Pat

Retired. Have time for the things I love: travel, my cat, reading, good food, travel, genealogy, walking, and of course travel.

Baku Azerbaijan “The Windy City”

9-13 September 2018

The ‘Mad Hatter’ drives us from the Heydar Aliyev International Airport using wide avenues of multiple lanes, flashing his headlights to move others from our path. Government official or royal family? Actually, a Baku Grand Prix hopeful. The Baku City Circuit, a motor racing circuit constructed along these boulevards, is the second-longest circuit on the Formula One racing calendar. I think we are being treated to an example of ‘driving the circuit’.

Our little taxi careens and tailgates toward our hotel, certainly beating his previous land record. We exit our taxi in laughter of relief. This was our initiation into the insane driving of Baku. The Baku Grand Prix may run each April, but these wide, one-way streets appear designed more for a Ferrari than a Kia or Lada.

I have landed in Azerbaijan.  (more…)

By Pat, ago

Paris – Something Borrowed and Something Blue

5-8 September 2018

“Something Borrowed” 

Place des Vosges, 1989

I revisited my travel article “Marais Embodies Paris At Its Best” published by The Boston Herald in 1990. I loved this area then and I still love it. From the article I borrow:

“If culture equals the sum of a city’s social behavior and artistic expression, then Paris has it in bucketfuls. Exploring Paris is like examining your first formidable city tourist map. Everything is spread before you, pleading to be seen and savored.

One quarter beckoning visitors to stroll its streets and enjoy their richness is Le Marais. Escape into a time warp, uninterrupted by modern glass and steel ‑ a quarter dominated by Place des Vosges. (more…)

By Pat, ago

10 things to plan before visiting Ethiopia

4th of Yekatit, the 6th month of 2010

“Travel to Ethiopia and be seven years younger” the advertising says.

Actually, with a flight time of 36 hours to reach Addis Ababa, I would need these seven years in order to pull my brain together and do anything other than sleep.  Just attempting to figure out what day it is in Ethiopia can be a challenge. I was warned to watch the time as well. Ethiopians use a 12-hour clock which cycles from dawn to dusk and starts over dusk to dawn. Being so close to the Equator, dusk and dawn never vary by much. (more…)

By Pat, ago

Shenkele Wildlife Sanctuary and Hawassa

3-4 February 2018

Today I ride in the last car of a five car caravan. This is important.

This morning we retrace our journey north following Highway 9 to Sodo and 41 to Alaba Qulito leading up the Rift Valley toward Addis Ababa. We pass fertile farmland planted with bananas, grains and tobacco. The savannah is quite beautiful. The soil is rich and dark; food and cash crops are in abundance. Various fruits, from huge mangos and avocados to small pineapples, are sold along the roadside. Almost the entire road is paved. But the real show is the road traffic and its sideshows.

(more…)

By Pat, ago

Omo Bend and the Omotic Tribal People

1-2 February 2018

Termite mound

Playing Ethiopian dodgeball with the goats, ruts, rocks, swales and riverbeds of the road, for two hours we bounce our way to the village of Gorcho. This is a new landscape of flat land, huge dry washes, red soil and towering red ‘chimneys’ of termite mounds. I definitely would not want to be in this area when the rains fall. There is much evidence of massive flooding and fast, dangerous rivers of water. Today it is hot and bone dry.

As Bette Davis warned in All About Eve –

Fasten your seat belts. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.

(more…)

By Pat, ago