Travel – Page 7 – GringoPotpourri

Holiday Travels – Part Eight

Well, another year has come and gone without me having traveled anywhere of note. For the first time in my post-college life, I will end the calendar year with almost three weeks of unused vacation days. I had better check with Human Resources to make sure they will roll over into 2017; I know that days accrued this year will roll over, but I still have days that I earned last year, too!

I hope, early in 2017, to visit some place warmer than East Tennessee, where the high for today is 37. I have friends in both Nicaragua – a country I have never visited – and Mexico – a country I lived in for almost two years. In addition to those places, I am also Jonesing to visit Cuba, sooner rather than later…and certainly before Donald Trump presumably sends our country’s burgeoning relationship with post-Castro Cuba back to the Stone Age. Ugh.

What do Nicaragua, Mexico, and Cuba have in common? Warm weather! Historically, I have enjoyed spending the holidays in such snowy climes as Stockholm and Copenhagen, but it’s been almost four years since I last set foot on a tropical beach. Here, in continuing my blog tradition of sharing my favorite holiday season travel memories, is one such story…and a tropical one at that.

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Photo Locale of the Month – November 2016

Delhi, India. The capital of the fastest-growing nation on earth has a treasure trove of culinary and cultural treasures. According to Wikipedia, the population of Delhi is 10 million, based on 2001 census data. According to Indiatoday.in and Thehindu.com, however, NCT (National Capital Territory, aka Delhi) is home to 25 million inhabitants, making it the world’s second largest city.

Whichever figure you choose, Delhi is huge. I had the pleasure of visiting the city in 2011, and found it to be a sprawling, captivating hodgepodge of rich and poor, opulence and squalor. Old Delhi, in particular, is a place to be experienced in person. The photos below only hint at its enchanting mix of chaos and charm.

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Onward and Upward: Four Years of Blogging

November has, thus far, been rife with disappointment. On a personal level, I have slowly been making peace with my mother’s passing, less than two months ago, while weathering a relationship break-up that felt like a sucker punch. Regarding the former, it took several weeks to even register the fact that my mom was gone. As for the latter, I’ve been trying to assess what I must have done wrong, but am slowly coming to the conclusion that I will never know for sure. All I can say is that I haven’t been sleeping well.

On the world stage – and for the second occurrence in my lifetime – the better candidate for the United States Presidency won the popular vote but lost the election. And the other day, I logged onto social media to learn that one of my favorite mood poets, Leonard Cohen, had passed away at age 82.

At times like these, I tend towards the melancholy. I spent much of yesterday doing some archiving and came across a few blog posts from 2013. I realized that it was Election Day, 2012, when I moved to Mexico City and established gringopotpourri.com. My blog has changed a lot over the years. For one thing, the writing is better now than it was then. Darker, perhaps, but also better. The regionality of the content has also shifted from being mostly Mexico-focused to being largely Tennessee-focused.

To “celebrate” my blog’s four-year anniversary, I thought I’d share a few of my favorite posts for you, along with comments on how those posts either came to be or how they hold up today. And as always: Thanks for reading!

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Photo Locale of the Month – October 2016

China. Legendary setting for the adventures of Marco Polo, Genghis Khan, and other larger-than-life historical figures. This “Far East” country, at press time the most populous in the world, is the starting point for the Silk Road, watercourse for the Yangtze River, site of the Great Wall and of vertiginous karst hills that doubled as Wookiee land in the Star Wars films, and location of what is currently the largest city in the world (Shanghai).

China features more points of touristic interest than perhaps any other place on earth. Most travelers make it to Beijing, Shanghai, Xi’an, and Hong Kong. Fewer, though, make it to Shanxi Province. Datong, an industrial city of 3.3 million people, is the gateway to Inner Mongolia. It is an overnight train ride (or one-hour flight) from Beijing. The city’s western outskirts are home to one of the country’s most remarkable sites: the Yunggang Caves.

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Cemeteries around the World

Fall is my second favorite season. Autumn leaves, crisp morning air, cool, foggy nights, haunted houses, S’mores, the list goes on….

During my travels I grew to love cemeteries. Sounds morbid, yes? But hear me out. There is a sort of peace in these places, walking amongst the tombstones, alone with your thoughts. Fall is an especially great time of year to visit cemeteries. For one thing, fallen leaves will crunch beneath your feet (hopefully the only sound you’ll hear besides, perhaps, the hoot of a screech owl). For another, your imagination gets carried away with memories of a gazillion horror movies come to life. (Especially if you visit after dark.)

Here is a collection of images from some of the more interesting cemeteries I’ve come across during my travels. Not all pictures were taken during fall, but the season, along with my mother’s recent passing, has found me reflecting on life…and death.

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Portrait of a Neighborhood: Pedregal

The next Mexico City neighborhood that I have decided to profile lies in the south of the city, beyond the reach of the subway. It is a ritzy area of palacial homes, double-decker shopping malls, Aztec ruins, desert gardens, and some of the worst traffic in the city.

Pedregal (full name: Jardines del Pedregal – “Rocky Gardens” en inglés) is an urbanization of land that sits immediately north of Periférico Sur and west of Avenida de los Insurgentes, in the shadow of Picacho Ajusco, the city’s 3,986-meter (13,077-foot) mountain. Although I have grown to not just like but love Pedregal, its sprawling, plus-sized colonia, filled with diesel-belching buses that drive past gated private residences is not for everyone.

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Photo Locale of the Month – September 2016

It amazes me sometimes how quickly time flies. Five years have passed since I visited this month’s photo locale – a mountain retreat for kings and queens of old, and one of Mediterranean Europe’s most undiscovered gems.

Sintra, Portugal, which sits in the mountains roughly 30 minutes inland from Lisbon, was the longtime resort getaway for Portuguese royalty. A series of castles and palaces, some whimsical, some stately, some medieval, dot the hilly landscape. They are a shutterbug’s delight, and a simple day trip (which is all that many tour bus travelers get) is nowhere near enough time to take in all that Sintra has to offer.

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Hiking the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu

I have mentioned more than once in this blog that September is one of the best months for hiking. My Mount Kilimanjaro hike, in 2010, is just one example of successful multi-day, late summer/early fall hiking. I can hardly fathom the thought that it has been exactly 11 years ago this month since I hiked the Inca Trail through the Peruvian Andes to the pre-Colombian citadel of Machu Picchu.

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Urban Graffiti around the World

I spent part of last Saturday afternoon walking around downtown Knoxville. It was a perfect summer day, with non-threatening clouds and a gentle breeze. As I headed from Gay Street towards Market Square, one block away, I passed an alley that travels between the two…and did a double take.

Graffiti, alive with color, adorned both sides of this urban alley, and a dozen or so tourists were snapping pictures. When in Rome, the saying goes…and so I did.

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City Showdown: Memphis vs. Nashville

Memphis has traditionally held the title of “Tennessee’s Largest City,” ever since westward expansion post-Civil War brought settlers across the Mississippi River. But that honor changed hands not long ago. Nashville, the state capital, is now 25,000 people greater than Memphis in population. In fact, Memphis actually has fewer residents than it did in 2000!

What is going on here? How can a city decline in population? And which city is the better one, really? Over the next several paragraphs, I’ll give my $0.02 on which city reigns supreme in categories of location, food, museums, parks and gardens, sports, nightlife, and – most important of all – overall livability.

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