France World Heritage Chartres Cathedral part 3 August 11, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Air Tickets, Europe, Hotels, Jerusalem, Library, Museum, Oceanarium, Rail Pass, Restaurant, Sightseeing, Tickets, Tour , 3commentsIt was called ‘La Lieue’, The League, although the length of its path isconsiderably shorter than a league (6,850 feet/ 2,088m) at approximately 450 feet (140m). It is believed that the Christian usage of such designs was as penance paths, and there are hints in names for Christian labyrinths that suggest their perambulation could be used in lieu of a physical pilgrimage to Jerusalem. But they are also cosmographic images, and this is indicated by the Chartres design. (more…)
Boating in Eire Dolmens and Blarney, feeling of plunging Water, eXhilaration Adventure July 25, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Aquarium, Art Gallery, Coliseum, Dolphinarium, Hotels, Motel, Museum, Oceanarium, Planetarium, Restaurant , 3commentsIt was a bright, clear spring morning when the boat docked in Rosslare and I disembarked in Eire.
Finding the roads almost traffic free, I decided to push on as quickly as possible towards the harsh and romantic west coast.
I was making good time when my eye was caught by a small, wooden sign, on which was written, “Harristown Dolmen“. I pulled up opposite, wound down the window and stared. At this point I might as well confess to being what is called in the trade a “megalithomaniac”. Any stone, no matter how small, if it has the tag “megalithic”, then I’m hooked. (more…)
River Journey up the Zaire July 23, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Aquarium, Art Gallery, Canada, Coliseum, Dolphinarium, Hotels, Motel, Museum, Oceanarium, Planetarium, Restaurant, Trip , 4comments“Into the eighth day and I really feel I’ve had enough. I’d like to be transported to a bathroom in the Ritz and then to a dry Martini in the bar.”
Eighth day, Zaire River. We often lost each other on the seven barges being pushed a thousand miles up the Zaire River, once Conrad’s Congo.
I found my son Joseph, aged seven, in one of the five bars with Sammy, a young soldier. to-dot puzzle. Sammy was concentrating on Joseph’s dot-to-dot puzzle.
“He’s very good at them,” said Joseph. “He never misses a dot.” “Where’s Daddy?”
“Gone for a pee at the back.”
It was all right for men, they could go over the side. Women had to cope with the dark, smelly “cabinets” and first invite the rats to leave through the crumbling rusty holes. These were the boats left at the Belgian Congo’s independence. (more…)
The EXhilaration Adventure, real Hiking Mountain Trail, Kebnekaise Mountain Station July 18, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Air Tickets, Airlines, Art Gallery, Beach Resorts, Cars, Coliseum, Dolphinarium, Hostels, Hotels, Lodges, Motel, Museum, Norway, Oceanarium, Planetarium, Restaurant, Round The World, Sweden, Trip , 2commentsThree of us got off the train at Abisko in the mountains of Swedish Lapland: two men and a dog. I sat on my rucksack while the dog and his friend strolled over to the station building. When they were out of sight I stood up, glanced at my map and took a compass reading. It’s difficult to look confident in the mountains, so I always check map readings when there’s no-one to question my judgment.
I was going to walk south through Lapporten to Kebnekaise — Sweden’s highest mountain, 7,000 feet above sea level — and on to Nikkaluotka, a Lapp settlement by a beautiful ribbon lake. If the weather was good, it would take about a week. If not, I told myself that ten days would do. (more…)
Not Memsahib July 14, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Air Tickets, Airlines, Beach Resorts, Cars, Destination, Europe, Flight Schedule, Hotels, India, Lodges, London, Motel, Museum, Oceanarium, Planetarium, Rail Pass, Restaurant, Sightseeing, Tickets, Tour, Trails, Trip , 3commentsEvery time I heard the word memsahib I wanted to take an ice-pick to the user. I’d gone on the Hindu trail clutching my libertarianism to my bosom, a cosy cocoon from which I could rationalise and contain the INDIAshrieks from the inferno — not that Dante, I’m sure, ever went to Calcutta. Very right-on. Very arm’s-length. But keep your liberal sensibilities Gandhi-pure? Emerge unscathed? Forget it.
Sympathy, empathy, had long since given way to simmering hysteria, cringing shame and a seething, at times uncontrollable rage which was generalised in its target but oh so localised in its pain. It wasn’t even a consolingly righteous anger at the pulverising poverty, the callousness of caste or the stalinisation of women — more a deep-seated disgust and hatred welling up from deep down and spewing out over all humanity, most of all myself . . . Well, OK, you try and make sense of the matchstick people of Madhya Pradesh, the execrable excrement of Bombay and Dehli, the obscene opulence of Jaipur jewellers, the blinding, vivid hues of Rajasthani women’s skirts — and all of it sinking in one great ubiquitous quicksand of suffocating, strangulating bureaucracy. (more…)
Getting High in the Yemen Question: how can you see London, Paris and New York simultaneously while sitting in a Remote Corner of the Arabian Peninsula? July 9, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Africa, Air Tickets, Beach Resorts, Cars, Europe, Hostels, Hotels, Lodges, London, Museum, Oceanarium, Round The World, Tour, USA , 3commentsAnswer: adopt the national pastime of North Yemen and devote the entire afternoon to chewing the narcotic qat leaf. Our host, his eyes dreamy and his cheeks bulging with the drug, rocks with laughter at his own joke.
We had landed that morning to find ourselves catapulted into a medieval Manhatten, a confusing world of centuries-old mud skyscrapers and lavish exteriors that make a mockery of the Middle Eastern practice of living behind blank facades. Resting in a secluded courtyard we watch a veiled face peer out from behind a half-opened shutter high up on a crumbling wall. A basket lowers itself to the ground from a distant rooftop. A train of three camels, loaded down with bundles of qat, squeezes through a tiny alleyway and lurches past the massive studded door of a mosque. (more…)
Villages, Boats, Boulevards, Bars, Break in France and Italy, Aegean Tour continue… July 4, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Africa, Aquarium, Art Gallery, Beach Resorts, Cars, Coliseum, Destination, Dolphinarium, Europe, France, Hotels, Library, Motel, Museum, New York, Oceanarium, Planetarium, Restaurant , 3commentsFabienne wakes us. She is pretty in a New York Jewish sort of way — cracked nose, olive skin, beautiful drooping eyes with lot’s of kohl, smoker’s teeth and bitten nails. Wrapped in a peasant blanket she talks of “le business” in Soho and Piccadilly — prostitution to pay for her drug addiction. Her arms are scars, dead veins with hanging skin which will take no more abuse, and so her ankles have become the focal point of her masochism. Corsica is vacation after hospitalisation in Amsterdam and, more importantly from her point of view, stamping ground of many Moroccans who come from the hash crops of North Africa to supply France from this paradise isle. (more…)
Villages, Boats, Boulevards, Bars, Break in France and Italy, Aegean Tour July 4, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Aquarium, Art Gallery, Beach Resorts, Cars, Coliseum, Destination, Dolphinarium, Europe, France, Hotels, Museum, Oceanarium, Paris, Planetarium, Restaurant, USA , 3commentsNapeoleon greeted us when we arrived in the palm-fringed port of Ajaccio and disembarked onto the jetty. Corsica’s capital exhibits boulevards, bars and boats in honour of its most famous son. The white-glossed vessels glide out slowly with their cargoes of rich French and Italian mariners, perhaps south to Sardinia or Sicily before venturing upon Poseidon’s homeland in the depths of the Aegean.
We wound up into the mountains for three hours at the back of a stifling minibus, rucksacks on knees, to arrive at Petreto-Bicchisano to au-pair and keep shop for two months. The villages of bleached stone are perched on crags, almost indistinguishable in the dense green forests. Grey stones on distant, wispy mountaintops become crosses and tombstones as one ascends. Every village has its protective saint and little dark chapel. Children play in the street with its one-thousand-foot drop to the bronze river below. The old women in black do not shout warnings. It seems that one is born to Corsica with an instinct of its precariousness. (more…)
Holiday Break, Adventure Boating Hidden Rivers part 1 June 30, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Beach Resorts, London, Motel, Museum, Oceanarium , 4commentsAs I climbed up out of the station the street stretched away uphill, shining under the lights like an old trouser seat. There were houses everywhere and scraggy trees, but I couldn’t see a pub anywhere. Thin drizzle peppered the thirsty pavements and I realised this was a hopeful start; I’d found a real, if repellent, suburb in an elusive city. I was standing in Salusbury Road, in Queen’s Park, in London.
Some of the shadowy nature of London is that one feels it ought to be well known. Anyone who can read can know London; from Dick Whittington to witty Dickens and beyond, every view is veiled with reference. (more…)
My Perugia Travel Diary continue… June 19, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Aquarium, Art Gallery, Asia, China, Coliseum, Denmark, Destination, Dolphinarium, Egypt, England, Europe, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Greenland, Gymnasium, Iceland, Istanbul, Italy, Library, Memorial, Morocco, Museum, Norway, Oceanarium, Paris, Planetarium, Poland, Restaurant, Round The World, The Nile , add a commentMass cremation pits containing ashes and charred bones indicate that he feared a plague, but Carthaginian skeletons with all their teeth have been disinterred as well as the tombs, yielding cataphracts as well as bones, of thirty Carthaginian nobles.
Spello, the most appealing of the Umbrian hill towns, is still enclosed by Roman walls with five gates, the main one bearing the legend “Splendidissima Colonic Julia Hispellum” over the arch. According to Spellan tradition, a phallus carved in the inner wall of the Porta Urbica does not celebrate Orlando’s (Roland’s) amatory prowess but the range and perfect arc of his actus mingendi. Spello is noted for its restaurants and truffled cooking, its steep, winding, and narrow streets—all one-way only—its Roman towers and amphitheater. A Vocabolaro del Dialetto Spellano, compiled by NicolettaUgoccioni and published here last year, contains, at a thumb-through guess, 20,000 words in current usage—by a population of only 6,800. (more…)
Pleasant hollow QUELUZ continue… June 15, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Aquarium, Art Gallery, Coliseum, Dolphinarium, Gymnasium, Library, Lisbon, London, Museum, Oceanarium, Planetarium, Portugal, Restaurant, USA , add a commentThe interior of the palace (which was partially destroyed by fire in 1934 but felicitously restored) is entered from the cour d’honneur. The cheerful lightness of first room, a corridor known as the Sala das Mangas, derives from its wall-to-ceiling revetment in blue and yellow azulejos, the characteristic Portuguese decorative tiles. A key position in the palace is occupied by the ceremonial reception room, the Hall of the Ambassadors. This room is also called the Hall of Mirrors, for most of the wall space not occupied by the window embrasures is filled with mirrors in gilt Rococo frames. The coved ceiling is decorated with a large painting, in which members of the royal family are depicted behind a balustrade as if watching one of the evening concerts for which Queluz was famous. (more…)
Ambitious attempt: CASERTA continue… June 15, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Air Tickets, Aquarium, Art Gallery, Coliseum, Destination, Dolphinarium, Flight Schedule, France, Gymnasium, Hotels, Italy, Library, Museum, Oceanarium, Planetarium, Restaurant, Round The World, USA , add a commentImmediately opposite the Great Staircase to the west stands the chapel, which, at the king’s request, repeats the scheme of its counterpart at Versailles. Although Caserta evokes Versailles in concept and ambition, this is the only part of the palace that directly imitates its French predecessor. As at Versailles, the main theme is stated on the gallery level, where coupled Corinthian columns march in stately procession towards the apse. But despite this common feature, the characteristically French ambulatory has been omitted and the proportions of the whole have been to some extent lowered.
The central peristyle also leads to the royal apartments that occupy the south front and the short wing leading to it. (more…)
The palace of Nymphenburg continue… June 7, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Aquarium, Art Gallery, Beach Resorts, Belgium, Coliseum, Destination, Dolphinarium, Europe, Gymnasium, Hotels, Library, Lodges, Museum, Oceanarium, Planetarium, Restaurant, Round The World, USA , add a commentIn 1716 Effner began the first of the four Rococo pavilions in the garden. This was the Pagodenburg, a product of the craze for chinoiserie that was beginning to sweep Western Europe. This little building has an interesting plan, which can be described either as an octagon with projections at four of the eight sides or as a Greek cross with the corners bevelled off. The exterior has an entirely French appearance and it is only inside that the Chinese theme is introduced. On the ground storey, the principal feature is provided by the blue Delft tiles in glazed earthenware, which the elector may have learned to appreciate during his stay in the Low Countries, though they are undoubtedly a cheaper substitute for Chinese porcelain. The upper of the two storeys has two pentagonal cabinets with lacquer panelling and furniture made by Parisian craftsmen in the chinoiserie manner. In the lounge, however, the purely European Régence again takes over in the fine wall carvings and silk brocade. (more…)
Split: the east coast of the Adriatic May 30, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Europe, Library, Museum, Oceanarium, USA , add a commentThe Yugoslav town of Split, or Spalato, lies on the east coast of the Adriatic, the much-travelled sea route linking Venice and Central Europe with the more ancient civilisations of the eastern Mediterranean. Here, in the first years of the fourth century, the Roman emperor Diocletian built himself an imposing palace, which, of all his many achievements, is perhaps the clearest reflection of the effect on his personality of his unceasing efforts to reorganise the scattered and rebellious Empire.
The future emperor was born about 245 as simple Diodes, the son of a poor Illyrian farm-hand. On joining the army, he served under a number of soldier-emperors from his own native province of Illyria, which corresponds roughly to modern Yugoslavia. (more…)
Charlottenburg: The interior is a superb example of German decorative art May 19, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Air Tickets, Airlines, Aquarium, Art Gallery, Beach Resorts, Coliseum, Destination, Dolphinarium, Flight Schedule, Gymnasium, Hotels, Library, Memorial, Museum, Oceanarium, Paris, Planetarium, Restaurant, USA , add a commentThe relation of Schloss Charlottenburg to the now vanished Berlin Schloss and to Potsdam, is rather like that of the lost Whitehall Palace to Kensington and, say, Hampton Court. The Berlin Schloss with its Schluter decorations was wantonly removed after the last war to make way for the Marx-Engels Platz in East Berlin ; in Potsdam the Neues Palais and the Cornmuns survive more or less intact, the Stadt Schloss and the Garnison church are ruined, while Sans Souci appears virtually as it ever did. Sans Souci was the idea and creation of a single monarch between 1745 and 1753. Charlottenburg has a longer history over a much greater span of years and indeed it might be said that its story still continues. From the Berlin Schloss down Unter den Linden through the Brandenburg Gate, the road runs straight along the Charlottenburger Chaussee past the Rondel of the Siegessaule to a fork at what is now the Ernst Reuterplatz where the proud cupola of Schloss Charlottenburg rises on the right at a distance of about eight kilometres in all. (more…)
Linderhof: Ludwing IP’s flamboyant fantasy in the neo-baroque manner continue… May 19, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Air Tickets, Airlines, Aquarium, Art Gallery, Cars, Coliseum, Destination, Dolphinarium, Flight Schedule, Gymnasium, Hotels, Library, Memorial, Museum, Oceanarium, Paris, Restaurant, USA , add a commentIn one respect Ludwig out-Heroded Herod. No Bourbon edifice has ever had a site as dramatically effective. Use has been made of two sides and the narrow floor of a valley-opening, fringed by forest and rockface, as a multiple-terraced arrangement of flower beds and fountains which, however formal, is yet acceptable in this remote spot. Karl von Effner was the designer of the grounds, but he followed detailed directions of the king. Linderhof faces the slope of the Linderbichl to the south. There is just room at the back, on the steep slope of the Hennenkopf, for a cascade of thirty-two marble steps with a Neptune fountain at their foot and a trellised rotunda at the top, corresponding to the rotunda in the south garden. On either side of the palace is a formalised parterre, divided into four sections and with a border of trimmed hornbeams. The south garden is the really dramatic one, rising in three terraces from the large basin immediately in front of and below the palace. (more…)
Linderhof: Ludwing IP’s flamboyant fantasy in the neo-baroque manner May 19, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Air Tickets, Airlines, Aquarium, Art Gallery, Beach Resorts, Cars, Coliseum, Destination, Dolphinarium, Flight Schedule, France, Gymnasium, Hotels, Library, Lodges, Memorial, Museum, Oceanarium, Planetarium, Restaurant, Round The World, USA , add a commentOne should approach Linderhof in a mood of reverence and delight. It is essential to view it not as a madman’s dream but as a piece of fairy-tale architecture in a setting surprising and yet amazingly appropriate. The eye which sees it as so much white icing fallen from a wedding cake at a sylvan picnic is not worthy of it. The cultural snobbery which dismisses it because of its overwhelming sympathy for a period other than its own, blinds its victims to merits which are intrinsic and valid. It is in indisputable little masterpiece, and, in the light of that, its debt to the France of Louis Quator ze becomes an irrelevance. (more…)
Sans Souci: The light-hearted summer-house of King Frederick the Great May 18, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Air Tickets, Airlines, Art Gallery, Beach Resorts, Cars, Coliseum, Destination, Flight Schedule, Gymnasium, Hotels, Library, Memorial, Museum, Oceanarium, Planetarium, Restaurant, USA , add a commentIn 1744 FREDERICK the Great gave instructions to build a vineyard of three terraces (only later increased to six) on the southern side of a shady and sandy little height in the woods above Potsdam. On the 13th of January 1745, a cabinet order was given that building materials were to be assembled because the King intended to build a Lusthaus there. By 1747 the King was able to use the east side of the little palace; the term ‘east- wing’ is rather too much for a villa which is only ten rooms across the entire front and with only a service passage behind them. The decoration of the rooms was only properly undertaken after 1753, the year in which Frederick’s architect, George Wenzeslaus Freiherr von Knobelsdorff, died. In the miniature library one can still see a drawing in the King’s own hand with the first sketch for the palace : on the north side a colonnade leading to an entrance, a rectangular entrance hall opening into an oval cupola hall, the right wing ‘pour le roy’ consisting of four rooms, an ante-room, music-room, (more…)
The Quirinal: The most venerable of the palaces in this city of palaces continue… May 16, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Air Tickets, Aquarium, Art Gallery, Beach Resorts, Cars, Coliseum, Destination, Dolphinarium, Flight Schedule, Gymnasium, Hotels, Library, Memorial, Museum, Oceanarium, Planetarium, Restaurant, USA , add a commentPonzio’s severe and imposing staircase consists of two flights advancing to meet one another between panelled stone walls. The landing where they converge is adorned by an important fresco by that rare fifteenth-century master, Melozzo da Forli. It is a picture of God the Father surrounded by angels. The awe- inspiring majesty of the subject, and the gravity of the full, austere forms, are conveyed with moving simplicity and directness of feeling bred of an age which had passed more than a century before the Quirinal was built. The fresco was originally commissioned by Cardinal Riario, nephew of Pope Sixtus IV, for a chapel in SS Apostoli, Rome, and was only brought to the palace in 171 1 when the church was rebuilt. (more…)
The Quirinal: The most venerable of the palaces in this city of palaces May 16, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Air Tickets, Airlines, Aquarium, Art Gallery, Beach Resorts, Coliseum, Destination, Dolphinarium, Egypt, Flight Schedule, Gymnasium, Hostels, Hotels, Italy, Library, Lodges, Memorial, Motel, Museum, Oceanarium, Planetarium, Restaurant, Round The World, USA , add a commentThe Immense Complex of the Quirinal Palace was the summer residence of the Popes until 1870 when it was seized by Vittorio Emmanuele. He died there in 1878 after receiving a message of pardon from the Pontiff he had outraged. The palace remained the home of the kings of Italy until 1946 and is now occupied by the President of the Italian Republic. Although the Savoyards endeavoured to remove the traces of the former occupants of the Quirinal, replacing the papal arms wherever possible with their own, the palace is essentially a monument to the taste of its builders, Gregory XIII, Sixtus V, Paul V and, to a lesser degree, Alexander VII and Clement XII. With its great irregular piazza it is among the noblest examples of that union of the baroque and the antique upon which the character of Rome so largely depends. (more…)