Entering Fes through the gates of the medina is like stepping into the 12th century. But be forewarned. The walls turn in on you, narrowing at times to slightly more than one person wide. And you never know what awaits you in the semi-darkness of the passageways.
Sunday with Maurizio
The movie Wings of Desire was very much on my mind in Italy, after spending an improbable Sunday with Maurizio. And it wasn’t just because he never seemed to take off his very well-worn three-quarter length jacket (made of black leather, of course).
The Not-So-Mythical Monster
Hoan Kiem Lake in Ha Noi is the Vietnamese equivalent of Camelot, with a legend reminiscent of King Arthur and Excalibur. Except this is a real place, with a hero that actually lived. And even more unbelievably, there was a sea monster (of sorts) lurking in its depths that turned out to be not so make-believe.
City by the Bay
Much has changed since I last visited San Francisco in the 1970s, and the city has been gentrified to the point where it has lost many of the little rough edges that created its originality. But one place remains as a beacon to the way it used to be – a bookstore that preserves the memory of a great era in American literature.
Eternal Graffiti
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Nowhere is that adage truer than at Pompeii. it isn’t a coincidence that “graffiti” is an Italian word. You only need to ride the trains in Naples to realise that. It’s just that when you visit Pompeii it becomes obvious that decorating walls with cheeky self-expression has an exceptionally long pedigree.
Grand Garden Châteaux
When it comes to architecture, both indoors and out, the French seem to have perfected “grand”. And nowhere is this more evident than in French châteaux. They’re thick on the ground in the Loire Valley, and once came with plenty of serfs. But these days if you want to pay the bills, you need to carve out your market niche.
A Mount, a Valley & The Flats
The Okanagan Valley in British Columbia is a prime example of what geographers call “Basin and Range”. In the spring of 1980, that basin filled right up to the brim, the result of an earth-shattering cataclysm in a mountain range over 600km away.
Broken Baroque
Vienna is a wondrous repository of baroque architecture. But if you look beyond the churches and palaces, you might also discover something else…the work of a radical architect who hated what subsequent modernism did to his city. And as it turns out, he had a curious link with New Zealand.
The Gentle Province
Twenty or so kilometres out in the Northumberland Strait, off the north coast of Nova Scotia, lies a little island that also happens to be an entire Canadian province. It’s a beautiful, peaceful, well-cared-for place that is known above all else as the land of Anne.
Moroccan Blues
Blue is the colour of the Berbers, the nomadic tribes that became the first members of the Kingdom of Morocco. And the blues originates from a music that plays an important part in the history of the country. There is another blue, however, and in both France and Morocco these days it’s known to everyone as “Majorelle Blue”.