Galleries

The world is a big place…I was picked up at 3am to travel to the Mumbai airport for a 6:40am Turkish Airlines flight, which flew seven hours from Mumbai to Istanbul. After a couple of hours in the chaotic, crowded, and very international Istanbul airport, I flew two hours to the Ben Gurion airport outside Tel Aviv Israel. Met by Susan, we traveled half an hour by taxi to the town of Rehovot, where Susan’s sister and her husband have lived for many years. . .

Flying from Beijing to Shanghai, Susan and I boarded the Viking cruise ship Yi-Dun.  We had the pleasure of a Shanghai city tour in which we viewed an ancient garden containing ornate buildings from the Ming and Qing dynasties. 

The skyline of Shanghai is impressive, containing the world's third tallest building, the Shanghai Tower with 128 floors, at 2073 feet high.  (The world's tallest building is Dubai's Burj Khalifa at 2722 feet high.  The second highest is the Merdeka in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, at 2227 feet.)--source Wikipedia

The city of Hue is located approximately in the middle of Vietnam and was the seat of royal power from the 19th and into the 20th centuries.  There were thirteen kings who reigned from Hue.  Many of the ancient structures were destroyed during the Vietnam-American War, which have since been restored.  The photos show scenes from the Imperial Palace as well as the three hundred-year-old Buddhist pagoda.

Our safari trip consisted of two weeks in Kenya and one week in Tanzania.  It was nice to visit both countries for a broader perspective on how each is using its diverse animals to attract tourism.

Tanzania is larger than Kenya and has 125 different tribes, compared with Kenya's 45 different tribes.

DISCLAIMER

My photo gallery for this blog is of varying quality.  That is because many photos were taken from the moving jeep.  Sometimes, the subjects were far away, such that expanding and cropping of the subject lowered the resolution.  Some of the subjects were not happy with my having taken their photos.  I tried to be unobtrusive when possible.  Don’t forget to click the photos to expand them and see the short descriptions.

As Susan and I begin the final week of our India visit, in this blog I want to try and describe our day-to-day life during our six weeks here.  We have had such a wonderful time, that we hope to return again at the end of this year.  We played more concerts in our six weeks here than we have in the past year at home in Reno.  The positive audience reception of our Indian audiences was very gratifying.

Our third (and final) Vietnamese port of call was Saigon, the former capital of South Vietnam, which was renamed Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) after the victory of North Vietnam at the end of the Vietnam War.  HCMC is a large prosperous city.  We were lucky to be met on two consecutive days by our old friend Bob, who is married to a Vietnamese lady and has retired to live in Vietnam following his long career in Reno as a counselor and professional musician.  I played many gigs with Bob in Reno over the years.

Once again as I arrive in Europe, I’m overwhelmed with the long rich awareness of history and the rich culture. This is the first time I’ve visited Portugal. Susan and I are traveling with our friends and regular travel companions, Bill and Linn, from Georgia...

Chilean wines of world class quality tend to be less expensive than similar European wines due to Chile’s lower labor costs.