South African Travel Guide: ‘Gem of the Karoo’ in a spacious mountain setting continued November 6, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Art Gallery, Europe, Hotels, Library, Memorial, Money, Museum, South Africa, Tour , 2commentsReinet House is now a superb period house museum, containing some of the personal possessions of the Murrays, and many fascinating domestic items. There is also a display on the town’s Reinet dolls. These were first made during World War I when many luxury imports, including dolls, could not be obtained.
In the back yard of Reinet House there is a reconstructed water mill, which can be operated by inserting a coin, and nearby is the old Black Acorn vine planted in 1870 by Charles Murray — believed to have been the thickest in the world until dead wood was removed in 1983. (more…)
Across the Swartberg and through the brightly coloured Meiringspoort October 22, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Africa, Cape Town, Hotels, Map, Memorial, Money, Restaurant, South Africa, Sunblock, Travelling Bag , 2commentsThe Grootrivier (great river) sculpted the colourful Meiringspoort gorge through the barrier of the Swartberg range, and our route follows the road that now winds along the river’s banks. First, however, we cross the mountains from south to north by rneans of the soaring Swartberg Pass. Four fifths of the route is tarred, the rest is gravel.
If you are considering this drive in winter, first check with the AA in George that the Swartberg Pass has not been blocked by snow. (more…)
A Thundering Waterfall in a dry, Desert Landscape September 30, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Africa, Air Tickets, Cape Town, Europe, Geographic, Round The World, Tour, Trails, Travellers Cheque, Zambia , 3commentsKnown to the wandering Khoikhoi as Aukoerebis (place of great noise), the Augrabies Falls thunder over a great granite slash in the barren bushveld of the northern Cape. Here the tumbling waters of the Orange River go mad in a series of deep ravines and dangerous, dizzying cliffs.
The first white man to see the falls was a Swedish-born soldier named Hendrik Wikar. Wikar deserted his post at the Cape in 1775 to escape an accumulation of gambling debts, and for four years he wandered through the uncharted country now known as the northern Cape describing in a journal, (more…)
Disappeared Inca Empire Supremacy CUZCO part 1 September 19, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Cars, Chile, Cuzco, Destination, Flight Schedule, Sunblock, The Nile, Travel Clinic, Travellers Cheque , 2commentsMore than merely the capital of the Inca empire, the very name ‘Cuzco‘ in Quechua, the language of the Incas and still spoken today, means navel. It was the navel of the Inca world, the omphalos of their empire which at its height stretched over 2,000 miles (3,200km) from Chile in the south to Colombia in the north. It was both an administrative centre and holy city, and is said to have been conceived in the shape of a puma, with its head at Sacsahuaman, the great fortress of cyclopean stonework on the northern edge of modern Cuzco. (more…)
Norway Røros Mysterious Light Phenomena continue… September 19, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Air Tickets, Beach Resorts, Canada, Destination, Hotels, Norway, Travel Insurance, Travellers Cheque, Travelling Bag , 2commentsThere seem to be various geological properties that recur frequently in zones that are prone to the appearance of these ‘earth lights‘ .’ Faulting is one of these factors, and faulting occurs around Hessdalen. Mineral deposits are another, and, of course, with Røros being famed for its mining heritage, it is not surprising to find that the area is heavily mineralized with all kinds of ores. (more…)
One More Burmese Day August 31, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Asia, Europe, Forex, Hotels, Rail Pass, Singapore, Tour, Trails, Travel Gear, Travelling Bag, Trip , 3commentsAt five in the morning Rangoon shakes off sleep. Paraffin lamps cast pools of sputtering light on the wet streets. After a night of drizzle, the city murmurs as though sound, like the dust, has been cleared from the air by the rain. The lamps wheeze. In a café doorway a man slaps chapati dough on to a board, and stacks the rolled balls into ranks. A boy yawns and adjusts his lunghi. He oversees a water tank parked in the road. Water splashes from a faucet into a jerrican, and when it fills the boy sluggishly replaces it from a line of empty ones. A truck, far off, grinds gears and whines, coming slowly closer. (more…)
My Traveling Companions two Flying Horses continue… August 14, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Air Tickets, Asia, China, Europe, Hotels, India, Money, Round The World, Sightseeing, Tour, Travellers Cheque, Trip , 3commentsThere is a sweet old chestnut about the JAL jumbo mistakenly landing on a tiny nearby private airfield in smog. On that occasion three miles of slums were levelled as a pathway along which the stranded plane could be dragged back to the International Airport runway. Only from here could it be reasonably expected to take off.
Our problem had been landing at all. The hydraulic lines had burst and the wheels had to be lowered manually. (more…)
Five days in Guinea, Discovering World Wide Attractions, Traveling, Fun, Tour, Rail Passing July 6, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Africa, Cash, Passport, Tour, Travellers Cheque , 5commentsDuring the night the rats stole my soap. A garrison of them lived beneath the floorboards and above the sagging, mildewed ceiling of my room. They swaggered about the place as though they owned it — which I suppose they did really: few people must have stayed in the old barrack-house since Nova Lamego was a beleaguered outpost of the Portuguese empire in Africa, surrounded by guerrilla-held bush, as the long war of liberation surged back and forth across the frontier with its neurotic Marxist neighbour, the People’s Republic of Guinea.
I rubbed the sleep of history from my eyes and stepped outside into the present: nowadays Nova Lamego is the peaceful market town of Gabu, in the east of independent Guinea-Bissau, and a couple of battered old civilian vehicles wheeze across that frontier each week.
Blinking in the unwashed light of dawn, I located the formidable old Russian lorry that came close to my idea of the archetypal truck. It had one headlight missing and was blind in the other; sported a complete set of bald tyres, and was incontinent on all counts: punctured exhaust, cracked radiator, and oozing a fuse of oil and petrol whenever it moved — which wasn’t for some time, as it took all morning to attract a full cargo of thirty passengers and their belongings. (more…)
Five days in Guinea, Discovering World Wide Attractions, Traveling, Fun, Tour, Rail Passing July 6, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Africa, Cash, Passport, Tour, Travellers Cheque , 5commentsDuring the night the rats stole my soap. A garrison of them lived beneath the floorboards and above the sagging, mildewed ceiling of my room. They swaggered about the place as though they owned it — which I suppose they did really: few people must have stayed in the old barrack-house since Nova Lamego was a beleaguered outpost of the Portuguese empire in Africa, surrounded by guerrilla-held bush, as the long war of liberation surged back and forth across the frontier with its neurotic Marxist neighbour, the People’s Republic of Guinea.
I rubbed the sleep of history from my eyes and stepped outside into the present: nowadays Nova Lamego is the peaceful market town of Gabu, in the east of independent Guinea-Bissau, and a couple of battered old civilian vehicles wheeze across that frontier each week.
Blinking in the unwashed light of dawn, I located the formidable old Russian lorry that came close to my idea of the archetypal truck. It had one headlight missing and was blind in the other; sported a complete set of bald tyres, and was incontinent on all counts: punctured exhaust, cracked radiator, and oozing a fuse of oil and petrol whenever it moved — which wasn’t for some time, as it took all morning to attract a full cargo of thirty passengers and their belongings. (more…)
A Fair Show, happy Travelers Diaries July 6, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Aquarium, Cars, Cash, China, Destination, Dolphinarium, Ireland, Library, Museum, Restaurant, Round The World, Tour , 3commentsThrough Leinster and Munster, along Connaught lanes and highways there’s a movement. Brazenly on verges, tucked behind hedges, parked in laybys there are caravans. Not tourists but the homes of the Irish Travellers, the Tinkers. Herds of their horses hold up the traffic. Greys, chestnuts, roans, bays and the especial pride, the batty mares: great coloured, patched horses, piebald and skewbald, hooves swathed in shaggy hair. They’re all heading along roads which lead to the nub, the October fair, Ballinasloe. A convergence for horses and horsemanship, dealing and drinking, exchanging news and the “crack”. “You’ll never see as many horses together as you will at Ballinasloe. Once Seamus McGinty rode down the high street at the head of sixty, his sons as outriders flanking their wealth.” (more…)
Sintra: The palace of the Portuguese sovereigns in the Moorish style May 10, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Air Tickets, Beach Resorts, Cars, Destination, Embassy, Flight Schedule, Hostels, Hotels, Istanbul, Lisbon, Lodges, Motel, Portugal, Round The World, Travellers Cheque, USA , add a commentThe Alhambra itself cannot well be more morisco in point of architecture than this confused pile which crowns the summit of a rocky eminence and is broken into a variety of picturesque recesses and projections.’ This description of Sintra Palace, which William Beckford entered in his journal on Sunday, September, 2,1787, has been echoed again and again by subsequent visitors, who have thereby, consciously or unconsciously, subscribed to the tradition that the building dates from the period of the Saracenic occupation of Portugal.
Many of its features are indeed strikingly Moorish in design, especially the pair of conical chimneys resembling giant Kentish oast-houses — oriental relations to that of Glastonbury, and distant cousins to those that adorn the seraglio of Abdul the Damned at Istanbul. (more…)
Queluz: A rose pink palace in the French eighteenth-century style May 8, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Air Tickets, Bank Note, Beach Resorts, Brazil, Denmark, England, Europe, Flight Schedule, Hotels, Italy, Library, Lisbon, London, Memorial, Museum, Portugal, Restaurant, Spain, Sweden, Travellers Cheque , add a commentThe palace of QUELUZ, near Lisbon, is elegantly rustic in a way that is very characteristic of Portuguese life and manners. It has a seductive grace, for its muted beauty grows on the beholder gradually, until at length the splendours of a more conventionally royal building seem almost vulgar in comparison.
The rose-pink colour-washed facade is cunningly designed with two low semi-circular wings springing out from a small central block. The southern side ends in a black onion dome above the chapel, and goes on at right angles in a series of dependent buildings of different sizes. The northern wing now contains a luxury restaurant in the original kitchens of the palace. (more…)
The Winter Palace: A masterpiece by Italian and French architects on Neva continue… May 4, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Bank Note, Beach Resorts, Credit Card, Flight Schedule, Library, Memorial, Moscow, Museum, Paris, Travel Clinic, Travellers Cheque , 3commentsWith Catherine the Great in power we find a new style creeping into the character of the buildings, classical tendencies from the West replacing Elisabeth’s Russian rococo style, the Palladian influence reaching as far as St Petersburg. The town gradually became, particularly in the reign of Alexander I, an ‘ Empire’ town; its classicist features were introduced first by Quarenghi and later maintained by Rossi. Rinaldi, the Italian architect, and the French Vallin de la Mothe, both employed by Catherine the Great, brought the Louis XVI style to St Petersburg, but on an overwhelming scale, inspired and required by the gigantic dimensions of the Neva. (more…)
The Winter Palace: A masterpiece by Italian and French architects on Neva May 4, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Beach Resorts, Credit Card, Finland, Health Insurance, Library, Memorial, Moscow, Museum, Russia, Travellers Cheque , 3commentsIt is impossible to talk of the Winter Palace without first conjuring up a picture of the city of St Petersburg, now Leningrad, and of the Neva River. I know of nothing in the world more beautiful than that great expanse of limpid and tremulous water, purified by the filter of the Ladoga Lake, and constantly agitated by tiny iridescent waves, that flow impetuously between the double dam of its magnificent embankments built in the rose granite of Finland. And the powerful stream that moves between the golden needle of the Petropavlovsk Fortress and the long facade of the Winter Palace is but a very small part indeed of the great river. (more…)
Tullgarn: A charming lakeside summer-palace of the Swedish monarchy April 25, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Airlines, Beach Resorts, Hotels, Library, Lodges, Memorial, Museum, Russia, Sweden, Travellers Cheque , 3commentsMuch of Sweden is composed of very wild country, and even today one can travel for miles through the rock-strewn, dark pine forests only occasionally seeing a cluster of houses or a gang of wood-cutters or a school bus on its daily round, returning the children from the school-house in some local township. Every now and then one comes to a town which has grown up round the timber industry, but such towns are mostly fairly new and it is hardly an exaggeration to say that in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there was nothing but wilderness stretching over most of Sweden — dark, terrifying and, it is easy to imagine, filled with trolls and other supernatural beings. Separated by these vast forests, were the three principal areas of habitation. (more…)
Kronborg: Hamlet’s pinacled castle at Elsinore on the Baltic shore April 23, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Air Tickets, Airlines, Beach Resorts, Denmark, Hostels, Hotels, Lodges, Memorial, Museum, Sweden, Travel Insurance, Travellers Cheque , add a commentKronborg is situated outside Elsinore, on the coast, forty kilometres north of Copenhagen, and on the promontory farthest to the north-east of Zealand. Although close to Elsinore, Kronborg is not really, and never has been, that town’s citadel. Even more than is the case today, Kronborg in former times stood apart from Elsinore. In those days, as the old pictures show, the open stretch between the castle and the town was still broader, and the great fortifications then as now surrounded the castle only, while the town remained defenceless.
Kronborg stands at the narrowest part of the Sound between Denmark and Sweden. On the journey by sea from the north towards Copenhagen the towers of the castle are the first thing to come into view. In former times this sight certainly more often than not gave cause for mixed feelings, especially to captains of foreign merchant vessels. For, from 1425 until 1857, the ships had to cast anchor at Kronborg and there pay a toll for passage through the Sound, both sides of which until I 66o were Danish territory. As this toll yielded a large revenue, which went direct to the King’s own privy purse, the Danish kings bestowed great care on Kronborg, which by virtue of its guns was expected to ensure payment of the toll. (more…)
Corfu: The place erected in honour of St Michael and St George continue… April 21, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Beach Resorts, Credit Card, Greece, Hotels, Lodges, Memorial , add a commentIt comes therefore as a surprise to learn that the architect was a British soldier. Colonel (afterwards General Sir George) Whitmore was an officer in the Royal Engineers, attached to the Corfu garrison for the purpose. In his unpublished memoirs, recently unearthed by Mr Stelio Hourmouzios, Whitmore described the difficulties by which he was beset. It was only after his design had been approved that he was told that the legislative chamber was to be housed under the same roof; and the parsimony which hampered his first designs was gradually relaxed as the work progressed (a strange experience for an architect) and he was obliged to spend on the embellishment of the interior what he would have gladly earmarked at an earlier stage on the design as a whole. (more…)
Ceremonies in the House of God April 20, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Beach Resorts, Egypt, Travel Clinic, Travel Insurance, Travellers Cheque , add a commentThe concept of the temple as the “house of god” has been accepted, with the proviso that it should not be taken too literally. But in examining the relationship between the physical elements of the temples and the ceremonies that took place therein, the concept helps to illuminate Egyptian religious attitudes. Some such relationship is inherent in all religious structures, of course, even when the concepts and the temples differ greatly from those of the ancient Egyptians, as in Christianity. In the classical Greek temple, for example, the statue of the god was retained but the altar was situated in an area in front of the temple; the same happened with the ancient Roman temple. And in these two civilizations, not only did the most important moment of worship, the sacrifice, take place outside the temple, but it occurred on certain occasions only. (more…)
Relations Between State and Clergy April 20, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Hotels, Memorial, Museum, Travellers Cheque , add a commentWe have been aware that the temples and religious monuments ofancient Egypt were all the exclusive works of the pharaohs. There isa precise reason for this. Actually, there was only one true priest, one depositary of the divine will, one guarantor of the well-being of the god’s land, the nation: this was the pharaoh. Thus it was that all those connected with worship practices were really subalterns. Even the high priest, the only person who could enter the god’s sanctuary, was merely the pharaoh’s substitute. And just as the state functionary class grew up because the king alone found it impossible to govern a nation with such complex administrative structures, so the priesthood developed because the pharaoh could not attend to the ceremonies of all the nation’s temples. (more…)
The Interior of a New Kingdom Temple April 19, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Egypt, Flight Schedule, Museum, Travel Insurance, Travellers Cheque , add a commentBefore entering the temple, let us again emphasize its image as a “house of god,” because this is the simplest and most useful way to look at it. Consider the temple organized like a human dwelling. There is one part for private living, another for supporting Services, and a third for “public reception.” So with the New Kingdom temple, we have three roughly analogous parts: one where the god lives; another where the preparatory ceremonies (or functions not directly connected with the cult) take place; and the third, which is public, a place where the god and worshiper can meet. In order to avoid confusion it would be better to use the technical names for these three parts : the sanctuary, the hypostyle hall, and the courtyard. (more…)
