Fred Schlomka is idiosyncratic enough that I shouldn’t have been surprised when our interview by email, between the U.S. and Israel, morphed into a personal meeting in Minneapolis. And even less surprising, now that I think about it, was that we met at a bike shop, The Hub in Dinkytown to be precise, a favorite […]
The challenge for Vietnam visitors like us–Americans old enough to have lived through the war or at least to recall the nightly news images–is to acknowledge those memories and then let them go. First-time visitors, especially, will want to get out of their own heads and embrace today’s Vietnam, its people and food and culture…but […]
This is a catalog, of sorts, of my travel photography exhibit at Icebox Gallery in Minneapolis, March 25-July 29, 2017. Hours are Thursday-Friday from 10-6, and Saturdays from 12-5. The gallery is also open by appointment. Call 612.788.1790. If you are in town, please come see it. Check the Icebox website for more information. 1. […]
In this second annual round-up of the books I’ve read and the beds I’ve slept in, I gotta admit I’m cutting corners on the reading list. Every year, I promise to keep better records, because by December it’s all a jumble. I’m left to cobble together notes, scan my bookshelves, log in to Amazon and […]
It was a bit of an odd year for us in 2016. While we did some trips around the Midwest in the first half of the year (and Kris went to Baja California by herself) we didn’t do much until June. Two reasons for that: we bought a small condo in Saint Paul, Minnesota, to […]
The Potala Palace is the erstwhile home of the Dali Lama and the holy of holies of Tibetan Buddhism. We got a lot of shots of the outside of the palace, but unfortunately, no photography was allowed inside. You’ll have to get to Tibet yourself, and climb the 700 steps into the palace to see […]
If you can stand all the pushing and shoving of the millions walking along The Bund in Shanghai, you can get up to the riverside rail and get a photo of the colorful and architecturally distinguished modern Shanghai skyline. It’s right out of Blade Runner, if you ask me. The moisture, the pollution, the noodles, […]
Shanghai is frequently described as the New York City of China. People say Shanghai is to Beijing as NYC is to Washington, D.C. The comparison works. Shanghai is a port city, straddling the Huangpu River which empties into the Yangtze. So it’s open, airy, and brighter than Beijing, with about a 100% chance of less […]
The view from the Fairmont Hotel, Shanghai, down the river promenade known as The Bund. It was holiday week in China, and there were an estimated 5 million Chinese tourists in Shanghai. That’s on top of the 24 million who live there. And, as you can see from the photo, most of them were taking […]
Among our group of more than two dozen, we could feel the heightened attention as we landed at LXA, Lhasa Gonggar Airport in Tibet. This side trip to Tibet, the middle section of our China tour with Viking River Cruises was, for most us, the deciding factor in selecting this particular itinerary. The anticipation was […]
