Galleries

Words are inadequate to describe India, absent firsthand experience. But I’ll try…

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.

Enjoy my observations about life in Sweden with photos that each tell their own stories.

Thousands of terracotta warriors were made and buried over two thousand years ago, but they were only discovered in 1974 when some farmers were digging a well.  They are buried 2-3 meters deep.  They were arranged in a classic large army formation, with the lowest rank soldiers in front, backed by archers and chariots, with the generals in the rear.  This is a unique human creation in the world.

When I took Latin in high school, I learned the acronym FRIPS for the five Romance languages, derived from Latin: French, Romanian, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish. So here we are in Romania, and I can recognize half the written words. I didn’t know much about Romania before. In my five days here, I have learned a lot. My naïve preconception was that Romania was inhabited by gypsies and peasants. Wow, was I wrong! We traveled a bit in the province of Transylvania and saw some older traditional houses. But the residents had every modern convenience. So let me declare, Romania is a modern, sophisticated, highly developed, relatively affluent country, not at all like the outdated memories of its Communist decades. . .

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.