The Haunted Hotel

With the exception of the Grand Hyatt in Taipei, this weekend marked the first time I knowingly stayed in a haunted hotel.
Located in Callicoon, New York, on the banks of the Delaware River, The Western Hotel is said to be haunted by the ghost of Laura Darling Kahl. In 1921, she was shot to death on the front steps by her husband, the hotel's bartender. Her parents owned the hotel at the time. Ever since, sightings at the hotel

The Ghosts of Prague

That Prague exists in tangible form somehow escaped my imaginings. Prague has always been the dark heart of fantasy, shrouded in mist and rhyme, colourless. So I wept, overpowered by reality, when I reached out my hand to touch the base of St. Peter on Charles Bridge, wept as I did at the Kremlin wall, to find myself standing on the very stones of history. Prague does exist outside of novels and photographs, rime a-plenty, invaded as it were by the colors of tourism. Modern humanity juxtaposed against spiritualism seems more unnatural than any gruesome tale of Kafka. I am touring the husk of a long-dead beetle. I am out of time, walking among ghosts without the reverence of fear.

How to Die in Florence

Florence. When the temperature drops below 50, that chilling memory sets in.

Italian chianti empties faster closer to the source. Two bottles stand between me and my memories of the day. Night found me wandering the streets with my involuntary companions.

Alcohol is a vasodilator. It drives blood to the surface. The Italian night shears off that fuzzy warm heat like a barber looking for lice. Cold burrows into bones like zoster, happy to find a permanent home. I had to get indoors.

New York Renaissance Faire

Up front: I despise Renaissance Fairs. First, they're hard to spell. Second, they’re typically designed to attract two types of people, troglodytes and cash-laden tourists, neither of whom I usually associate with. Here are the types of people I expected to see:

1. Twelve year old boys in the “Knights and swords are cool!” phase. That’s the one that comes after dinosaurs and trains, but before girls. Typically indicative of art school aspirations.

2. Dungeons and Dragons players. The actual game, not video games. These people crawl out of their mother’s pot hazed basement for an annual dose of Vitamin D.

3. LOTR fanatics. If you know the acronym, you are one. 

4. Comic-Con rejects (if there is such a thing without being a tautology).

5. Grossly overweight faeries. 

6. All of the above. Grossly overweight LOTR fanatic Comic-Con reject D&D playing boys.

Needless to say, I was not looking forward to getting dragged to the New York Renaissance Faire. So, in apology to all of the above, let me first say I was pleasantly surprised.

Travel in the Dominican Republic

Note shotgun and machete. 

The trip from the Santo Domingo airport to the Renaissance Jaragua hotel reveals a microcosm of the Dominican Republic.

Immediately upon leaving the airport, poverty and chaos engulfs my ruined taxi.
Burnt-out, mangled cars line the road as frequently as mile markers. Enterprising souls abscond with the mile marker husks, paint them, and continue to service the airport-hotel circuit. I suspect my driver is one of them. Most of the mini-busses in operation appear to have literally “hit the road”. Taxis are invariably Toyota sedans bulging with eight or more passengers. One gets the sense that Toyota shipped its first line of vehicles to the Dominican Republic as a gift when the Japanese started producing cars, and have not done so since. 

After an eternity spent crawling past densely packed, crumbling concrete block homes with rusted currogated rooftops huddling below palm trees, I arrive at 

Road Trip to Yosemite and the Redwood Forest

A Coyote in Yosemite

I drove over a thousand miles in the last week, most of that on hairpin mountain roads on the edge of a cliff. Yosemite, and then the Redwoods, with the Big Nothing of the Sacramento Valley in between.

Drinking Civet Coffee in Macau

I always wanted to try Civet coffee, so when I found myself in Macau in front of a coffee shop offering it, I had to have it. Don't know what Civet coffee is? Allow me to quote Wikipedia:

Hunting in Wyoming

Hunting the Grasslands of Wyoming

A friend of mine owns several thousand acres of prairie out in Wyoming. When he asked me to go hunting, I couldn't turn him down. Chasing antelope across the range with the reward of many good meals to take home - who could resist?

I prepared myself for weeks of stalking, camping, and living off the land. The idea of tromping through the cold wilderness with nothing but a rifle, a sleeping bag, and a camp stove to cook whatever we managed to catch or kill, well, that's what men are for.