Streets of Sana'a

I don't know why I like this picture so much.  It's not particularly framed well and the lighting is bad, but I just do - and as Gombrich would have told us, that's all that really matters.  It just reminds me of the chaos of walking around Sana'a, Yemen.  I was showing my students a picture from Sana'a recently as we were discussing the nature of a portrait.  At a certain point one of the students asked, "Who did you go to Yemen with?"  I replied, "nobody."  Several of them had a very perplexed look on their faces.  Their next question: "Who met you at the airport?"  I replied again, "nobody."  For some reason they found the concept amazing, and it may be the only thing they remember from the entire summer.  Anyway, it's just a shot of the maze of ancient narrow streets in Sana'a, and the constant need to look around every corner before turning.  I suppose there's a metaphor here somewhere.

And to think, we get in trouble in Burlington if we don't walk our bikes on Church Street.

Squid

Just thinking about the Croatia/Montenegro trip from last year.  My big culinary discovery was squid, which I had a lot of and which was almost uniformly delicious.  Apparently the key is to just cook in in a little quality olive oil and not to overcook it.  It gets rubbery real quickly.

A great meal at a little place a couple blocks off the main square in Dubrovnik.

Kotor

This year's 4th of July adventure in Hong Kong got me thinking about last year's trip to Montenegro.  After my friend flew out I had the day to myself and also had the rental car for another day, so I figured that I would take advantage of the opportunity to drive into Montenegro.  When I had rented the car they told me that if I crossed the border I had to have all the paperwork to prove that the car was legally rented and not stolen, and since I had this it wasn't a problem.  The drive to Kotor was really beautiful as you maneuvered around the mountains and fjords.  The city was packed, not because of the holiday obviously, but rather because that is one of the destinations where cruise ships unload passengers (which is one of the few things that can make visiting Dubroknik, Croatia a bit of a hassle).  It was was blisteringly hot, but also a great day.

A fairly decent picture that gives a sense of how the mountains crowd the shore in Montenegro.  A little further down the dock there was a huge cruise ship unloading.

The central square in old Kotor.  Thank god for the umbrellas and misty fans because it was brutal.

A nice little clock tower giving way to a maze of old buildings and then eventually the mountains.

As is usual for me, I loved getting lost among the narrow streets. 

I would love to say that I was carrying out a close reading of the iconography, but mainly I think I was enjoying the shade.

Sun Setting

Just looking back at some pictures of a wonderful vacation to Croatia and thinking of happier times.  Here are a couple kids grabbing a swim along the extraordinary walls surrounding Dubrovnik.  The camera can't begin to capture what an amazing night it was.

Sometimes the walls are so high that both shadows can't make it inside together.

Around the World in 11 Years

And with the trip to Hong Kong I've managed to accomplish one of my goals: circle the globe (although I don't think mine was as impressive as that of Magellan or Drake).  That said, at least it's impressive to me because I didn't get my first passport until I was forty-two.  I had this maddening little sliver of land between Beijing, China (traveled east to get there) and Melbourne, Australia (traveled west to get there) which I didn't know when or if I'd ever fill in.  And then the Hong Kong opportunity arose unexpectedly and, in addition to the excitement of the trip, I suddenly realized that I would be able to fill in the gap.  But even that was a tad uncertain because the initial flight from Newark went over the North Pole, which left me with the feeling that I had potentially only achieved the goal in the spirit if not the letter of the law.  However, on the way back we flew directly east on the way to Chicago so there are no doubts.  Not bad for a "reasonably intelligent young man of Hoosier bourgeois stock" (one of my first teaching evaluation comments from a professor in graduate school).

The sixteen hour flight from Newark seemed to be moving this fast.  The shot was taken from Sun Yat Sen Memorial Park looking across Victoria Harbor towards Kowloon.

Another 4th of July

And if it's the 4th of July, this must be Hong Kong.  Yes, Hong Kong has now been added to the inexplicable list of seemingly bizarre places that I've visited on the 4th of July.  As previously documented, the July 4th list includes: Kotor, Montenegro; Dubrovnik, Croatia; Agra, India; Bratislava, Slovakia; Alexandria, Egypt; and now Hong Kong.  I never plan on being out of the US on the 4th of July, it just happens that way.

Strolling through one of the older neighborhoods on Hong Kong Island.