Category Archives: places
Good time in Αθήνα
Last spring, our great Greek friends invited us to come see their beatiful, troubled country rich with history. They were the paragons of hospitality, and we could have hardly wished for better guides. Here’s a bunch of photos from the capital, where we spent some quality time with Iakovos.
La Ciudad Imperial de Cusco
Cusco is a high city squeezing in an Andean valley at 3400 meters above the sea, and the Mekka of Peruvian tourism with around two million visitors every year. Its air is heavy with smog that comes from all the ancient cars that never heard of emission standards and are kept running probably by faith alone. Serving as a great base for trips around the Sacred Valley, it has become an immensely popular destination and experienced explosive growth – tripling its population over the past 20 years. Before the colonisation it served as capital of the Inca empire, and is now a UNESCO world heritage site. When Francisco Pizarro arrived in Cusco, he renamed it the “Very noble and great city of Cuzco”. As is the case with most invaders, they destroyed many of the original temples and palaces, using the foundations and material to build churches and colonial houses.
I will share parts of Alžbeta Lengyelová’s diary from the trip with you. It is in Slovak, so many apologies if you can’t appreciate it.
The Promised Land
For many years I wanted to visit מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, the State of Israel. Every time I heard or read of the things going on in Middle East, I was wondering what the place must be like. The whole story would easily make a conversation topic for an evening or two, but the strongest thing for me was versatility. Tel Aviv is a booming, busy modern metropolis. Old Jerusalem is the ancient holy place of three great religions, breathing history. Akko is a beautiful old small port town with Muslims and Jews just living beside each other in peace. Regular people didn’t seem to care about such differences, didn’t seem to hate their neighbour. Mosques beside synagogues beside churches, four quarters of Old Jerusalem, at the surface it all seemed to work great. And yet some things are very, very different from Europe.
New York, New York…
The famous city welcomed me three times altogether during my trip. The first was after an unplanned night in Paris, when Air France locked the plane’s door on me, although the plane didn’t take off for another 90 minutes, and I was lucky enough to get the last seat on the morning plane. It was an amazing ride from JFK, seeing the Manhattan skyline in golden sunlight, I was amazed. :-)
My Own Boston Tea Party
…or how Boston’s light got captured on my sensors. :-)
It started the first night after landing over the pond. TD Garden was packed with hardcore fans, junk food, expensive beer, sassy cheerleaders, Boston Bruins who hammered Tampa Bay Lightning 8:1, and us.
