'Staying Alive By Not Staying Still'
about writing a different kind of travel blog, inviting reader participation in the process
I’m back. After a long run of recuperation following the roughest patch of travel I’ve experienced in nearly six years, I’m catching up starting today with a post from my …
On arrival in the early evening at Cairo’s international airport I beefed with the taxi drivers who told me that the metro doesn’t go to the airport.
All the info I had was that they do. I wanted to take the metro. But I saw no signs for the metro at the airport terminal.
I’m breaking in a new pair of hiking boots so walking has been my principal mode of transportation of late. But that’s OK since walking through unfamilar cityscapes is one of my favorite travel pastimes.
So far so good with my new bargain boots.
I’ve been in Athens now for a week. You’ve probably seen my first post on the Acropolis; now I’ve got some other photos taken on various other walks, starting with the Wednesday open market on Kavlou Street, in the Gizi neighborhood of the city, where I live.
Sunday I leave Crete for an 11-day stay in Athens.
Although it was my second time on the island of Crete, I previously had not given myself the opportunity to spend any time in Athens outside of a few layovers in airports.
I’m having the greek salad, about as authentic as it gets where I am in the beautiful, rural foothills of the White Mountains on the island of Crete, Greece.
I watch the regulars start filing into the tavern in the early afternoon, spicing the air with their husky voices, breaking the stillness of morning with lively, spirited talk of whatever old Greeks talk about with time on their hands.
Not every grand idea is a good one. Not even one with free liquor! Take the Chacha Tower in Batumi, Georgia, for example, sitting abandoned in an area known as …
“The brave succeed in all adventures, even those who come from countries far away.” — The words of Athena, Goddess of Wisdom and Battle, to Odysseus, the wandering traveler trying …
“Without music, life would be a mistake,” said German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.
I surely agree. A life-long love of music has played an important part in my post-retirement travel life, providing many new, wonderful opportunities to hear and see live musical performances throughout the world that I would never have had without it.
Many of my most memorable travel experiences have involved music.
From the mad rock sounds of the French band The Inspector Cluzo in Peru; Gregorian chant in an 11th century cathedral in Berlin; impromptu jams by indigenous musicians in Iquitos on the Amazon River; the Amazon Symphony Orchestra itself playing Hayden and Strauss in Manaus, Brazil; to most recently discovering the incredible polyphonic voices at Tbilisi, Georgia’s Holy Trinity Cathedral, and many more, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed a grand variety of world music along my journey.
This week I was looking online for more live music in Tbilisi and discovered to my delight that the internationally renowned Tbilisi Symphony Orchestra was performing this week at the Kakhidze theater, just a six-minute walk from where I live!
On Sunday I went to the impressive Holy Trinity Cathedral in Tbilisi, 11 a.m. mass, hoping to see and hear the renowned polyphonic cathedral choir.
It’s been too long since I last posted. I was in Turkey at the time, which was two countries ago on my continuing journey.
For the past 11 days I’ve been in Georgia — the country, not the state — and before that I spent a week in Barcelona, Spain, where I visited a friend who I first met in 2017 in Medellin, Colombia.