Gaze across the blue Mediterranean at Europe while feeling the vast African continent breathing down your neck, and then remember, you’re in Spain. Confused? You wouldn’t be the first. Hidden behind the southernmost of the two pillars Hercules dropped at the entrance to this civilization-cradling sea lies this tiny Spanish enclave you never learned about…
Alhama’s name says it all…that is of course if you speak Arabic. Just a mile or two upriver from this quiet town astride a vertigo-inspiring canyon, a hot spring has been soothing aches and pains for two millennia. The town’s name comes from the mineral-rich water bubbling out of the ground at a toasty 116.6…
Soft and sweaty in the deliciously warm early May sunshine…Gorgeous, round, curvy and even just a wee bit pungent. The Feria del Queso, a culinary beauty pageant takes place in the very town that Pizarro left off from on his way to conquer Peru. These creamy contestants sport names like Tortas del Casar and la…
Unlike the Star Wars version, this massive structure levitates out of a vast plain and even seems to dominate the mountains in the distance, like a bricked-out Mongol tent in the middle of Persia that even Luke Skywalker might have trouble with. Twenty-five meters of solid domed brick crown the immense Oljaytu Mausoleum, whose construction…
If you’re walking the ancient Via de la Plata on your way to Santiago, by now your blisters have hardened into calluses and you scoff at a mere 15-mile walk. You’ve sung in the Romans’ amphitheater, crossed their bridges, seen that cork actually does come from trees, and figured out that olives can’t be eaten straight…
Monkeys, Englishmen with Andalusian accents, duty-free shops, tea sets, English breakfasts, pints instead of cañas, sunburns in December, the curry you’ve been craving, and English bookshops… the Rock is something different for everyone. This Mediterranean protuberance has been a thorn in the Spanish conscience ever since the Berber commander Tariq Ibn Ziyad stepped ashore and…
Writing in the local paper. Local issues with a global take. I never translate literally and the editor trims at will to make it fit. Here’s my version, then theirs. Long before San (saint) Obama’s time and the recent thaws, I recall sitting at a café in one of the posher neighbourhoods of northern Tehran. Heavy snow still sat…
Sometime ago they built a tramline up here, hoping that it would bring tourists up from the beach… it didn’t work. The imposing castle tower, once clustered around for protection, long ago lost its luster to the inviting sea that shines in the distance. Back in 1350, Ibn Battutah spoke of a mighty mosque (whose…
Imagine the Caliph’s entire army hot on your tail and you with around a hundred guys on your side. Where would you want to hole up? The answer is here. High atop a mountain smack in the middle of one of Spain’s most productive wine regions lies the ruins of a castle where, back in…
Des(s)ert in Canada isn’t only Nanaimo bars and maple taffy at the cabane a sucre. Up here in the notoriously cold Great White North, the very tip of the long tongue of the Great Basin Desert sneakily licks up across the border from its birthplace down in the Sonoran Desert in Mexico. The town with…