Jordan: Wadi Rum & Handicraft Photos
World Cruise, April 2022
Wadi Rum is the landscape used in the hit movie The Martian (starring Matt Damon) and countless other movies.
Galleries
Dallas Smith's Blog
Georgia: Savannah and Cumberland Island
September, 2014
Columbus, Georgia, is the place I spent the first two decades of life, where I attended public school. But my real "ties to the land", my "roots", are actually to the forty-acre "country place" over the stateline in Alabama across the Chattahoochee River from Columbus. It's somewhat bittersweet to visit the place, since the memories of my departed parents are everywhere. But there's still a smell, a legacy, a longing to hold onto the past, that I feel every time I visit, which is only once or twice a year.
Istanbul: The link Between Europe and Asia
November, 2015
How much of Istanbul can one see in a short two-day visit? Actually, quite a bit, when logging over 20,000 steps/day on my FitBit. When we first planned our Viking River Cruise, I told our friends Bill and Linn, who were traveling with us, that we would be so close to Istanbul while visiting the Balkan countries, that we must add it on to our trip. And so, following our Danube River cruise, we flew from Budapest to Turkey, arriving in Istanbul the evening before Election Day. . .
Iceland: Land of Fire and Ice
November, 2017
Whenever I travel to “old Europe,” that is, the continent of Europe, I’m reminded that Europeans are much more aware of history than Americans are. They see the old cathedrals, the castles, the city walls, the statues, the artwork…all products of their long history. . .
Final World Cruise
May, 2022
In this blog I will share photos from several ports that did not receive blogs dedicated to them. After the photos, I summarize my thoughts and lasting impressions of the world cruise.
Visiting Three Coastal Cities
These are not typical cruise destinations.
Our Viking China cruise continued to three port cities I had never heard of before. The Chinese government seeks to increase tourism, and our cruise is one of the first collaborations with the Chinese government and Viking Cruises. The ship's staff is 100% Chinese, and the entertainers are all Chinese. So this particular cruise is different from the usual Viking multi-national staff.
Our ship, the Yi Dun, is named after the first Chinese commercial ship launched in 1872, the Yi Dun.
More Alaska Photos
October, 2013
As we traveled across the Denali Highway, the 105 mile dirt road through this incredible wilderness, with higher elevation came fresh snow.
Turkey: Religion and Politics
Our Turkish tour guide, Mehmet, has a college degree in English literature. He spent his military service working as a translator. Obviously, his English language skills are outstanding. Having been a tourist guide for twenty years, he has visited these Turkish historical sites hundreds of times. Thus, he has refined his narratives over the years to be immensely content-rich, historically informative, and culturally aware. Therefore, besides my own reading and observations, much of the information I will recount in this blog is derived from what I've learned from Mehmet's daily cultural and historical descriptions.
Reflections on My Travel Affinity & Why Beliefs Don't Matter
Why do I like to travel? Maybe it started with the fact that my parents took me to see many of the country's national parks before I was twelve. I've told many friends that the single most life-changing thing I ever did was to leave the security of Columbus, Georgia at age twenty and enroll at the university in Kiel, Germany. I didn't know where I was going when I made that move, but I did know what I was getting away from—the prospect of a constricted life in Columbus, Georgia. . .