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You experience a city in a unique way when you wander the streets in its early morning hours, before the stores open their doors and before the streets begin to bustle with traffic. On our first few days in Hanoi, adjusting to the 12-hour time difference, we would leave our hostel at first light. HavingContinue reading “Incense”

The earliest bus leaving Reykjavík brought me to the trailhead in Skogar at noon. To make it all the way to Landmannalaugar in four days, I couldn’t afford to wait until the following day to start north on the Fimmvörðuháls Trek. Sleeping accommodations between there and Pórsmörk were limited and had to be reserved farContinue reading “A Terrible Photograph”

The itinerary we had outlined for our trip to Madagascar involved multiple taxi-brousse legs between Antannanarivo and Tulear along the most respectable of the potholed highways in the country. I credit the success of the first leg entirely to two men. The first, our private taxi driver, expertly navigated the narrow, spider-web layout of streetsContinue reading “Chou à la Crème”

I just had to order the February 1987 issue of National Geographic, because it featured the two countries on my travelogue for this year, Iceland and Madagascar. When my copy came in the mail, I quickly turned to the page with the editor’s note. I skimmed his write-up and was disappointed that he had madeContinue reading “Worlds Apart”

I’m usually not particularly moved by sculpture. Sure, I can appreciate some pieces, especially those that resemble familiar objects, like the stylized, yet obvious rendering of a ship at the harbor in Reykjavik. “Walk around it,” one of my friends suggested while I gazed up at the structure. I slowly walked clockwise, gazing from allContinue reading “Circumambulating the Globe”