Travel – Page 10 – GringoPotpourri

Holiday Travels – Part Seven

My recent post, about 2003 Holiday Travels to Puebla, Mexico, received higher than normal readership. The sentimental nature of the blog entry makes it one of my personal favorites in this series, and I thank everyone who commented online and offline about the enjoyment they experienced while reading it. The next several Thanksgivings were spent even farther from my (at the time) home of Los Angeles than Turkey Day 2003, and – if you’ll humor me – I thought I’d comment on one particular late November-early December trip from that era.

Singapore and Malaysia (2006)

Do you still keep in touch with friends from university? I do. A few friendships forged during those formative years have withstood the test of time, and I have even been fortunate enough to travel with some of these college friends. In 2006, my friends Miles, Chuck, and myself took advantage of an Asia fare sale on United Airlines and booked round-trip tickets to Singapore!

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Holiday Travels – Part Six

I have no idea where the year went. Thanksgiving has come and gone, and December is only a few days away! I have been working some sweet overtime lately, but as it happens, I was off on Turkey Day and got to enjoy Thanksgiving dinner GringoPotpourri-style – stuffing, long grain-and-wild rice, cranberries, peas, brown-and-serve rolls, and Cornish hens instead of turkey. In other words: a real smorgasbord! 🙂

If you have been a long-time follower of this blog, you know that I often wax nostalgic about past holiday travels. At least five out of my last 15 Thanksgivings have been spent in Mexico, and those particular Turkey Days remain especially memorable. For all of my holiday travel blog recollections however – Scandinavia in 2010, Rome in 2008-09, East Tennessee in 2011, Québec in 2008, London in 2006 – I have never actually written in much detail about any of my holidays spent in Mexico…until now.

Thanksgiving in Puebla, Mexico (2003)

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Photo Locale of the Month – November 2015

It is mid-November as I write this, and though technically still autumn, it feels like winter. One of my Facebook friends posted pics yesterday of holiday lights in Lucerne, Switzerland, while another friend posted a single image of snowy Moscow, taken from the roof of his apartment building. Here in Tennessee, a local music station is already broadcasting Christmas music. Temperatures last night dropped to 30 degrees, and I’ve even had to start wearing underwear again!

As such, for this month’s photo feature I thought I would share pictures from a warmer place and time. It was in September of 2009 when I visited Croatia, and was fortunate enough to be able to bask in late season Mediterranean sun. Croatia is famous for its beaches, of course, but the country as a whole also has much to offer to history buffs. In particular, the dazzling Old Town of Split.

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Top Ten Spooky Places around the World

Do you like haunted houses? Graveyards? Abandoned buildings? Have you ever hiked through a desolate canyon, the only sound being your boots crunching fallen leaves? Would you spend the night on the 13^th floor of a hotel? If so, this post is for you.

Think of this top ten list as a work in progress. I hope to have ten more spooky places to write about by next Halloween. Until then, here are my Top Ten Spooky Places:

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Photo Locale of the Month – October 2015

Washington DC is one of the most vibrant cities in the U.S. Forget politics; DC is jam-packed with museums, historic sites, Parisian-style buildings, parks, street food, and youthful energy.

I have had the opportunity to visit Washington three times. The first time was as an infant, and I allegedly cried so much that I ruined the trip for my parents. The second time was in August of 2001, for a national fraternity conference, during which I skipped out on most sessions in favor of sightseeing. The third time was one year ago, when my friend Jenny invited me to explore the city with her and hopefully land a job interview or two. The job interview portion was an epic fail, but I did get to revisit some favorite places and further explore the city’s superlative National Mall.

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Photo Locale of the Month – September 2015

This month’s entry takes us to a new continent and hemisphere. Roughly one dozen nations across South and East Africa are home to lions, elephants, and gorillas (oh my!), and despite still-dwindling wildlife numbers, there are innumerable game parks to choose from for seeing these beasts, and others, in their natural environment.

I recently published a three-part entry about my 2010 encounter with mountain gorillas in Uganda. You can access Part One of that series here; it is a personal favorite among my 150+ blog entries so far. One of my companions from that trip, my friend Mark, requested that I write about another safari from that same trip. Mark – and others – here are a few pictures and anecdotes about Maasai Mara National Park, Kenya.

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Gorillas (Not Quite) in the Mist – Part Three

Speechless. Astonished. Flabbergasted. Those are just three superlatives that I can use to describe my elation at having spent an hour with mountain gorillas in Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable Forest National Park. Uganda, neighboring Rwanda, and the DRC (Democratic Republic of the Congo) are the only places in the world where these great apes still roam free. And I saw them.

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Gorillas (Not Quite) in the Mist – Part Two

Bwindi Impenetrable National Park was just 50 yards from our lodge, Lake Kitandara Bwindi Camp. Our driver, Matthieu, escorted us to the park gate, where we signed in and met the park staff and other trekkers. We showed our permits – a whopping $500 apiece – and were led through orientation. The head guide was a female, something of a surprise in this male-dominated part of the world.

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Gorillas (Not Quite) in the Mist – Part One

I can hardly believe that five years have passed since my three-country safari and hiking trip to East Africa in August, 2010. I wrote about the trip’s climax – a successful summit of Mount Kilimanjaro – last fall, and thought you might like to hear about the Uganda portion of trip, in which my friends and I had one thing on our minds: gorillas!

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Photo Locale of the Month – August 2015

This month’s feature takes us back to Europe. Ukraine has been in the news for the past two years, courtesy of Vladimir Putin’s push for returning Crimea and Eastern Ukraine to Russia-proper.

Although I have never traveled to that part of Ukraine before, I did have the opportunity to visit the country’s vibrant capital, Kiev, in 2011, and it remains one of my favorite cities in Eastern Europe. Kiev’s Caves Monastery is the city’s most-visited sight, and draws camera-toting travelers such as myself as well as devout pilgrims of Orthodox faith.

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