Cambodia: October 29 - Thailand: November 1

 Day 6: Battambang. An adventurous day that gave us a real insight into daily life in Cambodia. We were driven around the widespread and low-rise city of Battambang in a tuk-tuk. The city was important to the French colonial empire and has some handsome buildings from the era, though some are suffering from heat, humidity and flooding — the city was recently under water when the river burst its banks, and the roads have not recovered. First we visited a very old dilapidated house inhabited by a very old guy who spoke incomprehensible English and French. The house was built by his grandfather out of huge teak planks and he was very proud of it. Then, the local market, where we tried samples of local fruit (longan, sapodilla) and did not try samples of snails pickled in chili, dried octopus, and many other unidentifiable animals. 

A visit to a rice wine distillery was enlightening. “Wine” is a complete misnomer — it is a high-alcohol distillate that only the brave or foolhardy would drink undiluted. The process is fascinating. Rice is soaked and treated with yeast to develop some sugars, then it is fermented for a week in plastic barrels (seething and bubbling), then distilled in a dangerous-looking still, heated by cheap rice husks from the local mill. The clear distillate is 70% alcohol! The discarded mash is fed to some healthy and probably alcoholic pigs which are a secondary product of the factory. The ash from the still and the pig manure is sold to farmers for fertilizer. the rice wine is treated with various fruits, grains and snakes to produce various more palatable and sellable flavors. Sandy tried a few teaspoonfuls… The whole enterprise is set up to convert low cost rice into valuable products, the most lucrative being pork and bacon.

We also visited a maker of rice spring-roll-and banana-wrappers — thin sheets of rice flour and sliced bananas dried in the sun or toasted over a charcoal fire. (see photo). He also owned fighting roosters although the fights and betting on them are illegal in Cambodia. Our final example of Cambodian ingenuity was the “bamboo railroad”. There was a railway line that was barely used, there were wheels salvaged from an abandoned tank from the war in the 1970’s, there was a lawnmower engine, bamboo poles and a few other bits and pieces. Weld, glue and tie them all together and you have a self-propelled vehicle that can zoom along the railway tracks, carrying paying tourists. If a train does come along, or you meet another bamboo railroad car you can quickly disassemble the whole contraption and lift it off the track. So, we sat on the platform and were driven on the track through the rice fields. After our exhausting and exhaustive tuk-tuk tour of Battambang, we were ready for a quiet afternoon and a swim in the hotel pool.

Day 7: Battambang to Phnom Penh. A long drive on an excellent road through the countryside from quiet Battambang to noisy, messy Phnom Penh. On the way we visited a marble sculptor, skilled at making Buddha statues, and some very talented women potters in a tiny village that specialized in large clay pots for rice storage. One of the potters did not even have a wheel. She put her raw material clay, dug from a local hillside, on a wooden post and walked round and round moulding the clay into a large elegant pot — amazing touch and skill. At a second pottery, the young woman had been gifted an electric wheel, and could turn out beautiful pots with amazing speed. Sadly the whole village economy based on pottery is threatened by a military government official who is threatening to forbid access to the hill where the clay originates. We heard many stories in Cambodia of the corrupt rich elite riding roughshod over the poor who make up 95% of the population.

Our hotel in the capital city was very pleasant and comfortable, and Chinese owned, like nearly all the big new offices, hotels, and condos that are under construction. Phnom Penh is located at the confluence of two rivers, and it is a lovely site, but our first impressions of the city were not favorable. The heat was oppressive, the sidewalks were impassable with parked cars, food vendors and broken paving stones. Crossing the road was an adventure like that old Frogger arcade game when you dodged between the scooters, tuk-tuks, handcarts and a large variety of cars from old bangers to the latest sleek Chinese EVs. We got back to the hotel after a hot, sweaty walk feeling a bit disillusioned. A nice dinner in a Nepali restaurant cheered us up.

We have not mentioned Cambodian food up to now. They have a wonderful variety of fruits and vegetables, many we are unfamiliar with. They eat a lot of fish and other aquatic creatures. Many are smoked, sun-dried, or preserved in salt and chili. Overall we found it pleasant but not as flavorsome as the Thai or Vietnamese food we are familiar with in the US. 

Day 8: Phnom Penh. Our guide to the capital city was a charming young woman with excellent English who was eager to share her knowledge with us. We visited the Royal Palace —. An impressive collection of buildings where the king and his mother live. He is over 70 years old, unmarried, and lives as a monk — there is no heir or close male family member. Cambodians are worried, as the next king will be chosen in a very restricted election where only the royal family and senior nobility can vote. The Cambodian government is run by the semi-dynasty of the Cambodian Peoples Party. The current Prime Minister is the son of the previous PM and the whole senior leadership sounds thoroughly corrupt and self serving. Cambodia has a truly horrible history and is a poor country, which along with equally poor Laos is squeezed between much more powerful Thailand and Vietnam, with even more powerful China to the north. The Cambodians are nostalgic for the days of the Khmer empire 600 years ago when they were the dominant power in Southeast Asia. They are mostly Buddhists, and seem surprisingly happy and ready with smiles of welcome for tourists and foreigners.

After our tour of the Royal Palace, we visited the impressive National Museum, full of ancient treasures, many of which were originally stolen and smuggled out of the country. The repatriated art was mostly recovered from the US and Germany. The French, who were the biggest looters have yet to return much of anything. 

The second part of our day was occupied by a too-close introduction to the ghastly history of the Khmer Rouge genocide in the 1970s when about 1/3 of the population was murdered by their own government. We first visited a school that had been used as a prison camp and interrogation center, then on to a “killing field” where thousands of people were slaughtered and buried in mass graves. The Cambodians are still trying to come to terms with the sheer horror of this period of their history when a whole generation of educated people was destroyed. They seem to want to show tourists the worst of what happened as a warning, a confession and a lesson to the world.

Our day was redeemed by a wonderful Phnom Penh tradition called “Walk Street”.  Several large streets along the river bank are closed to traffic on Saturday evenings and a huge carnival erupts with parties, a street market, performances, and open air restaurants. It was Halloween, which some Cambodians seem to have adopted, and that added to the fun. We did enjoy seeing so many people having a good time, and we felt perfectly safe in a large crowd where we tall, old, white people stuck out like sore thumbs

Day 9: Bangkok. We left Cambodia from the huge, elegant, brand new and practically deserted Phnom Penh airport for the short trip to the vast city of Bangkok — with more people in the one city than in the whole of Cambodia. Our lively guide, Ranna, met us at the airport and escorted us to our elegant Western-style high-rise hotel in central Bangkok through its nightmarish traffic and road reconstruction. 

More to come…

Battambang market, with monks

Rice wine stills

Lin not sampling serpent rice wine

Grilling banana “paper”

Home-made bamboo railway car

Pot making — no wheel

Pot making, with electric wheel

Phnom Penh rooftops

Cambodia, October 24 - 28, 2026

After leaving Philadelphia on Thursday, 22 October in the evening we eventually arrived in Siem Reap, Cambodia’s second largest city, at lunchtime on Saturday, having lost half a day to jet lag. Our guide calls himself “Frank”, though his real name is Sey, and he is a gusher of detailed knowledge about Cambodian history, geography, religions, food, politics, culture etc.

Day 1 in Siem Reap: On Sunday morning Frank picked us up with his minivan and driver to start our tour of the temples of Angkor. Between the 9th and 15th centuries, the Khmer empire was the power in Southeast Asia. They were Hindus and/or Buddhists (it’s confusing) and the kings built hundreds of temples glorifying themselves and their families, trying to outdo their predecessors and hoping to attain immortality. Some of the temples are massive, like the famous Angkor Wat, others are beautifully decorated with beautiful murals carved in sandstone. All were pretty much lost in the jungle for centuries until they were rediscovered (and looted) by the French in the 19th century. Now they are the pride of Cambodia and the highlight for tourists. With a temperature of 90 degrees and high humidity, our 4-temple day was exhausting but fascinating. We don’t want to sound like a guidebook, so will avoid further descriptions, but we certainly had our fair share of crumbling and restored ruins, extraordinary stone murals hundreds of feet long, precipitous staircases, and the mother of all tropical downpours. As well as admiring 1000-year-old stonework, we were also treated to a parade of very well dressed Cambodians celebrating high school and college graduations, posing for photos on the bridge to Angkor Wat as the rain started to pour down. There were also a number of young soon-to-be married couples posing picturesquely among the ruins in formal traditional silk clothes. Our final temple of the day was at the end of a long climb up a hill where we were invited to stay and enjoy the sunset. Exhaustion and jet-lag got the better of us, and we returned to our hotel for 10 hours of deep sleep.

Day 2: Another day, another temple (or actually several). First, an even older Hindu temple built in the 9th century out of brick, but still tall and impressive. Local people are given jobs and uniforms, and help to keep the temples clear of vegetation, which grows back immediately if left unattended. We took a long drive into the countryside, with fewer rich paddies and more jungle, eventually stopping at the foot of a mountain for a long, strenuous hike up a very rocky path amid jungle vegetation, insects and birds, to another temple, but a very unusual one — stone carvings on a river bed, where water has been running over them for more than 1,000 years. There were many recognizable images of Hindu gods, as well as mythical snakes and dragons, and even more remarkable, over 1000 carvings of Shiva’s lingam (penis) in the rock of the river bed. Bathing in the river water was a believed to be a sure cure of infertility. A very wet pummeling under a waterfall for Sandy was cooling and refreshing, but no further physically enhancing effects were apparent. Our final temple of the day was to Banteay Srei, famous for intricate carvings in pink sandstone. It was a favorite target of French “collectors”, including the author and future French Minister of Culture, Andre Malraux, who was jailed for three years for trying to saw off a chunk of the temple — luckily he did not succeed. 

That evening we went into the center of the town by tuk-tuk for Cambodian dinner in a nice restaurant and then visited the notorious “Pub Street” — a neon lit extravaganza of sensory overload: bars, discos, massage parlors, tacky Halloween decorations, and large crowds of overexcited teens — very uncharacteristic for a demure and laid back country. We lasted about 15 minutes before taking a tuk-tuk back to the hotel.  

Day 3: Our last day in Siem Reap featured a lower level of temple visits on the way to the huge Tonle Sap Lake in the center of Cambodia. It is a very peculiar lake of about 1,000 square miles and 3 feet deep in the dry season, growing to over 6,000 square miles and 25 feet deep in the rainy season. It is the end of the rainy season just now so it is large, and several of the towns on the edge of the lake are in the water. We visited one town, Kampong Pfluk, by boat, and it was truly fascinating: Houses built on stilts, everyone travels by boat, including elementary school kids in immaculate uniforms paddling tiny canoes between home and school. The principal industries are fishing, handicrafts and catering to curious tourists. The lake is home to 200 species of fish, as well as innumerable birds, mammals and crocodiles. We had a lovely lunch in a local home stay house — all fish of course. And we visited a school where children were learning English, chanting and singing our favorite elementary school songs. 

In the evening, another adventure: Two young men on off-road motor bikes got us kitted up with German-looking helmets and drove us on increasingly rough and rutted dirt trails into the countryside, passing and avoiding cows, dogs, waving children, chickens and vehicles to a country residence where we spent an idyllic hour with a glass of wine and tasty snack watching the sun set over the green rice fields. It was a lovely end to an interesting day, though the motorbike ride is something we do not plan to repeat.

Day 4: After our four nights in Siem Reap we set off for Battambang, Cambodia’s third city, and a major center of the former French Indochina. Our two days in Battambang were a real introduction to Cambodian culture and more recent history. North of the city is a mountain with a horrible history and a fascinating present. Local people have carved huge statues of Buddha into the cliff face of Phnom Sampov mountain — very impressive. Grim and awful is the cave at the top of the mountain where the Khmer Rouge murdered thousands of people during their brutal reign of terror in the 1970’s. There are memorials and Buddhist stupas commemorating the dead. After coming back down the mountain, we took our places to watch a natural wonder — literal millions of bats leaving a cave in the mountain in a never-ending flood, made visible in the setting sun as they set off for a night of feeding on insects over the rice fields. They are the improbably named “wrinkle-lipped free-tailed bats” — we were mesmerized.

I am trying to add photos, but it is not working well. More blog and hopefully photos in a few days.

“Tomb Raider” Temple

Amazing red sandstone carved temple

On the bridge to Angkor Wat

Sandy under a waterfall

Sunset over rice field

School transport in Kampong Pfluk

Padua, Vicenza and Verona

After our 3 days in Venice, we have spent a few days in each of three northern Italian cities —  Padua, Vicenza and Verona. Although they are quite close to each other they are surprisingly different. The main obstacle to our full enjoyment has been the searing heat. The whole region, and apparently much of the rest of Europe is having an exceptionally early and intense heatwave, with daily highs of 95 - 102 F (35 - 39 C), and occasional thunderstorms. We have been undeterred, fortified with plentiful cold water and daily indulgence in gelato.

We have been staying in various small comfortable B&B’s — a “residenzia”, an “Elite BB”, a “relais”, and an “Albergo” — all with excellent breakfast, comfortable rooms (with good air conditioning) and friendly landladies with a range of English skills. It was quite noticeable that once we were out of Venice, the locals were much more reluctant to try their English and we struggled with rusty and never very good Italian.

Italy is much changed from what we remember from trips here as children in the 1960s. Tap water is safe to drink, and excellent; hotels and restaurants are air-conditioned; cities are quiet with far fewer cars and honking horns; few people are smoking in the streets and the streets are immaculately clean, with battery-powered cleaning machines vacuuming and brushing any trash or dust.

Padua has a very old university founded in 1222 — Galileo taught there. Even though it is summer, there were many young people on bicycles and many inexpensive eateries. The city streets are small and there are few cars. We really liked the shaded arcades over the sidewalks wherever we walked. Padua is a big pilgrimage site with the Basilica of St Anthony of Padua as the main attraction. He is one of the most popular Catholic saints — he is asked for help finding lost things. The locals just call him “Santo” — he is the only one that counts. His feast day was June 13, so we just missed it, though there were still large crowds queuing up to visit his tomb, and people leaving white flowers at his statue. His enormous basilica dominates the south part of the town. 

One other site, not to be missed, but that we had never heard of, is the Chapel of the Scrovegni. This is a small chapel that allows only 25 people to visit for only 15 minutes at a time. Before entering, the select 25 must sit in a small sealed chamber for 15 minutes while the air is purified and dehumidified. All this is essential to protect the wonderful Giotto frescoes, painted in 1305. The interior of the chapel forms a picture book of the story of Jesus, with each of the 38 panels depicting a scene from the story — vital in an era when few could read. There were some other interesting touches; small medallions of the 7 deadly sins on one side of the aisle with their corresponding virtues on the other. It is amazing that the Chapel ever survived. Apparently the whole place was nearly “deconstructed” and the frescoes shipped off to the British Museum in the 19th century (like the Parthenon marbles!)

On a more secular note, it is so interesting to see that each of the towns we have visited has at least one street that is lined by the most exclusive and expensive shops selling beautifully designed and displayed men’s suits, women’s clothing, gloves, shoes and other high end items. Italians have a great sense of style…

Two other Padua notes: It is the home of Aperol, the ubiquitous orange aperitif that is served as an Aperol spritz in every cafe. It is also the city where Shakespeare set “The Taming of the Shrew”. He loved these north Italian towns!

Vicenza was our next destination — only 25 minutes by train from Padua, but a totally different ambience. It is the birthplace and main workplace of Palladio, the Renaissance architect who defined the neoclassical style that spread throughout Europe. It seemed like every building in the town was designed by Palladio and his acolytes and they give the town a very stately look and feel. We spent the first day walking around, always looking up at pillars, windows and cornices. We visited several interesting galleries housed in Palladian palazzos, including a really interesting architecture museum (We never thought we would write those words).

Unfortunately, we discovered that most of the buildings in the town we might have wanted to visit were closed on Mondays,  so despite the heat, we walked over 6 miles out of town to visit an interesting villa, gardens and a chapel. The Villa Valmarana was a beautiful building “with dwarves” (ai nani), again in Palladian style and with murals in every room painted by Tiepolo, and in beautiful condition. The dwarves are 17 fascinating stone statues set on the wall surrounding the villa. Tiepolo and his son also painted many imaginative and stylish frescoes in other buildings in the villa complex, which we enjoyed looking at and finding interesting little details. The villa had a lovely, but very steep garden, with a variety of trees, colorful flowers, herbs and beautiful views over the valley.

Our next stop was the chapel on Monte Berico, high above the city and accessed via a long, steep arched portico. The chapel was not much to look at, but the views of the city were wonderful. With the city below, we could see the southern edge of the Alps in the distance and the lush northern Italian plain stretching east towards Venice and west towards Verona.

During our walk we had come across the central square of Vicenza being prepared for a huge “Viva Verdi” concert. We discovered admission was free but you had to send an email to the city administration asking for tickets. Google Translate to the rescue; and a few minutes later we had a very charming and personal response saying that there were no tickets available but if we just turn up there would be space. Then we found that the restaurant we were planning to eat at was right on the square, and they had a table that gave us front-row seats, and we listened to the orchestra and singers warming up. So we had a delightful meal to the sounds of Verdi, then a fascinating glimpse of the parade of locals kitted out in elaborate and glamorous evening dress and spike heels arriving for the concert. After some technical issues the concert got started a bit late. The weather was looking threatening but we heard some fine choruses, solos and orchestral pieces, before the wind rose, rain came down, and giant cafe umbrellas were blowing over, scattering glassware. The audience started to scatter too, as did we, and we got back to our hotel just before the heavens opened, with thunder and lightning. It was dramatic, and we felt sorry that the weather spoiled the huge effort staged by the city, but we did experience some lovely music. 

Then, the next morning…on to Verona. The immediate impression was a bigger city;  busier, more tourists, more traffic, more to catch the eye in every direction. Shakespeare definitely contributed to the atmosphere, with “Romeo and Juliet” and “Two Gentlemen of Verona”. We are strenuously avoiding the “Juliet Balcony”, which apparently was only added to the house in the 1800’s, but is a serious revenue generator for the city. The huge Roman arena is the venue for the Verona Opera Festival, which has just started and features all the Italian favorites. The area round the arena was full of enormous pieces of scenery, including an elephant (for “Aida”) and a Moulin Rouge (for “La Boheme”) We considered going to a performance of Aida on Thursday, but it won’t start until 9:30 PM, runs for over 3 hours and we have an early start on Friday to catch our plane from Milan to Philadelphia — too bad.

We spent our first morning in Verona visiting some interesting churches — some built on top of older churches, the very oldest being 4th century Roman constructions. Several notable local saints were martyrs, killed by the Romans before the Romans converted to Christianity. Saint Fermo was killed in 304 with a “fishbone” and there are a couple of large fishbone “sculptures” in Verona to commemorate. A very early subterranean Romanesque church dedicated to St Fermo was a cool and fascinating place to visit with fine ancient frescoes and quiet simplicity. On top of the old church, a “new” church was built in the 13th century. It has a huge impressive wooden ceiling, like an upturned boat, with images of 416 saints, mostly unidentified. 

Other destinations included Sant’Anastasia and The Duomo of Verona, and in the afternoon a visit to a museum of Roman inscriptions. A Veronese nobleman, the Marquis Maffei, was obsessive about collecting stones with Greek and Roman inscriptions — it was part of the ethos of the Renaissance. He also collected stones with forged Latin inscriptions to expose the 16th century trade in fakes! Our final stop of the day was a huge and ancient red-brick fortress, on the banks of the fast-flowing Adige river, and now housing an amazing collection of ancient, mostly religious art.

Today is our last day in Verona and tomorrow we fly to Philadelphia from Milan. We have squeezed in a few more tourist destinations — a fine classical-style garden and a modern art galley, more as a respite from the heat than for a genuine love of the art. This afternoon — our last art gallery; the Palazzo Maffei, and one of the best collections and layouts we have ever seen. A spiral staircase led up to the roof with terrific views of Verona to end our wanderings. Tomorrow an early train to Milan.

Here are a few pictures, again in reverse order :-(  

Giusti Garden, Verona

Cathedral Cloister, with robot lawnmower, Verona

San Fermo Church wooden ceiling, Verona

Dante statue, Verona

Concert with rain clouds, Vicenza

Gelato, Vicenza

Arcade to chapel, Vicenza

Dwarves statues, Vicenza

Villa Valmarana “AI Nani”, Vicenza

Train from Padua to Vicenza

Giotto “Justice” Scrovegni Chapel, Padua

St Anthony of Padua Basilica

Central Market, Padua

 

Italy In June

After a wonderful week in Corfu with 15 members of our family, Lin and I took a ferry from Corfu to Igoumenitsa on the Greek mainland then a 20 hour voyage on an Italian ferry from Greece to Ancona on the Adriatic coast of Italy. The ferry was quite new and comfortable — we had a cabin with a shower. Most of the other passengers were truck drivers…all tough looking guys from Bulgaria, Serbia, Germany, Poland, etc., who slept on the benches in the ship’s bar. 

Ancona, itself, is primarily a port though it has a few interesting corners. It was very seriously damaged during WWII by American bombing, as it was an important port when Italy was occupied by the Germans. Our hotel had obviously been THE place to stay — the Grand Hotel Palace — with 20 foot ceilings and elaborate plaster cornices. It was wonderfully comfortable and after wandering round looking at a few interesting churches, we stopped at a nice little restaurant in the main square for dinner. We were entertained by the owner “attacking” the marauding pigeons with a high powered water pistol. After a quiet, non-rocking and rolling night, we enjoyed a delicious breakfast buffet where we bumped into a group of young American women working in Ancona this summer; one of them had gone to the same high school in Dublin, Ohio as grandchildren Leah and Evan.

Our next step was northwards on wonderful Italian high-speed trains to Venice. We sped at 120 mph through coastal towns, some of which I remember visiting in 1962 when my mother and 4 children including me visited Italy in a Fiat 500 Giardinera. We were so impressed by the immaculate farms and towns of the Po Valley, and we even crossed the Rubicon (though going in the opposite direction to Julius Caesar).

WOW! Venice is a completely weird and crazy city, different from anything we have ever seen — water everywhere and no cars. Directly from the station, we struggled with waterbus timetables, balky ticket machines and nervous tourists, but eventually found the right waterbus to the right “busstop” and then walked dragging our suitcases over hump-backed bridges to a charming little B&B for the next three nights. 

So much has been written about Venice that there is little more to say. It is a crazy patchwork of tiny streets, alleys, passageways and bridges, interlaced with canals of many sizes. The buildings go from vast grand palaces to tiny houses squeezed into oddly shaped gaps. Some are immaculately maintained, others are so dilapidated it is surprising they are still standing. There are virtually no straight lines. We were pleasantly surprised, after hearing horror stories, to find that the streets were relatively quiet and free of visitors. Even St Mark’s Square — the focus of much tourist activity — was almost empty. Our first evening we spent wandering round, dazed by the sights and sounds, and being regaled by gondoliers hoping for our custom. Their beautiful sleek black and elaborately decorated boats were everywhere.

With so much to see, what to do? We discovered almost by accident that the Venice Biennale of Art is taking place this summer so every church, palace and public space was given over to art exhibits. There are also two huge venues in the southeast of the city where the major exhibits are located. Our first day we visited the Peggy Guggenheim Museum (remarkable private collection of early 20th century art, and a lovely garden), a serendipitously discovered and fascinating exhibition on the history of maps (sponsored by Saudi Arabia!) in an old convent, and the mindbogglingly enormous Doges’ Palace, with the biggest oil paintings anyone has ever seen, mostly extolling the virtues of various Doges, who seemed to be portrayed as only slightly less important than Jesus and the saints. We were also amused by the “complaints letterbox” where ordinary citizens could post anonymous complaints about the behaviour of Venetian officials.

As we left the Doges’ Palace in the evening there was something going on with large numbers of police holding back the crowds to keep us away from some VIPs in expensive suits waking through the St Mark’s Square. Later at dinner on a small canal, our restaurant was occupied by 25 riot police, with helmets and shields who all seemed to be enjoying a nice Venetian meal. Apparently the mayor of Venice needs a huge protective force wherever he goes. He is so unpopular because he has introduced a “tourist fee” of 5 Euros a day for everyone who visits Venice on Friday to Monday and it is making it more difficult for locals to make a living as fewer tourists are visiting. 

The next day, we decided to go for it, and visit the Venice Biennale in the old Venice Arsenal. This turned into an experience of sensory overload — an enormous dark warehouse with massive colorful and cryptic modern artworks in every imaginable medium. We wandered for hours trying to make sense of it all. The artists, from all over the world, but particularly from Africa, SE Asia and South America had provided descriptions of their intent and motivations, but frankly their explanations often left us even more baffled. We probably need to abandon our western, rationalist, logical mental habits to get on the right wavelength, or perhaps no wavelength at all. 

After we had visited the central exhibit, it was on to somewhat smaller installations sponsored by various countries. We also moved to the other main site, where the Biennale has been held for more than a century.

Some of the country exhibits were playful and fun. We were particularly amused by the Japanese pavilion that was overrun by hundreds of well dressed baby dolls in sunglasses. Visitors were encouraged to walk around the exhibit holding a “baby” and doing various babycare activities, like feeding and changing. There were precocious babies playing on the roof, climbing ropes and watching TV. It all had something to do with the falling birth rate in Japan.

The American Pavilion was quite baffling. An artist called Alma Allen had created about 30 amorphous sculptures in various materials; all were called “untitled” and there was no artist’s statement. Not sure what that says about the USA!

A Belgian artist had collected over 50,000 postcards from junk shops and thrift shops and classified them into various themes by subject, color, type, country and pasted them on walls in columns 40 postcards high. We stared for ages from close up and from a distance. It was like a treasure hunt crossed with a pointillist painting.

After 6+ hours we staggered back to our hotel, exhausted and slept like logs that night.

Today we are in Padua, reached after a short train ride from Venice. On the waterbus from our hotel to the station we met someone who used to live in Narberth and when to school at Lower Merion High School, where Rob and Mark went. He was somewhat younger than them, though, traveling with wife, 3 very young kids and mother-in-law.

What a contrast Padua is… a quiet old town with many nice squares and old cobbled streets. As we walked down one little street we heard a wonderful operatic tenor voice streaming out a window of the music school — a very Italian moment. It is hot (93 degrees F), so we treated ourselves to some delicious gelato in a cool little air-conditioned store in an arcade. 

We are looking forward to one more week of traveling through northern Italy, before flying back to Philadelphia next Saturday.

Here are some pictures — in reverse chronological order.

Japanese Babies

Belgian postcards from a distance

Belgian postcard closeup

Scorpion seal made of rubber with blood?

Gigantic woolen things

Dinner with riot police

Venetian washing day

Gondola ride

St Mark’s cathedral

Ancona sunset

 

Back in Brazil, Part 3 Olinda - Fernando de Noronha, March 24 - 31, 2025

 This is the final leg of our 3-week trip to northeast Brazil, and the final installment of this blog.

We spent four nights in a small, very old pousada in Olinda, a beautiful, hilly city next to Recife, the huge 3.7 million-person capital of the state of Pernambuco. What a contrast there is between the two places, although they are so close to each other. Olinda has small twisty, cobbled streets and steps, and the houses are extravagantly painted in wild colors, often with dramatic murals. There are dozens of old churches, many in a state of near collapse or terminal mildew. There is also a very lively market with many interesting art and craft stalls, woodcarvings and lace-making, as well as the inevitable plethora of tapioca stands. Olinda is very green, with fruit trees and vines growing everywhere, even out of cracks in the roofs of buildings. 

We spent our first day exploring Olinda, and visited one notable 16th century Franciscan monastery, its walls covered with blue Portuguese tiles depicting the life of St Francis, including parrots, peacocks and monkeys. St Francis loved animals according to legend, but we are pretty sure he never met a parrot.

We regularly did our walking and sightseeing in the mornings after a substantial breakfast and before the heat became too brutal. By noon we were ready to retire to our air-conditioned room for a few hours, before heading out for an evening stroll, and sometimes a bowl of açaí sorbet. 

Despite the fact that Olinda is a well-known and picturesque tourist destination we rarely ran across other non-Brazilian visitors, and even Brazilians were thin on the ground. Apparently we were visiting in the post-carnival low season. This led to the problem of finding an open restaurant in the evening — most were closed or only open at weekends. However we did find some excellent, quiet places to enjoy delicious Brazilian food. Our favorite was a whole small pumpkin filled with a “soup” of shrimps, coconut milk and delicious if unidentified spices.

Feeling quite adventurous one morning, we took a local bus into Recife to visit some of the sights. We were lucky to encounter a young passenger who was adept with Google Translate and directed us to the stop to get off and change to another bus line. Our encounters with young Brazilians have been very positive and rewarding.

Recife is a big, messy city with some beautiful modern buildings, but on the whole it was a disappointment — trashy, grungy and grubby. We visited a couple of the top tourist attractions in the old town but were less than impressed.

Our final Olinda day involved a long Uber ride into a remote area of rain forest in the Recife suburbs, where we visited one of the most amazing art museums we have ever seen — the Oficina Cerâmica of Francisco Brennand. He was a reclusive and prolific ceramicist who worked mostly in the 1960 - 90 period. He inherited a ceramic factory from his father, and spent his life creating and displaying inside and outside thousands of huge, complex and weird ceramic sculptures and structures, based on mythology, imaginary animals, abstract shapes, and artistic interpretations. We won’t try to describe any more — there are a few photos below. The museum significantly rehabilitated our impression of Recife.

Our last few hours in Olinda were eventful, with a series of violent thunderstorms that caused the hotel roof to leak, and flooded the streets on the way to the airport. A misunderstanding about plane times and airport gates caused us to miss our flight to Fernando de Noronha, but we were able to rebook and arrived on this small, remote island only a few hours late. Fernando is about 200 miles off the coast of Brazil, and is the tip of a huge submerged volcano. As a result the coast is black volcanic rock interspersed with beautiful white-sand beaches and tall rocky pinnacles. Most of the island and nearly all the surrounding reefs and islets are part of a national park, so much of it is inaccessible.

We are here for 5 nights, and are staying at a beautiful little pousada surrounded by tropical vegetation. There is only one road across the island served by a regular and free bus service, so we are becoming adept at getting around. It would be hard to get lost in such a small place, with only 3,000 regular inhabitants. We are so far east that we have only a 2 hour time difference with London, and 3 hours in the other direction from Philadelphia. 

Charles Darwin visited on his famous Beagle voyage and was disappointed in the lack of interesting bird life. However, the cliffs and outcrops are alive with boobies, noddies, terns and beautiful tropicbirds. This is a wonderful place to relax in the shade with a pair of binoculars. We are being quite careful not to get exposed to too much sun, as we are only 4 degrees south of the Equator. We have been in the sea up to our knees, but no further — the surf is huge and dangerous. Also, Noronha is famous as a breeding place for many species of sharks. We also came across multiple nests of turtle eggs waiting for the full moon to hatch. Because the island is so isolated and small, everything is imported, except for fish, and we have been enjoying dinners of various local fish dishes .

This is a perfect place to end our holiday — fascinating, relaxing and friendly.

Olinda houses

View from our hotel window

More Olinda houses

Pumpkin with shrimps — Jerimum

 

Francisco Brennand ceramics

Brennand fantastic animals

Courtyard — it’s ALL ceramic

Fernando de Noronha

Sand, rock, surf

Empty beach with black rocks

Brazil’s favorite snack — tapioca

Another reason to stay out of the water

Back in Brazil, Part 2 Salvador - Olinda, March 19 - 24, 2025

We spent 5 nights in an elegant remodeled colonial hotel in Salvador, dined in excellent local restaurants, then headed northeast. Our ultimate objective was the town of Olinda, a beautiful old town close to Brazil’s third largest city, Recife. The distance between Salvador and Recife is about 600 miles (c 900 kms) with many interesting places in between, so, despite many warnings about crazy Brazilian drivers and hazardous roads, we rented a car, and relied on Google maps to get us where we wanted to go.

Salvador Shopping Our first adventure was finding the rental car. Our Uber dropped us off at the front door a massive new multistorey shopping center with a bewildering number of elevators, escalators and ramps. We got completely lost, but luckily a very nice young man who spoke no English but was adept with Google Translate ordered up a golf cart to rescue us and drop us at the rental office — another example of the kindness of Brazilians to the hapless elderly.

Brazilian Drivers really did not live up to their reputation. Most are polite and considerate drivers, obey the traffic signals and road signs, and keep to their lanes, though there are exceptions. For a country that is still developing, there are very few old cars. Everyone is driving newish Korean, Japanese, and European models mostly made in Brazil.

Roads are mostly good. The main hazard is speed-bumps, called lombadas. Even the main 4-lane highway has frequent speed bumps in most towns. Some are signed and painted, others are not, so it’s impossible not to hit a few of them pretty hard, putting a strain on the car’s suspension and tires — and on our nerves, especially when the jolt switched on the wipers and the radio.

Agriculture. Long stretches of the road traversed vast sugar cane plantations, mostly grown for conversion to alcohol fuel — though the Brazilians do love their sweet cakes and candies, too. The other crop we saw in many places was cassava, a rather pretty plant about 3 feet tall with huge underground tubers used for making tapioca, one of the staples of NE Brazilian cooking. 

Monkey bridges The road passed through some long stretches of uncultivated forest, with regular rope suspension bridges designed for monkeys to cross over the road. We did not see any monkeys on their bridges, but we did come across some at our first stop.

Aracaju We divided our trip into 3 chunks of roughly 300 kms each, which led us first to the city of Aracaju, capital of Brazil’s smallest state, Sergipe. Aracaju is a not very attractive city, but just south of it are some wonderful beaches and pretty beach towns. The sand dunes between our hotel and the beach were home to interesting wildlife, including burrowing owls and demented looking guirá cuckoos. We visited the old market in the center of town which sold vast quantities of colorful Brazilian fruits, many of which have no recognizable English names and were completely unknown to us. Little wild marmosets take advantage of generous stall owners who feed them pieces of banana and other fruits. They are very cute. 

Aracaju is named after the caju = cashew tree which grows there in abundance. The fruit is peculiar — an orange-yellow pear-shaped fruit that is used to make an acidic juice and fruit sauces. Below the fruit hangs a small greenish comma-shaped thing, which is the shell of the cashew nut. The shell is poisonous and tricky to open, but inside is the deliciously tasty cashew nut that we and Brazilians eat in large quantities. 

After two nights in Aracaju, we headed towards the next big town, Maceio, in the neighboring state of Alagoas. Google Maps let us down, and led us onto increasingly narrow, twisty roads, through some very pretty little villages, until we were driving on dirt roads through sugar cane fields and eventually came to a dead end. We knew where north was and eventually managed to find a road that led us to our next destination, the small coastal village of Barra San Miguel. Our hotel was on the beach, but there were no surfers or sunbathers in sight. The fabulous white-sand beach was mostly empty for miles in both directions.

There is not much going on in Barra San Miguel, but our hotel was comfortable, and there was an interesting small town nearby called Marechal Deodoro, known to Brazilians as the birthplace of the first President of Brazil. Unlike George Washington, he was not an admirable figure, so is little celebrated. The town was picturesque, with fishermen landing their catch and dozens of great white egrets waiting for their share. There was a huge convent and church, which the tiny guardian unlocked and allowed us to visit.

We did not visit the town of Maceio itself, which is mostly modern buildings, and is famous as the home of one of Brazil’s allegedly most corrupt presidents, who was convicted and jailed for taking millions of dollars worth of bribes.

Our final day of driving took us from Barra to Recife where we dropped off our car, with some relief, and we are now spending 4 nights in beautiful Olinda.

Brazilian food We are not big meat eaters, though most Brazilian menus feature large amounts of grilled beef. However, there is an abundance of wonderful fresh fruit at breakfast — nearly always 5 or 6 varieties — and many interesting baked goods. At our hotel in Barra, they had an open wood fire to keep the coffee and pastries warm, despite the 90 degree heat. 

Another staple of breakfast is tapioca. This is not the easily digestible pudding that was a feature of our British childhoods. A tapioca is a small white pancake of cassava flour, toasted in a frying pan then loaded with sweet or savory fillings and folded like a taco. This is such a popular snack that there are at least 20 tapioca stands on the main square of Olinda. We cannot imagine how they all stay in business. Lin has never tried a tapioca, and Sandy is not a fan of slightly chewy flavorless white cardboard.

More in the next chapter…

Marmosets hanging out in Aracaju market

Wood burning stove at breakfast

Cashew fruit with nut underneath

Huge church and convent in tiny town of Marechal Deodoro

Beach in northeast Brazil - they are all this empty

Guirá cuckoo

Burrowing owl in sand dunes

Fishermen and egrets