The Windy City

"Seagulls can always be seen flying around the rampart walls of Essaouira, riding the powerful north-easterly trade winds as the waves crash over the rocks below. This wind is a part of the town's personality, flowing through the streets, and also attracts a crowd of eager windsurfers and kiteboarders." Barry Vera, Feast Bazaar

Journal during the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle

Following a pathway, I entered a noble forest, and from a height of five or six hundred feet, one of those splendid views was presented, which are so common on this side of Rio. At this elevation, the landscape attains its most brilliant tint; and every form, every shade, so completely surpasses in magnificence all that the European has ever beheld in his own country, that he knows not how to express his feelings. The general effect frequently recalled to my mind the gayest scenery of the Opera House or the great theaters.

- Charles Darwin, Journal during the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle (1832-36)

Delight in Yokohama

In Yokohama, I went to the hundred steps, at the top of which lives a Japanese belle, Oyuchisan, who is the theme for artist and pet, and the admiration of tourists. One of the pleasant events of my stay was the luncheon given for me on the Omaha, the American war vessel lying at Yokohama. I took several drives, enjoying the novelty of having a Japanese running by the horses' heads all the while. I ate rice and eel. I visited the curio shops, one of which is built in imitation of a Japanese house, and was charmed with the exquisite art I saw therein; in short, I found nothing but what delighted the finer senses while in Japan.

- Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman, Nellie Bly's Book (1890)

Letter to his Mother

If any person wants to be happy I should advise the Parc. You sit drinking iced drinks and smoking penny cigars under great old trees. The band place, covered walks, etc., are all lit up. And you can't fancy how beautiful was the contrast of the great masses of lamp-lit foliage and the dark sapphire night sky, with just one blue star set overhead in the middle of the largest patch. In the dark walks, too, there are crowds of people whose faces you cannot see, and here and there a colossal white statue at the corner of an alley that gives the place a nice artificial, eighteenth-century sentiment. There was a good deal of summer lightning blinking overhead, and the black avenues and white statues leap out every minute into short lived distinctness.

- Robert Louis Stevenson, Letter to his Mother (1872)

Round the World in Any Number of Days

Sometimes in dreams the fancy creates a composite, colored photograph of a town, a place, or a house. The dreamer notices the different of the component parts, but accepts the whole as correct... So it was to a certain degree with my impression of Melbourne. I saw it as a huge city in the Midlands of England, or the Five Towns, but the buildings were more perpendicular, the streets more rectangular, all was larger and more symmetrical, and there was a multitude of tramcars.

But these large, tall, black, square buildings were set in a soft, tepid, luminous air: pearly pink and gray...unlike anything in modern Europe - a dreamlike contrast.

When the fancy creates a place it forgets the necessary changes in background: air, sky and light. This is true of dreams.....

- Maurice Baring, Round the World in Any Number of Days (1913)

Lady of the Avenues

There is a bluff in the presidio, towards the end of Washington Boulevard; some call it the Washington Bluffs, others Rob Hill, but it really has no name. There, at the sweeping curve of the road, you will find one of the finest views of the Golden Gate and the Pacific to be had anywhere. I always come back to this place, borne by the waves of sun and water that extend far beyond the boundaries of the eye, and reminisce about times long gone, dreams unfulfilled, and visions yet to be explored. An ancient Chinese couplet haunts me here:

The moon in the water resembles
the moon in the sky;
The person in the heart is
the person in front of you.

The sea-and pine-scented air fills me with hope and the belief that all men and women are made better by a visit to this place. The dream of San Francisco is that humanity might live in harmony with nature but at the same time enjoy the benefits of civilization.

Call to yourself down through the centuries and see if it is not here that you will return. San Francisco isn't just a city, it is a jumping-off point to eternity. In an ocean of light, this is the place.

- Sean O'Reilly, Travelers' Tales San Francisco

City of Enchantments

We have been traveling for hours through a country filled with an immense energy - with the energy of silence. The enormous plain stretches out to the blue horizon's hound; it is brown as dust. it is grey and ashen, but with the changing hours the colours change. It is mauve and it is reseda , it is sage green and periwinkle blue; and set in the midst thereof, and fair as a star sapphire, and so old that age is non-existent, is the city. Time has no power upon her beauty, which was ordained before time was. The twilight of the ages is luminous upon her; she broods, aloof and fair, a place of enchantments. As Spain has no dew, so Spain has no dreams, but she has magic, and some of it is black magic; as Siena is a city of dreams, so Toledo is a city of enchantments, legendary and magical.
- Georgiana Goddard King, Heart of Spain

1890s Colour Antique Map PRAGUE WYSCHEHRAD NUSLE ZIZKOW

1890s Colour Antique Map PRAGUE WYSCHEHRAD NUSLE ZIZKOW

We love and hate

"We love the place we hate/We hate the place we love/We leave the place we hate/Then spend a lifetime trying to regain it." Director Terence Davies narrates for his film Of Time and the City

You'll understand when you get there

"The energy of the place slams like a shock wave...Kathmandu is so overwhelming, so packed with images, that succinct summaries seem almost impossible - certainly inadequate. I'm tempted to say "You'll understand when you get there..." It's a dream. I've never seen anything like it."
- David Yeadon, The Black of Beyond : Travels to the Wild Places of the Earth

Roma moment

A Roma sepultada en sus ruinas

To Rome Buried in Its Ruins

Buscas en Roma a Roma oh peregrino! y en Roma misma a Roma no la hallas: cadáver son las que ostentó murallas y tumba de sí proprio el Aventino. Yace donde reinaba el Palatino y limadas del tiempo, las medallas más se muestran destrozo a las batallas de las edades que Blasón Latino. Sólo el Tibre quedó, cuya corriente, si ciudad la regó, ya sepultura la llora con funesto son doliente. Oh Roma en tu grandeza, en tu hermosura, huyó lo que era firme y solamente lo fugitivo permanece y dura!

You seek Rome in Rome, o pilgrim! and in Rome itself you do not find Rome: the proud walls are a corpse and the Aventine Hill is its own tomb. Where the Palatine once held sway it now lies full length and, honed by time, medals show themselves to the battle of the ages more as damage than as the Latin Escutcheon. Only the Tiber remained, and its stream, if once it irrigated Rome as a city, now weeps for it as a supulchre, with a grim and grieving sound. Oh Rome, in your grandeur and beauty, that which was solid vanishes, and all that endures and lasts is the fleeting moment.

Quoted from baroque writer Francisco de Quevedo

The Windy City

In Chicago you feel the pressure of infinite surrounding plains; it's a city that fills the land; even the lake, enclosing one side, allow no escape. From time to time, at the end of a long ride by tramway, train, or elevated railroad, the buildings thin out, and it seems that the city is finally going to expire. Then it springs up again, even more vigorously; you've merely reached an old border, with new neighbourhoods built beyond. And beyond that there's is yet another belt, and another farther on. But it's not only these exorbitant dimensions that give Chicago its density. Los Angeles is vast but porous. This town is made of a thick dough, without leavening. More than any city in the world, it reeks of humanity, and this is what makes its atmosphere so stilfing and tragic. Neither nature nor the past can penetrate it, but in the absence of the picturesque, it possesses a dark poetry.
-Simone De Beauvoir, America Day by Day

Look Closer

"People rush through Athens on their way to the islands," he said, "and take in nothing but the Acropolis." Antonis recited the words of a shepherd he'd encountered while lost in the mountains: "A foreigner and a blind man are the same. They don't see what in front of them." And it's true - Athens has gotten a bad rap among travellers, for its traffic jams, overcrowded tourist sites, and seasonal air pollution. But there is another side to Athens, and those who focus only on the city's glorious past, Antonis says, are missing its seductive present: its sensual dry heat and sea light; its blue sky and bright flowers; the icy drinks, garlicky dips, and tangy cheeses served in cafes; the splashes of green and, everywhere, a citrusy smell; the startling hills that jut up heroically in the centre of town.
-Alan Brown, "Athens, Look Closer"

Palermo, Italy

I suppose Palermo, the great bay of Palermo with its lofty promontories thrust out into the sea, so noble in outline and in mass, Monte Pellegrino on the west, and Monte Alfano on the east, the city set as it were in a natural amphitheatre between them on the shore of the blue jewel-like sea, its palaces and turrets and minarets seen against the dark background of far flung mountains, and surrounded by the riches of all wales, the Conca d'Oro, running up in an ever narrowing valley into the great bare hills, with its olive gardens, its orange and lemon groves, its fig trees and almonds, its palms and agraves and its infinite flowers: I suppose Palermo is one of the loveliest places in the world.
-Edward Hutton, Cities of Sicily (1926)

Trees in Sydney

Sydney is so beautiful. The sparkling blue of the ageless harbour is framed by the verdant foliage of aged angophoras, she-oaks and Moreton Bay figs. On the other hand, they're blocking the view of the harbour and the houses overlooking it. This leads to outbreaks of midnight pruning. "Nature is amazing. It took this Moreton a century to grow. Pass the chainsaw. It'll take it a century to grow back. Imagine the price of this place then!" Jean Kittson is an Australian performer, writer and comedian in theatre and print, on radio and television. Quoted from Sydney Magazine (The Sydney Morning Herald)