Stefanie models the Talavera tile kitchen When will your house be done? When are you moving in? How long dear Lord, how long? When you build in Mexico you have to get ready for the hurry up and wait. No schedule is firm, no crew is consistent, every budget is filled with bubbles and shadows. But "poco a poco"...
Posted by dlucht at Feb 14, 07 02:54 PM | Comments (0)
Travel
In general, things don’t turn out the way you planned. Did you notice? If you can just accept that on principal life becomes one sweet kick in the pants; an adventure, instead of ruthlessly inconvenient. The problem arises from the fact that you have to make plans in the first place. We focus on our well laid plans in order...
Posted by dlucht at Nov 10, 06 10:13 AM
Travel
Sometimes the biggest obstacles are internal… as in internal combustion. Our well-traveled vehicle gave us great service and no surprises on the trip to Chicago and back over Christmas. Such is the case with aging autos that recent history provides no guarantees for future performance as our second major trip began less auspiciously. We left San Miguel for Florida in...
Posted by dlucht at Mar 23, 06 04:23 PM | Comments (1)
Travel
A tiny green tree frog came to visit the other night, just one of the many improbable creatures that are here amongst us that I seem to be focusing on these days. Turning on the light in our bathroom I caught the quick blurred movement of a greenish spot no bigger than a thumbprint. Looking more closely, I spotted a...
Posted by sgraves at Aug 20, 05 09:15 PM
Travel
We were invited to a birthday party for a four year old boy, a son of some friends of our former landlords. We went along with another couple who are renting the same downstairs apartment that we lived in last fall. The boy’s extended family live in a small village about a half-hour’s drive west of San Miguel. The entire...
Posted by dlucht at Jul 18, 05 09:40 PM
Travel
Stefanie composes in Green Park, Athens Our earthly circumnavigation fades to the background of my mind these days with visions of our wanderings crystallizing in the quiet of night just before drifting off to sleep. Outside the realm of the unknown the memories are friendlier. The difficulties of travel, the discomforts of lumpy beds, the uncertainty of food and...
Posted by sgraves at Jun 29, 05 10:13 AM
Travel
A game of backgammon in Green Park, Athens Green Park in Athens was full of families pushing strollers and little knots of men playing backgammon. Or else performing a curious ritual that we would see again in Italy and Spain. It’s a kind of walking discussion. But I don’t think it’s anything like what we do as we walk,...
Posted by dlucht at May 12, 05 01:14 PM
Travel
Post Office as palace Madrid is all grandiosity. Great statues soaring in the sky atop practically every other building you pass. Not just some meek, chaste Madonnas but fabulous sweeping chariots and horses chafing to get underway, towering muscled Hercules posturing to the masses below, winged creatures of vast imagination in frozen animation. If that’s not enough, the buildings...
Posted by sgraves at Apr 5, 05 12:45 PM | Comments (1)
Travel
Instanbul's Blue Mosque at sunset After Asia, Europe seems like another civilization. OK, it is but still… something seems like a long lost friend here. I’ve always pooh-poohed the European travel thing, having a strict bias towards Asia, beginning with my stay in Nepal many years ago and gathering steam in visiting other points east. Arriving in Istanbul from...
Posted by dlucht at Mar 26, 05 03:55 AM
Travel
The bustling Grand Bazaar in Istanbul As we briskly walked through the carpet souk at the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul a man stopped Dave to ask us, “Where are you from?” The United States, Dave told him. “Why don’t more people from your country come here?” he wanted to know. It’s a hard question to answer and one we’ve...
Posted by sgraves at Mar 21, 05 05:12 AM
Travel
Chicken Murtabak with a hot mug of sweet Teh Tarik I’m sitting in our room in Penang, Malaysia and not far from here, in some small restaurant lost to memory, is found that holy grail of Malaysian cooking: The Perfect Murtabak. When I traveled through here 16 years ago I stumbled on this local dish, a griddle-fried bread filled...
Posted by dlucht at Mar 6, 05 10:41 PM | Comments (4)
Travel
Colorful crowded streets of Chinatown in Singapore Arriving at the airport last Friday we were congratulating ourselves on our mastery of Singapore’s bus and subway system, conquered over our 3 day stay. We were especially proud of the fact that we’d made it to the airport by the recommended 2 hours prior to takeoff for our flight to Mumbai,...
Posted by sgraves at Mar 2, 05 02:38 AM | Comments (1)
Travel
You can go ahead and laugh at the superstition behind the Wishing Tree. I’ll just stand off to the side, arms folded, with that “I know better” look on my face. By the time we arrived at the airport in Bali, my wayward bag was sitting there with a red “rush” tag on it, next to the luggage carousel. I...
Posted by dlucht at Feb 17, 05 12:02 AM
Travel
It’s raining gulley whoppers and the old man is dumping tons of potatoes on his bridge. This booming thunder sounds just that way, like there’s someone up in the sky dropping loads of potatoes, or maybe bricks, just like my mother used to tell it. I don’t know when I’ve seen it rain so much – certainly not since we’ve...
Posted by sgraves at Feb 13, 05 08:12 PM
Travel