Category: Travel
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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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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…
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Day 748 – Santiago de Compostela, Spain – The end of the Camino.
The Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain was believed to house the remains of St. John the apostle and in the 10th century became one of the three great pilgrimage sites of the Catholic church (Rome and Jerusalem being the others) where one could earn a plenary indulgence for the journey. There are…
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Day 731 – Porto, Portugal – There’s no place like Porto
Porto. I’ve been here before. The once familiar caress of an old lover. The ghostly remembrances of younger explorations. Embarrassingly inexperienced. Ridiculous notions of what to do. Fears. Words left unsaid. A gnawing regret for not doing things right. And now, under the cloudy dark skies, you get another chance to do it right. You…
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Day 701 – Vienna, Austria – Beethoven, Marie Antoinette, and Rococo
I didn’t know what to expect from Vienna. One of my favorite movies, Before Sunrise, paints a painfully romantic version of the city that I didn’t hope to be a true experience. But I have to say, the place is beautiful. You really do find yourself wandering through majestic gardens and down dark and magical…