Imagine one of the most turbulent flights you’ve ever experienced, then imagine it going on for three hours, and you’ll begin to get an idea of how bad the major roads are in Cuba. By the time we got to the (very nice) rest stop, I felt like my teeth were jarred loose.
Our destination today is Viñales. Our route took us through Pinar del Rio, with its large collection of Soviet-era apartment blocks. Brutalist architecture, for sure.
Viñales, by contrast, is a tidy, charming town featuring colorful colonial-era wooden houses facing a vibrant main thoroughfare dotted with shops and restaurants.
Sady took us to a private botanical garden created by one of the local residents.
Viñales was settled by people from the Canary Islands, who dreamed of planting vineyards, hence the name. But the climate and terroir weren’t conducive to cultivating grapes, so over time other agriculture took root, as it were. Now the region is known for growing tobacco. The area is situated in mountains made primarily of karst outcroppings and dotted with sinkholes and caves.
Lunch was at a farm in the national park, with all the tasty food coming from the gardens and butchery. I partook of a special house drink with a touch of Havana Club. It was like a milk shake, and so tasty.
After lunch we were treated to a cigar-rolling demonstration and were cajoled into having a smoke.
Our guide, Colby, has been to Havana many times. I can’t tell you how many people stopped him on the street and greeted him like a long-lost friend. Could be because he’s very tall — 6’3 or 4, with an engaging way about him. Anyway, people seem to want to serenade him!
It was really cold today — only in the fifties, with strong gusty winds. When we went out this morning, the streets were deserted and Sady was miserable! They just don’t get temperatures like this. Of course, there’s a hard freeze predicted for south Florida, so….
We visited the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes and saw some disturbing installations. Melanie, a retired art teacher, was in her element.
A traditional Cuban lunch cost $21 for the five of us. Food is very cheap here. Last night Jane and I shared delicious grilled octopus, Melanie had ropa vieja (shredded beef with rice) and Colby had lobster and the cuenta came to $60, including some yummy flan. They love US dollars here.
Tomorrow we’re leaving town for a trip to Viñales, snuggled in the mountains west of Havana, where they grow tobacco. A welcome change of scenery.
Overcast skies threatened our plan for the day, which was to explore Old Havana and be squired around in 50s-vintage cars. First stop was Fusterlandia, in Jaimanitas, a quiet neighborhood in the western part of the city.
Reminiscent of Parc Guell in Barcelona, with a nod to Picasso, seemingly every surface is covered with mosaics. The artist José Fuster began the project some twenty years ago, festooning his own house with fanciful tiled designs in kaleidoscopic colors. His whimsical creations spilled out into the surrounding neighborhood, creating a visual feast that defies description.
Unfortunately, you’ll have to wait for the dozens of images I captured, as I came without the critical dongle that allows me to download the photos from my camera to my iPad (and I left my laptop at home as well). So unless my new friend Jane’s dongle works, all the images for the next few days will be from my phone.
Later in the afternoon we piled into two bright and shiny 1950s-era taxi convertibles, clearly the pride of their owners, but the ride was cut short by a torrential downpour.
Angry waves crashed against the Malecón, the sea wall stretching eight kilometers along Havana Harbor. More dramatic images to follow.
A bit about my group. Our leader, Colby, looks to be in his forties and lives with his wife and son in the Poconos when he isn’t jaunting around the world running photography tours. Melanie, a fairly recent widow about my age and an ex-pat from South Africa, lives in Hollywood, Florida; and Jane, a bit younger, is from San Francisco and is third generation Japanese. They’ve both been on multiple trips with Colby and have traveled extensively beyond that.
We have a charming guide, Sady, born and bred in Cuba and mother to a six year-old daughter. She has never been off the island! Her husband emigrated to the US for work shortly after their daughter was born, and lives in Houston. She went through the arduous process to emigrate herself, but was denied when the US government contended she was a communist. Not true, said Sady — she never even flirted with the idea. It’s very sad that the family has to live apart, though her husband is able to visit on occasion. She’s been sharing valuable insights into the everyday lives of the Cuban people.
Conditions here aren’t good, but the situation on the ground is not nearly as bad as the hysterical accounts in the US press declare them to be. We’re staying in a comfortable casa, with good WIFI and reliable electricity, thanks to a generator. The power failed for a short while this afternoon, but it didn’t inconvenience us.
There’s a real contrast between what you see on the streets — crumbling buildings, pavement mostly potholes — and some of the elegant government buildings and villas that survived the revolution or have been restored. Despite everything, the Cuban people love Americans (except for one) and are unfailingly warm and welcoming. It’s just a shame that in their 1959 revolution they traded one corrupt and repressive regime for what would turn out to be another. Still, graffiti proclaiming Siempre Fidel is everywhere.
I’m finally back on the road after a pretty long hiatus. Today I’m with a very small group of photographers— only three of us — plus our leader, and we’re in Miami awaiting our flight to Havana. I’ll post as I can, but don’t know how the power situation will be. They have outages nearly daily. Our leader assures us we’ll be fine, as the casa where we’re staying has a generator and good WIFI. If you don’t hear from me during the next week you’ll get the full story when I get back.
So many people on the flight had multiple large bags — many of them just giant plastic bags secured with duct tape — that ours didn’t make it onto the flight. So we had to wait for the next flight. The reason for all the bags is people bringing stuff home to Cuba, things they can’t get at home.
Eventually we were able to leave the airport and meet up with our lovely guide, Sady. A circuitous trip through Old Havana, down streets in desperate need of repair, delivered us to our casa, a beautiful home on a relatively quiet street, owned by the gracious Madeleine, who supplies ample quantities of filtered water, strong WIFI and a generator. Here’s the living/dining room.
After settling into our rooms we walked a few blocks to Frente, a lively restaurant with a quiet rooftop where we dined. I had three delicious tacos mixtos, along with a ginger mojito — yum! Here are a few images from my phone today, some from the neighborhood.
The contrast between the homes, offices and businesses and some of the newer marble-clad buildings is remarkable. They use all manner of transportation here, including tuk-tuk taxis.
More walking tomorrow with my real camera. But for now, sleep!
After breakfast on Friday we decamped to the Sonora Desert Museum to photograph raptors in free flight. My pals are very experienced in identifying and photographing birds, but I know nothing, so my expectations were modest. Despite never having done this before, I was thrilled to be able to capture a few species, some in flight, and ended up with a few decent images. This Cara Cara looks like he’s wearing a toupée! We dubbed him the used car salesman.
A great horned owl was very accommodating, holding a dignified pose.
Camouflaged in the brush, he’s barely visible, with Mexico in the background.
The Harris’ Hawk is quite the hunter, and he buzzed the crowd en route to snagging a small animal for lunch. He was also a vain poser!
The Desert Museum has much else to recommend it as well: a myriad of cactus species, an aquarium, a butterfly garden, a mountain lion named Cruz (who refused to emerge from his nap), two sleepy wolves and a lethargic lizard. Yes, those butterflies below are mating!
After our morning in the hot sun, we visited my friend Cheri, who made us a delicious lunch on her breezy patio. As I expected, the three of them hit it off famously, and I hope they’ll cultivate their new friendship over shared interests.
I didn’t expect to find wetlands in Tucson, but Sweetwater was a lovely, serene spot to watch ducks, coots and a little piping fellow whose name I forget.
For a change of pace, on Saturday afternoon we followed Cheri’s recommendation and sought out the Mini Time Machine Museum, a fascinating collection of over 500 dollhouses and roomboxes. The detail was just exquisite: if you didn’t know these were miniatures, you’d think from the photos they were full-sized. I was amazed at the fabrics, laces, chandeliers and wall art in these rooms, the minuscule titles etched on the book spines and the labels on the foodstuffs in the general store.
Sunday morning was cooler than usual, perfect for a last walk in the neighborhood. It seemed that the cacti burst into bloom overnight.
Such a lovely trip! I was so grateful to see my friends Jen, Marsha and Cheri again, and play with our cameras together. And so home I went, anxious for another adventure.
Brown and grey dominate the color palette of Connecticut in March, and the weather is fickle: it can be near 70 one day and the next barely reach 40. So when two friends suggested a few days in Tucson, I jumped at the chance. These dear friends are fellow photographers, and we hadn’t seen each other since before COVID; our last trip was to Death Valley in February, 2020. Another fellow photographer also lives in Tucson, and our last trip together was to Provence in 2022 . Though all of us have taken trips with the same photographer leader, my three other pals didn’t know each other, so I thought this would be a great opportunity for them to meet.
The warm, dry air embraced me as I deplaned, and the vibrant blue sky promised several days of fair weather ahead. If you love sun, Tucson is a good bet, since they enjoy 340 days of it a year — though I’m not sure “enjoy” is the right word for their blistering summers.
Our adventure began with a stroll around Old Tucson, the picturesque heart of the city, where art is on display in myriad forms, from cactus gardens to weathered doors to murals on adobe walls. After an uninspiring winter, it was good to dust off my camera!
In the Botanical Garden, our next stop, there were abundant signs of impending cactus bloom. To live out here demands learning a whole new category of flora: barrel cactus, rabbit ears, agave, prickly pear (I never knew the pads were purple), cholla, organ pipes, aloe — and a variety of others too numerous to mention.
A couple of years ago, some of my sorority sisters from college got together for a little reunion in Indianapolis. We had so much fun that we went to New York City last fall (see may post about that), and this year rented the same huge house to get together again. We had a wonderful time pretending we were young again, playing Euchre, drinking wine, visiting an immersive Salvador Dali exhibit at the Newfield Museum and having a feast with other sisters who live in the area but didn’t stay with us.
On the way home I took a detour to visit Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater, a place I’ve wanted to visit for many years. It’s tucked into the Laurel Highlands, a lovely spot in the Allegheny Mountains.
Designed as a weekend retreat for the wealthy Kaufman family, who owned the department store bearing their name, it was built in 1935 and is now a World Heritage Site. When the Kaufmans first purchased the land, they made it into a summer camp that could be enjoyed by department store employees. But with the Depression putting a cramp on leisure time, the family decided to build their dream retreat in the woods where they loved to hike. The house is built over Bear Run, and a waterfall adds a unique design element to the home.
Wright’s entryways are often referred to as compress and release, and Fallingwater’s is classic.
Inside, most of the furniture is built-in, consistent with Wright’s custom.
Fallingwater’s kitchen (above) was as forgettable as all the Wright kitchens I’ve ever seen. Below, Edgar Kaufman and his hiking stick.
As it turns out, Fallingwater is an apt name, as water leaks into the house through the reinforced concrete beams.
A short distance down the road is Kentuck Knob, another home designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and built in 1956 for the Hagen family, also of Pittsburgh, who made their money in ice cream. This single-story structure sprawls across the top (knob) of a hill overlooking a panoramic view of the Highlands.
Built of limestone slabs like Fallingwater, it is trimmed in Tidewater red cypress from North Carolina.
Open skylights above the wraparound porch create hexagonal patterns on a sunny day, and allow for cute piles of snow in winter. No photos were allowed inside, but I was impressed with the 28-foot long built-in sofa. The current owners spend 4-6 weeks there in the summer, which probably accounts for the no-photos rule.
By the 1950s, Wright was signing his work…
A winding woodland trail marked by large sculptures leads from the house back to the visitor center.
At the edge of the knob, the trees give way to a panoramic vista of the rolling hills of the Highlands.
The current owner is British, which informs some of the interesting artifacts around the site.
All in all, well worth an extra two days added to my journey.
While reviewing this blog in preparation for a presentation, I realized I never finished! Better late than never!
Upon returning to the city, we took in Coptic Cairo, a part of Old Cairo that contains many historical sites, including the Hanging Church, the Babylonian Fortress, the Greek Church of St. George and many other historic buildings. Christian tradition holds that the Holy Family took refuge in the Saints Sergius and Bacchus Church during their flight into Egypt. All of these structures date to the 7th and 8th centuries A.D.
The old bazaar in Cairo is everything you could imagine from an Indiana Jones movie: a tangle of shops offering all manner of merchandise, from prayer rugs to hanging lamps to unique quilts to pottery.
The Egyptian Museum is like Cairo’s attic, stuffed with more artifacts than you can imagine. Unlike the National Museum, there seems to be no logical order to the exhibits; nevertheless, there are important items here such as King Tut’s burial mask and treasures from his tomb. They’re constructing a new and better home for the hundreds of thousands of artifacts, the Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza.
And speaking of Giza, we wrapped up our tour with a visit to the Pyramids. I had been under the mistaken impression that they were out in the desert somewhere, but no: they rise up from a field within the Cairo city limits.
The Great Pyramid is believed to be about 4500 years old, and took over 20 years to construct. Contrary to popular belief, the Pyramids were not built solely by slave labor. The sophisticated construction techniques called for highly skilled labor, and it was considered a badge of honor to help build the structures. The Great Pyramid (aka Khufu’s Pyramid) alone is made of 2,300,000 stones, which had to be quarried and transported to the site. Each stone weighs about 2.5 tons!
The two images above are of Khafre’s Pyramid, smaller than Khufu’s, but still retaining some of the fine limestone casing at its tip. Originally all three structures were encased in the expensive limestone, but time and looters have taken their toll. Menkaure’s Pyramid rounds out the famous trio.
The Great Sphinx is a mythological creature with the head of a human, the body of a lion and the wings of a falcon, and is connected to the Sun God Ra. People have speculated that his missing nose is the result of Napoleon’s soldiers using it for target practice when the famous French emperor invaded Egypt, but that cannot be verified. The statue is part of the pyramid complex.
A sumptuous Lebanese lunch marked the end of our stay in this fascinating country. There’s so much more to learn and write about, but I’ll conclude with this story about the relocation of Abu Simbal, facts I learned after I returned home and read a biography of Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt called Empress of the Nile.
Desroches-Noblecourt, an intrepid fighter in the French Resistance (she was responsible for relocating and secreting many masterpieces from the Louvre to Loire Valley chateaux to avert Nazi theft) became an Egyptologist after the war, a rare career for a woman in those days. Energetically advocating for the ambitious temple relocation scheme, she was able to secure the support of Jacqueline Kennedy, who persuaded JFK to appeal to Congress for funds to help the effort. Even after his death she continued to make sure the US provided financial assistance. This was a fascinating book and enriched my understanding of Egypt and its monuments. I highly recommend it.
Our last full day in Portugal! I haven’t commented on the weather, but it has been just about perfect. Our final destination today is Lisbon, but we’re making two stops along the way.
Obidos is a fortified hilltop town with an enormous entry gate that transports you back to the Middle Ages — sort of. It was held by the Moors until the mid-12th century, but today the streets are chock-a-block with boutiques and cafés. Our first stop was to sample the local specialty, Ginja, a sour cherry liqueur served with a cherry in an edible chocolate cup.
The church is adorned with lovely tiles.
There are sweet little streets just begging to be photographed.
We ducked into a bakery to try some of their chorizo and ham and cheese bread, which was ever so much better than what we made a few days ago. The almond cake and orange cake were too tempting to pass up, so we took some along for later.
Another 30 minutes and we were in Sintra, described by Luis as the “crown jewel” of the tour and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. After fortifying ourselves with lunch, we tackled the steep cobblestone street leading to the Pena Palace. The walk winds through a forest that includes a half-dozen Sequoias, and at the top you are rewarded with a fairy-tale castle of yellow, red and blue.
The entry arches testify to the castle’s Moorish origins, but the Kings and aristocrats who later resided here added their own special touches to the sprawling complex. It’s truly a monument to excess.
We climbed all the way to the top where we had panoramic vistas of the town, the beach and the Atlantic.
If the walls could talk, they’d have a treasure trove of stories from centuries past.
And then back to Lisbon to end our food and wine tour of Portugal. We had an excellent guide, Luis, and were in the hands of a very skilled driver, Adelha. One last dinner near our hotel, the Avenida Palace, and we scattered to the winds.
Thursday found us heading to Coimbra, once the medieval capital of Portugal and now known for its university, one of the oldest in Europe. It was founded in 1290.
The library, dating from the fifteenth century, is off-limits to students — and photographers, unfortunately. It houses some 60,000 books, and the walls and ceilings are covered with gilded sculpture and paintings from the period, as well as cloisonné and trompe l’oeil ceiling decorations. (The images below are not from the ancient library.)
Students garbed in black robes evoke Hogwart’s, and groups serenade tourists in the streets.
According to Luis, the vast majority of the 20,000+ students are Portuguese, and classes are taught in that language, as well as Latin.
About 30 minutes southwest of Coimbra lies Tomar, which was the Portuguese headquarters of the Knights Templar, founded there in 1160. Templar imagery, most notably the white tunic with a red cross, is everywhere in the town. The Convento de Christo , a UNESCO Heritage Site, is a complex dating from different eras, the oldest originating in the 12th century. The layout is modeled after the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.
The Knights Templar, a French military order of the Catholic Church, were established to protect Crusaders in Jerusalem. The Portuguese branch helped finance the Age of Discovery through their innovative banking ideas, and Henry the Navigator was a prominent member. Tomar was strategically located between the Moors in the south and the Catholics in the north. Over time, opposing forces accused the order of bad behavior (spitting on the cross, homosexuality and other ”crimes”), and the Pope mounted his forces against them, prompting them to disband two centuries after their founding.
Exploring the Convento de Christo reinforces the wealth they amassed during their fairly short life. The church is massive, and covered in paintings, gilt and decorations,
The gardens are impressive.
Tonight we’re staying in Tomar, resting up for the last leg of our journey tomorrow.
(This post is out of order, as WordPress was misbehaving.)