We actually did quite a lot of other activities in Kalimantan, besides the festival we have reported on for the past three days. Dave Metcalf, our photography guide from David Metcalf Photography kept us busy pretty much all day, every day with wonderful photo opportunities. One afternoon, we drove more than an hour into the […]
Cuenca – Pase del Niño Parade 2021
This year’s parade was like no other before it… and yet it was exactly the same. Read on to see why… In 1823, the Vicar of the Archdiocese of Cuenca took a doll of the baby Jesus to various Holy sites around the world. The pope blessed the doll when it went to Rome. This […]
Hawaii – Steel Guitar Festival 2021
This past Saturday was the 11th annual Steel Guitar Festival. Normally this is a week long event. It was cancelled in 2020 due to COVID restrictions, and this year was constrained to a single day’s event instead of the normal week. There were four professional steel guitar players in the morning, and four young players […]
India 6 – Holi Festival at Nandgaon
This is the third of three blog posts describing our experience at Holi Festival 2018. For our third day, we moved from Barsana to Nandgaon. Though many aspects of the festival are the same here, there were some very important differences — the biggest being the behavior of the crowds and lots of water mixed […]
India 5 – Holi Festival Part 3 – Barsana
This is the final of three parts describing our time in Barsana, India, during the Holi Festival 2018. People were frenetically dancing everywhere at all times, from early morning, until sundown when we left. Small bands of drummers would wander from place to place (upper-left and upper-right), and start a rapid staccato snare drum beat. […]
India 4 – Holi Festival Part 2 – Barsana
We spent two days in Barsana for the Holi Festival. This is the second of three parts covering those days. Holi powder is sold everywhere. We were told that only red and yellow should be used though, as those represent the upper caste, while blue and green were for the lower castes. After only a […]
Portugal 4 – Feira Medieval de Penedono
We are staying in the Douro Valley today, and our host told us that there is an annual festival this weekend in Penedono, a nearby town with a castle. We decided to check it out. In Northern California, we have the Renaissance Fair every summer. This is very much like that, but only lasts the first […]
Portugal 1 – Festival of St John of Porto
We arranged to come to Porto, Portugal in time for the annual street festival paying tribute to St John the Baptist (Festa de São João do Porto). This lively party has been held every year for the past six centuries (starting the afternoon of June 23rd and ending the sometime on the 24th), and is considered the city’s most […]
Turkey 14 – A Dervish Delight
Today we watched a Whirling Dervish performance in Istanbul. The dervish were a Muslim sect that originated in Konya, but were outlawed by the first Turkish president, Mustafa Kemel Atatürk, in 1923. The whirling was part of a religious ceremony, in which the person was supposed to lose his ego to the wider universe. The […]