Mention Marbella and what automatically comes to mind are gaudy images of Saudi princes, building-sized yachts, Ferraris, and the sweet smell of… corruption. This is the poster child of the infamous concrete Spanish coast where, according to who you believe, more than 30,000 buildings lack the proper permits. Golf courses grow where it rarely rains,…
Somewhere in this “bride of Andalusian cities,” one of the greatest travel-story meeting of minds took place. A rendezvous that seven years and a different continent later would give fruit to one of the best travel books ever written, Rihla (also know as A Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels…
For many this was the end of the line, a place at the end of Africa to get lost in purple hazes and naked lunches. But long before Burroughs and Hendrix added their hipness, a local boy took the Tangerine brand far beyond the Levant. A medieval gap-year wanderer who saw it as a beginning…
Came across a repost of something that I wrote for Trazzler on the website, Salon. It was a series of 10 travel bits on places in Spain that Ibn Battutah visited on his trip through Andalusia back in the 14th century. Nice surprise. See it here.
The Costa del Sol’s concrete boredome costing you a bit? Trazzler’s collected 10 trips following the great Ibn Battutah’s trips through the region. Shake off the fish and chip shops and dig a bit deeper here.
This plaque on the church is about the only evidence you’ll find of Battuta’s visit in the town of Coin. Think Marco Polo was the world’s greatest traveler? If you do, it’s because you haven’t read Ibn Battuta. For whatever reason, be they ethnocentric prejudices, islamophobia or the simple fact that Polo had better PR,…
Ibn Battutah is known for traveling around most of the known world back in the 14th century, but perhaps the least well known part of his travels was his sojourn here in Spain. Even still, in his Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Traveling, he paints one of…
Over the Christmas break we went off again, searching for more of Ibn Battutah’s tracks…this time from Morocco to Spain. The trip ended, like Battutah’s in that lovely city at the feet of the Sierra Nevada, Granada. Of the few cities that live up to their hype and more. Even without the Alhambra sitting on…
I’ve chased Ibn Battutah’s ghost through Yemen, Syria, Turkey, Libya, Spain and even Cambodia. Each country has provided fleeting glimpses of the medieval wanderer, from his lions in Aleppo to castles in Fuengirola. Have a read about a recent pilgrimage to this traveler’s tomb in Tangier in the Sydney Morning Herald.