Tag Archives: architecture

A Crusader castle? It didn’t feel real to me; it was as if the pictures in an old children’s storybook had come to life. My visit to Shobak Montreal Castle – now known as Qal’at ash-Shawbak in Arabic (the nomenclature and spellings vary wildly) – caused me to take a deep-dive back into my vinyl […]

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I’m not sure what impressed me most: the artistic beauty; the architectural complexity; or the mind-boggling age. Mahabalipuram (Thirukadalmallai, Mamallapuram), one of the oldest cities in India, is a coastal town on the Bay of Bengal in Tamil Nadu, and home 40 ancient monuments and temples dated to the 7th and 8th centuries. UNESCO- listed […]

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“Life is a journey, not a destination.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance They say that getting there is half the fun and that the journey is more important than the destination. That may well be true, but it helps to keep the destination in mind when you need the motivation to keep going on a […]

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I always struggled with Greek mythology: there was an irrationality and impetuosity to the behaviour of the Gods that didn’t sit well with my conservative upbringing. And, having been trained to ‘be good’ and to ‘work hard’, the concept of being unable to escape one’s fate – regardless of one’s behaviour – was an anathema! […]

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Petra! It was a dream come true. This ‘rediscovered’ ancient city was built by the Nabateans some time around 300 B.C. Situated roughly halfway between the Red Sea and the Dead Sea in what is now Jordan, the city was at an important trading crossroads between Arabia, Egypt, and Syria-Phoenicia. It grew rich from hosting passing […]

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