Tag: Travel
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Aethelgifu, The Teenage Abbess: A Peak Inside The Walls Of The Shaftesbury Abbey
[Gold Hill, Shafesbury] Silence isn’t empty, it’s full of answers. It was a chilly day, this fourth day of October. Chilly and windy. Mariam and I had just had a very enjoyable lunch with a former student of mine, Sally, and her husband, Matthew. Sally was in my Geography class when I had the joy…
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Breakfast in Marrakech/Dinner in London
[Trafalger Square, London. The National Gallery of Art in the background. A fast car in the foreground. A lion and a blue-lit fountain in the middle ground. Photo is mine.] Keep calm and go to London… The title above makes it sound like it’s a skip and a flip to make the three and a…
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A Tale of Very Old Water Tunnels, Dying Palms & A Police Citation
[One of the many towns we encountered on our way west…toward Marrakesh. Photo is mine.] Traveling-it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller. ~~ Ibn Battuta The Great Dunes are behind us. My dream of riding into the largest desert in the world has been fulfilled. I have no regrets, except for the…
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Nothing Prepared Me For The Medina Of Fez
Leaving our hotel in Fez is an experience. We left our room and walked down a flight of stairs to a sitting room, a sofa with cushions. A baby grand piano is in the next room. Portraits of men in Fezs’ and women in veils. Soldiers with carbines and horses with elaborate saddles. In the…
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The Door To Africa: Tangier in Half a Day
[Mariam at the view point of the place where the Atlantic meets the Mediterranean. Tangier, Morocco. Photo is mine.] It you see her, say hello She might be in Tangier She left here last early spring Is livin’ there, I hear ~~ Bob Dylan We’re at dinner in our hotel, The Royal Tulip. No other…
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Paris Inhabits Me, But Must Free Me To Wander The Dunes
[A Gargoyle contemplates Paris from Notre Dame Cathedral. Charles Laughton, in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, 1939, says to the figure: “Why am I not made of stone like this statue?” Source: Google Search] “Paris…is loath to surrender itself to people who are in a hurry; it belongs to the dreamers…” ~~Julian Green “We’ll always…
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yes I said yes I will Yes.
[James Joyce. Source: Google Search.] Yes, I’m perfectly aware that the title I’ve chosen for this blog is the final sentence in the wondrous novel, Ulysses. Written by James Joyce (shown above) and considered one of the most seminal books of the 20th century. I am also aware that the quote is from Molly Bloom’s…
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Gallery 636
[The Woman. Photo is mine.] We sometimes encounter people, even strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight. Somehow suddenly, all at once, before a word has been spoken. ~~Fyodor Dostoyevsky I’d seen the El Greco, the Tiepolo and the Manet. But, what I really needed was a bench, so hard to find sometimes…
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Rovinj & Split: Olive Oil, Cobblestones, Thrones and Holy Bones
[The closest to Dubrovnik, Croatia that I will get on this journey.] I’m sitting at a desk in Suite 137 on board the Wind Surf (Wind Star Cruise Lines). The level of the mineral water in a glass next to my mouse pad gently tilts, back and forth, like I am playing with a level…
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Next Stop: Poughkeepsie
[Mariam awaits our train at Grand Central Station My weariness amazes. —Bob Dylan As Train #283 chugs northward, the Hudson River, on my left…its water the color of tan mud, is flowing south to enter New York harbor. It’s going home in a way. So are we. Almost one month ago we were aboard the…
patrickjegan 