus sailed from Cádiz on his second and fourth…
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Day 848 – Seville, Spain – The Best Tapas in Seville
I travel for food. And I’ve been around the world in search of the best. Spain might be the best place in the world to eat right now. And my favorite Spanish food comes from Andalusia in southern Spain and specifically tapas bars (though tapas style bars are common across all of Spain). Tapas…
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Day 795 – Chiang Mai, Thailand – The Buddhist Temples of Northern Thailand
Having grown up in austere protestant American churches conspicuously devoid of ornate or lavish decoration, I never felt particularly connected to those holy places. My personal spirituality always manifested in elaborate, intricate, and shamanically hypnotic self-made shrines and environments. A visual language that more fit the internal beauty that I experience the world as,…
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The Best Khao Soi in Chiang Mai
I have somewhat of an obsession with the northern Thai specialty, khao soi. It’s a typical northern Thai curry noodle soup that is ubiquitous in Chiang Mai but uncommon in American Thai restaurants and even uncommon in Bangkok and southern Thailand. To my shame, I visited Chiang Mai about 4 years ago, but had…
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Day 795 – Chiang Mai, Thailand – Kingdom of a Million Rice Fields
Northern Thailand. There is something haunting in the mist covered mountains and emerald rice fields surrounding the city. Something that I connect to. A reverence for the spirits of trees and nature. Of something beyond our earthly pursuits. A kindness that permeates the people, a resilient joyfulness, and a welcoming disposition. It’s something that…
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Day 754 – Istanbul, Turkey – Going native in Kadıköy on the Asian side.
It is impossible for me to walk through the streets of Istanbul and not ponder chaos theory and particle swarm dynamics as a system of organization. The symphonic madness. The rivers of kinetic energy. The ancient flow. When I first came to Istanbul, my western eyes could only see the discordant mash of unrelated…