‘So that the monotonous fall of the waves on the beach, which for the most part beat a measured and soothing tattoo to her thoughts seemed consolingly to repeat over and over again… “Virginia Woolf
I know the beach. I grew up on one. I knew the color of the sand, the coldness of the water, how the waves break and the distance between the jutting rocks. I found this photo on the internet. I lived right behind the left side of that photo. I also learned to ride my bike at the beginning of the boardwalk. The houses weren’t there yet. It was all beach. but that red brick wall was. When we mastered the two wheeler, we would come careening down that incline with the dangerous thrill of wondering if we would turn the wheel before smashing into the wall. I ended up riding right on the beach a lot. (Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, New York)
I liked how the sand felt on my toes and how the sun warmed my back. (Okinawa,Japan)
I knew where to find clam shells, crabs and snails. In the winter I built snowmen on the beach. In the spring, I chased birds. When I got older, I dated a lot of the lifeguards in the summer. I was happiest in a bikini on the beach getting a tan. (Bondi Beach, Sydney, Australia)
I remember sad moments, scary moments and wonderful moments in an ocean. (Santa Barbara,California)
I’ve seen the power of hurricanes, felt the waves knocking me down or the undertow pulling me further out and almost drowned. There was always at least one drowning per summer. (Cartagena,Colombia)
We rented beach houses in Malibu when our kids were young. (Malibu, California)
One summer, I decided to make a table out of sea glass. I needed thirty pounds of sea glass and I was determined to get it. I enlisted the help of family and friends. When a big pile of rocks came up, I was out there for hours, with my feet cut up. It was a job. Everyone on the beach wanted sea glass. I have the table. (Shell from Eluthera, Bahams)
I still always look for sea glass on a beach.
I bring bags of shells or stones home from any beach in the world. I can not walk on a beach without looking for treasures. (Panama)
I turn to water for a sense of calm and clarity. (Hvar, Croatia)
The ocean gives my brain a rest and heals what is broken. (Marajo, Brazil)
It connects me to something beyond myself. (Great Barrier Reef, Australia)
My life and my problems always seem very small compared to the vastness of the ocean. (Varadero, Cuba)
When I walk onto a beach in any country, it invokes the memories of my childhood and I am at home. (Paraty, Brazil)
“Just give me a thousand words and you may make your own pictures.”
Erica Goros
I have been instagramming for about half of the year. I see the world in pictures anyway so it is really fun for me. I learn as I go. I have “internet brain” now. i think it’s going to be a real thing. It is getting harder and harder to immerse myself in a book or lengthy article. It is much easier to spend time looking at photos that have nothing to do with anything, places I want to go or have been or finding the perfect emoji to put on my comment. My topic hopping, time-wasting, hashtagging, bad spelling sessions have resulted in this blog. (No particular order)
#sunset (Yesilkurt,Turkey)
#hiking in#redmountain (St. George, Utah)
T
impossibly#wide #beach (Marajo, Brazil)
Can you take a bad #Venice photo? (Italy)
#car in#cuba (Varadero,Cuba)
#streetart in #bogota (Colombia)
Holding up the #mountain just noticed the #cross (Tilcara, Jujuy, Argentina)
#cactus or #cacti (Jujuy, Argentina)
#sunset makes the best #photo (Izmir, Turkey)
Another boring day in #marajo (Belém, Brazil)
None of my LA photos made it into the top ten. Instagram likes me out-of-town, with mountains, a beach and a great sunset. I agree.
Thirty Things That I Wanted To Do 2014. Did I Do Them?
“Every hundred feet, the world changes.” Robert Boitano
Go to Colombia. Yes
Go To Southeast Asia. Yes
Go to Seattle. Yes
Read more books on the 1000 Books You Have To Read Before You Die. Yes
Go to the theatre with my son. Yes
Meditate every day. I think this may be like a dieting resolution. I will make it every year. Still not every day.
Do an Urban Art tour in LA. No definitely in 2015
Do a spa day with my daughter. Yes
Watch even less Real Housewives. Yes they are getting boring now that so many of them are going to jail.
Go to Guatemala. No
Go To Miami. Yes
Have more spiritual friends. Now I want to have less spiritual friends.
Eat less sugar. Hmmmmm not sure but probably not.
Go to the Bridge On The River Kwai. No
Try ten new restaurants in LA. Yes Orsa and Winston, Bucato, Sushi Tsujita, Bachi Burger, Cleo, Republique, Wallys, Everleigh, Carousel and Escuela De Taqueria
Try ten restaurants in other places. Yes Andres Carne De Res – Bogota Colombia, Matiz – Bogota, Colombia, Salou – Cartegena, Colombia, Morning Glory – Hoi An, Viet Nam, Golden Rice – Hue, Viet Nam, Pepper Tree – Phu Quoc, Viet Nam, Washoku Bar – Tokyo, Japan, The Dining Room – Siem Reap, Cambodia, Salumi – Seattle, Washington, Anchovy and Olive – Seattle Washington.
Have ten meals with Kitchensurfing. Yes
Go back to Japan. Yes
Spend more time at 826 LA.Yes
Practice tai chi. Yes sort of.
Go to a ryokan.Yes
Go To Angor Wat, YES ( a bucket list item)
Drink less coffee maybe No
React less. Maybe
Go To Agua Dulce. Not yet
Get more people to read my blog. Still trying
Do more yoga. Yes
Go to Bainbridge Island. Yes
Go to the Grand Canyon. Not yet.
Go to a Grouplove concert. Yes
Not too bad. Two thirds yes. I don’t beat myself up over stuff like this. On to the 2015 list. I’ll make it smaller and harder.
25 Things I Want To Do In 2015
1. Do something big that I am afraid of.
2. Drink less coffee.
3. Go to Rio.
4. Go To Another Grouplove concert.
5. Finish my hamburger blog.
6. Get more people to read my blog.
7. Try eleven more new restaurants in LA.
8. Try eleven restaurants in other places.
9. Go to another place on my bucket list.
10. Read more books – the kind you hold in your hand that smell like books.
11. Go to Sao Paulo..
12. Meditate every day.
13. Look up less random questions on the internet.
“I wondered about the explorers who’d sailed their ships to the end of the world. How terrified they must have been when they risked falling over the edge; how amazed to discover, instead, places they had seen only in their dreams.” Jodi Picoult
The heat in Cartagena gives it a sleepy feeling which kind of makes it okay to sit on the wall, browse through shops and street vendors, buy fresh fruit from a woman carrying it on her head and not go to a museum.
The city was founded in 1533 and was the main South American port for the Spaniards. They stored treasures pillaged from the indigenous people in Cartagena to ship to their homeland. Silver, gold, cacao beans, chile peppers and tobacco from the new world were shipped to Spain. Cartagena was a marketplace for slave ships coming from Africa. It was probably the most looted port in the world. As a result of constant pirate attacks, the Spanish built a solid wall to surround the town to protect their valuables. It was built during the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries and is the only walled city in the Americas. It took more than two hundred years and fifteen million African slaves to build the wall.
The main fortification was the Fort of Castillo San Felipe de Barajas (named after Spain’s King Philip IV) which is located on a 130-foot-high hill towering over the city. Originally built in the mid-1600s, it was rebuilt and enlarged several times over the years to become the greatest fortress Spain ever built in the Americas.
Las Palenqueras are the famous fruit basket ladies you see around the walled city. They come from San Basilio De Palenque which is an hour away from Cartagena.
These women are the descendants of South American slaves and San Basilio De Palenque was the first city in South America of free slaves. Las Palenqueras keep their African culture and traditions.
The food market in Cartagena is hot and dark with a lot going on. The smell hits you. It is a mixture of sweet smelling fruit, fish smelling fish, raw meat and live birds.
The thing I always notice in these markets is that they use every part of the animal and the parts are all there to buy. There are always flies and fast-moving, knives, machetes and hammers.
Tables are filled with all the local fruits and vegetables. I eat delicious tamarind from the pod. I have never seen a raw one before. (tamarind)
Everyone is moving quickly carrying a lot on their heads or in their arms. It is a market for locals and you can buy anything from toiletries to clothes as well. I bought flip-flops.
La Boquilla is a poor fishing village twenty minutes outside of Cartegena. (poor but happy)
I
It is a peninsula at the end of a beach with the Caribbean Sea on one side and a lake with mangroves on the other.
The guide takes you on an old canoe through mangrove tunnels with flocks of birds and fishermen fishing for crabs ,shrimp and small fish.
After the canoe they pull out a fresh coconut and make a hole for a straw with a machete. When you finish the water they quickly open it up and slice up the meat. It was clearly not the first coconut they’ve opened with a machete. It feels very far away from Cartagena.
Then I walk for a long time with my feet in the Caribbean sea. I have lunch on the beach of fresh fish, plantains and coconut rice.
Day and night the sound of clip clopping horse and carts carry tourists around the city. I prefer to wander around and walk the walls at dusk.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez became a writer in Cartegena. His novel Love in The Time Of Cholera Is set here. It is one of my favorites. I see Fermina riding in the horse and carriages and Florentino wandering everywhere in despair.
You can see how much of Cartegena is in his books. Garcia Marquez or Gabo died a few days after I returned . But now I can picture him sitting in La Vitrola, Café Havana or in a square in Cartegena writing his stories. ( a person standing in front of Gabo’s house, some famous characters from another author play chess in the square)
Thank to Jose and Kevin Rodriguez for their kindness and knowledge of a city they love.
Colombia is now one of my favorite places. One of my best trips happened because I said yes to something I never thought I would be doing alone. Thanks Jeannine Cohen from Geox for planning this wonderful adventure.
“Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.”Ralph Waldo Emerson
I was in the Bahamas one Christmas when I was nineteen. The Monday after Christmas I needed to go to a pharmacy. They were all closed because it was Boxing Day. That was my first real experience with a holiday that we don’t celebrate here. You never think about that until you are in a country that is celebrating their holiday. It gives you a little more insight into a place when you see them observing their traditions.
Boxing day is traditionally the day following Christmas Day, when servants and trades people would receive gifts from their superiors or employers, known as a “Christmas box”. Today, Boxing Day is better known as a bank or public holiday that occurs on 26 December, or the first or second weekday after Christmas Day, depending on national or regional laws. It is observed in the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and some other Commonwealth Nations. I always remember that Dec 26 is Boxing Day though I don’t celebrate it. JZ, BAHAMAS
Cuban families in Miami have a delicious Cuban tradition that we carry on with zeal. Every Christmas Eve starting early in the morning, all the men in the family set up a ‘caja China’ (direct translation: Chinese box) in the front yard of the house. They sit outside, smoke their cigars, drink their rum and cokes and roast a full pig in this box for hours on end. When the whole family comes over for dinner, the pig is still cooking and the men cut off the skin to serve as ‘chicharron’ while the rest of the pig roasts. It’s undeniably good. Our ‘kosher’ Jewish neighbors will tell you the same. MA, CUBA
All Saints Day on Nov 1 is big day. Croatia is a strongly Catholic country and November 1st – the day of the dead – is a big family occasion. All Saints Day is the day that people go to visit the cemeteries . They bring flowers , light candles and say a prayer. All the businesses are closed and it is a time for families to be together in peace and quiet. ( spirituality) to celebrate the lives of their deceased relatives. PV, CROATIA
In Colombia, the Christmas traditions come from Spain. They make nativity scenes called Pesebre. Columbia is deeply rooted in Catholic tradition. From the 16th till the 24th everyone gets together and prays to the Novena and sing Christmas songs called Villancicos. On Christmas Eve, the families gather around the Nativity Scene and eat pork or ham, dulce de guayaba , dulce de guanabana,bunuelos ( fried dough) and natilla (special pudding dessert with sugar, cloves, panela and milk). They drink Aguardiente (fire water) and dance and sing all night. The kids write letters to Nino Dios ( baby Jesus) and wait for him to bring them presents. On Christmas Day everyone makes their own brightly colored balloons and fills them with hot air and lets them into the sky at the same time. Feliz Navidad. AN, COLOMBIA
Shavuot is a holiday that usually occurs in May, fifty days after Passover. It is the end of the harvest season for grain and wheat. People brought the first fruits of the season to the temple to thank God. It is fun to celebrate Shavuot on a kibbutz in Israel. Everyone wears white . The girls braid their hair and make crowns of greens and flowers . Families bring blankets and carpets and sit out on the grass and have a picnic. They eat dairy food. The kids bring decorated baskets of fruit. There is a “parade” of tractors and farm equipment decorated for the holiday. This is followed by a lot of dancing and singing to celebrate the day that the Torah was given to the Jewish People on Mount Sinai. KR ISRAEL
Peruvians put up a nativity scene at Christmas, not a tree. In the Andean city of Cusco they buy the pieces for their nativity on Christmas Eve at the festival of Santorantikuy — “buying of saints”. The city fills up as people come to Cusco from all over the region to sell little figures they have made of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, the Magi, the star and the stable animals, along with an array of ornaments, moss, lichen, ferns, bromeliads and other wild plants to create the backdrop. PF, PERU
One of the events I’m going to is Maha Kumbh Mela in February. Maha Kumbh Mela held in Allahabad , India is the “ largest pilgrimage on earth.” It attracts between thirty and seventy million people. The Maha Kumbh Mela comes every 144 years and will occur this Feb 2013. Hindus gather at the Ganges for a purification bathing ceremony during the auspicious days. Other activities include religious discussions, devotional singing, mass feeding of holy men and women and the poor, and religious assemblies. The devout –including mystics, yogis and sadhus (in saffron sheets with powder and ashes on their skin), spend a month there. Kumbh Mela is the most sacred of all the pilgrimages in India- the Maha being the most important. DL, INDIA (if you are interested, some of the other videos that appear at the end are fascinating)
People prepare their homes for Christmas. Dubrovnik is covered in Christmas lights and a lot of Christmas trees on the Stradun. On Christmas Eve, lunch is traditionally fish. (codfish-usually)That is the same in many Catholic and Eastern European countries. In the afternoon we go to our first neighbors to wish them a good Christmas Eve. We sing the traditional Christmas song from door to door. (Colenda song – a song that has been sung for centuries). In the evening most people go to confession to wait for Christmas in the best spirit. Then we go to midnight mass.On Christmas Day our families are altogether for lunch. It is a time of happiness and celebration. PV CROATIA
New Year is a special holiday in Japan. It is leaving of old and starting of new. At the end of the year, we clean the house and decorate the entrance gate with ornaments made of pine, bamboo and plum. Bonenkai parties (forget the year gathering) are held everywhere to leave the old worries behind, and on New Years Eve, just before the temple bells ring at midnight, we eat toshikoshi soba (end of year buckwheat noodle) wishing for another healthy new year to come.
Viewing the first sunrise of the New Year is the best way for a fresh start. We visit the shrine or temple, buy o-mikuji ( random fortune written on strips of paper) and hope for another happy year. RH, JAPAN
Travel Well, Fly Safe 
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