If you’re a whale in Monterey Bay, everybody knows your business. On the eve of our morning whale watching sail, I found the entire marine mammal community to be hotter gossip on the California peninsula than the Royal Wedding two days away or that the Golden State Warriors were trouncing my hometown and hapless Houston Rockets in the NBA Conference Finals. In Gladys Kravitz-like fashion. . . Read more. . .
Lurk behind the garment racks at the balcony railing to view Louis Comfort Tiffany’s glass-vaulted ceiling in Macy’s Chicago State Street store. Assembled from 1.6 million pieces, the design shimmers and mimics a braided texture. Read more. . .
Portugal’s fancy-edged homemade piecrust look to Gothic architecture is the style that cinnamon and clove spice built.
Spices sacked by the ship load in the ocean-bound Age of Discovery brought wealth and the exotic Near and Far East influence into Portugal and created its most ornamented, iconic historic buildings. Read more...
With its rickrack bell towers and spires, La Sagrada Família loomed like a spiny-horned prehistoric species. The cathedral sprouted from the center of Barcelona, and its towers could be seen from high points almost anywhere in the city. Inside, visitors tumbled into the cylinder of a kaleidoscope as the cathedral’s Modernist stained-glass shapes refracted red, green, yellow and blue and splashed new hues onto the floor, walls and vaulted ceilings. Read more...
With two Great Danes standing rib cage height next to Mark and me, we assembled on the grass terrace. Our hostess, Joana, pointed to each of the three visible castles on the Serra de Sintra sloping away and up above her guest house in the valley. We had reached the hub of Portugal’s Romantic Era, Sintra, abundant with castles sheathed in vivid ceramic tiles, Gothic architecture and... Read more...
