I had intended for today’s post in our 2016 Advent Calendar to focus on the tasty seasonal treats we enjoy as Christmas draws nearer. One I had in mind was marzipan, the almond paste used in so many European treats and particularly popular at Christmastime. … Read more
Modern travel can be confusing, especially by ship. Ships are luxurious and convenient, but they don’t remain long in any given place. A ship may dock at 7:00 a.m., and by 8:00 guests are pouring off onto buses for organized excursions led by knowledgeable guides. … Read more
“What do monks do all day?” That question popped out casually from one of the men in our group. We stood at the top of the stairs at the Abbey of Monte Cassino. Leaving our cruise ship early, we’d bussed for ninety minutes through the … Read more
Saint Mark’s Basilica in Venice played an important role in music of the late Renaissance. Here Alessandro and Giovanni Gabrieli took advantage of the architecture by placing separate choirs of instrumentalists across from each other and thus pioneered a new antiphonal sound. Listen to my … Read more
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The bells are ringing at 6 p.m. in Weimar, Germany, as I look directly at the dome of a tiny Russian Orthodox church. This church is so small it would fit inside a lecture room at a university. It was built in 1860 to be … Read more
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Two empty seats in the middle of a crowded international flight? It’s rare, but we had them on a Lufthansa Frankfurt-to-Dallas fight I took last week. I sat on the right aisle of the middle section, happy to discover the adjacent seat empty. The woman … Read more
It really was there: tear-shaped chips of amber in the flotsam left by the lapping of the waves. We had stopped at Pärnu to drool over the beauty of the Baltic Coastline and look for amber. We scrambled out of the bus like kids, some of … Read more
Sometimes it’s the glances that remain with us. Glances that barely hold the eye, but are enough to tell the tale. I’ve been recalling the recent three weeks of intense travel during my last stint as a Smithsonian speaker. I confess that this voyage overwhelmed … Read more
I’ll never wash clothes again without recalling this place. If you know Mumbai (Bombay), you’ve guessed what I’m about to describe. Dhobi ghat. It’s the central laundry district founded in 1890 that sits smack dab in the middle of the city. Yesterday, as part of … Read more
I won’t claim the ranching town of Bowie, Texas to be the cultural center of the universe, but it is where we first met Leng Tshua, Chief Executive Officer of the contemporary Singapore Art Museum (SAM). He was visiting a former colleague who happens to be … Read more