Tag Archives: travel
The Bendy Pillars of Perfection at the Acropolis
There was a guy who would occasionally drop into my reading group. He was smart but seemingly unfamiliar with the Western canon. We’d read a Shakespeare play and he’d be like “Oh, actually this was quite good—that Shakespeare fellow, I think he was on to something!” It was refreshing and in a way I was […]
The Adonis of the Cell Phone Charging Station: A brief history of free-standing Greek sculpture in Athens
I guess I had a decent understanding of Greek sculpture before visiting Athens, but it helped me a lot to see it in person. So here’s a quick art history lesson from my visits to National Archeological and the Acropolis Museums, broken down into three time periods: The Archaic Period (650 – 480 BC) If […]
Passage of the Merchants, Athens
Just outside of Athens’ Syntagma square, there’s a vacant arcade that must have been quite a hip center of retail in the mid-20th century. In the 21st century it seems to mostly serve as a place for sneaking a smoke (and judging by the smell, a covert bathroom break). Flanking the arcade are vintage-cool stores, […]
Picnic With the (Occasionally Drooling) Cats of Athens
I’m in Athens where I’m having a hard time following my sight-seeing agenda because I just want to walk around and see things like this precious Byzantine church which is between an H&M, a TGI Fridays and a dude pimping energy drinks. What Athens also has is cats. So obviously I have to stop and […]
Dublin’s Georgian Architecture as Social History
Let’s just get the doors over with. Alrighty, here are some Georgian doors in Dublin. Everybody happy? If you’re like me and interested in architectural heritage and planning a trip to Dublin you’re going to encounter a lot of references to these doors, which are nice I guess but being honest I found them sort […]
On the winter solstice, you can touch the light at Newgrange
At dawn on the winter solstice, when the light breaks over the horizon, a beam of light channels through a box above the entry to the prehistoric tomb of Newgrange. Moving inward little by little down a narrow passageway, it reaches the heart of the chamber. This 17 minute-long yearly event is a distillation of so […]
The charisma of Dublin’s pubs (from the outside)
Lots of folks travel to Ireland. Whenever I’ve asked them what they enjoyed the most, they invariably say “the pubs”. Now don’t get in my face about this, because I don’t think there’s anything wrong with going to pubs, but they just don’t appeal to me. When I was planning my trip, HOB said “If […]
Dublin: Run to the Theatre, Run Away from the Stewed Prunes
Take some advice from a legit theatre nerd: go see theatre in Dublin. I chose my hotel because it is next to Abbey Theatre, a company I saw in Chicago years ago and was determined to see again. The first play I went to in Abbey Theatre was in the smaller space. I came back […]
Upstaged by a Seagull in Dublin
I’m in Dublin and I guess you could say I’m getting the full Irish: From my hotel breakfast to the weather. The upside of the rainy weather is the rainbows. Yesterday I visited Trinity College. On the right is the schools chapel, known to the students as Heaven. On the left is where they take […]
Picnic at the Cathedral of Modena
When we arrived off our flight from Chicago, we planned to take a short train ride and spend the night in nearby Modena. We bought train tickets from a machine in the Bologna station but we couldn’t find the right departure track because it wasn’t posted on the electronic board, so I asked a station […]
Picnic at the Cathedral 