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Zeitz MOCAA : Africa finds its voice
$ 0.00The art at the Zeitz MOCAA museum in Cape Town turns the Western perception of African art on its head, which of course was the intention of the 39 curators involved at this world-class centre. That’s of course not counting the unbelievably photogenic architecture of the converted old grain silos. The sliced-open hollow tubes that create ovals and circles and curvatures wherever you look were once giant storage cylinders.
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Spain-Portugal Road Trip Map & Highlights
$ 0.00It was the second week of May, just ahead of the Spanish summer, when we touched down in Madrid to embark on a road trip, a kind of pear-shaped circle, around Spain and Portugal. It was our first time in this part of the world (although it had been a long-standing place-marker on our wish list), we were armed with only a cryptic guidebook or two, with no expectations.
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San Sebastian Spain
$ 0.00It’s named after a saint. It’s on the Bay of Biscay in the north of Spain. And it’s near the French border. That’s San Sebastián. Europeans love the city for its powder-sand beaches. When the sun shines, the sea is the colour of Indian turquoise. So, yes, there’s kind of a surf culture here. But there’s also a gentle elegance to San Sebastián with its Belle Epoque flourishes.
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Bilbao Guggenheim Spain
$ 0.00When you mention Bilbao, most people think immediately of the Guggenheim Museum designed by Canadian-born architect Frank Gehry. It is quite awe-inspiring. Daring. Almost architecturally impossible with its supple metal curves gleaming gold, copper, silver, depending on how the light strokes its surfaces. And, indeed, this building was what really lifted Bilbao out of its bleak industrial slump of the 1990s.
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Haro Rioja photo essay
$ 0.00Haro (silent ‘h’) is all about Rioja wine … those luscious, juicy Tempranillo, Grenache and Carignan (among other cultivars) reds. Hey, Ernest Hemingway liked it enough to hang out for a while. And where else is there a yearly Batalla del Vino, a battle of wine, staged on a nearby mountain where the townsfolk dress in white, then raucously lob fermented red juice over each other from buckets and wineskins?
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Porto, Portugal
$ 0.00It’s the funniest thing … the towns I got the least excited about are the ones that have turned out the best (and the longest) as photo essays. What gives? Perhaps in Porto’s case, it was the miz grey skies that got me down — but when I look at the pictures, the city didn’t hold back from offering up offbeat photo opportunities in every corner.
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Salamanca Photo Essay
$ 0.00Ah, Salamanca. I can think of no other city with an identity so entwined in learning and graceful university architecture and boisterous student life … the one simply doesn’t exist without the other. Certainly, we’re talking of the Old Quarter here, but that’s where the soul and heart of Salamanca lie.
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Coimbra Portugal photo essay
$ 0.00Coimbra has had a long complex history. Celts lived here. And the Romans. So did the Barbarians (those non-Greek-speaking invaders of abroad). Then came the Moors, and later the Spanish. But most guidebooks focus on Coimbra as a university town; tour buses consider it worthy of half a day, disgorging their travel troupes there for just a morning or an afternoon.
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Palatial Lisbon
$ 0.00Because the Portuguese were such a seafaring (and colonising) nation, they came into contact with many different cultures and societies, absorbing and assimilating their tastes and styles. And of course, the conquering Moors from North Africa left a very rich architectural heritage throughout Portugal and Spain. And so … Lisbon has its French-inspired Versailles in the Queluz palace.
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Monumental Lisbon
$ 0.00It’s a bit like a seesaw … some of the most appealing attractions lie at opposite ends of the city, with Lisbon the central pivot. Witness wonderful Belém all the way to the west and the captivating Azulejo (Tile) museum all the way to the east. And yet both these destinations were highlights of our stay in Lisbon. Belém, particularly, snuck into our hearts.
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Street Lisbon
$ 0.00Lisbon is difficult to define. It has grunge, elegance; shabby neighbourhoods, exquisitely sculpted cathedrals; grand plazas and mouldy time-worn squares. According to one of Lisbon’s many legends, the city was built on seven hills (these actually exist and interestingly enough, each one is topped by a church) and it’s often spoken of as “a cidade das sete colinas”.
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Evora Portugal photo essay
$ 0.00What does Obelix from the French comic books have to do with Évora? He's a menhir sculptor, that's what, and just outside the Portuguese town is a megalithic ceremonial site with 95 of these giant stone pillars. As Asterix fans know, Obelix's superhuman strength had him habitually carrying a menhir around on his back. But Old Town Évora is so much more than cromlechs and menhirs…
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Seville photo essay
$ 0.00Sun-drenched and hot ꟷ mid-May it was a healthy 37°C at 5 p.m.! ꟷ Seville’s streets are lined with heat-embracing bougainvillea, jacaranda and oleander. But you can also escape into the city’s immensely narrow, always cobbled, streets with their furtive glimpses into leafy courtyards brimming with blooms. That said, we were always thoroughly lost in Seville, in spite of carrying a map.
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Alhambra photo essay
$ 0.00Full disclosure here. When we first stood at the high point of San Nicolás Plaza to look across at the hill on which the Alhambra is built, I wondered quietly to myself what the fuss was all about. After all, we were staring at Spain's most poeticised historical palace and fortress sprawled in front of the purple-blue Sierra Nevada. Which, incidentally, in May still showed veins of snow.
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Córdoba photo essay
$ 0.00The old Roman-walled town of Córdoba took us completely by surprise. Admittedly we like to arrive in new, unexplored places a little under-researched so that we can get under their skin, without too many preconceived ideas. We prefer to wander and absorb the energy and (try to) act like a local. All the same, we didn’t expect Córdoba to be so charming and historically rich.
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Madrid’s Graffiti
$ 0.00During a four-day stay in Spain’s capital city, what immediately struck us was the proliferation of graffiti (admittedly not in the chi-chi shopping precincts). But this was graffiti elevated to real funky street art. When I delved a little further, it was fascinating to learn about La Movida Madrileña, a spontaneous creative movement that swelled after the death in 1975 of dictator Francisco Franco.
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