Post by Ella Maki, a vibrant woman in her 30s, fetched us from the Yuasa train station for the 20 minute drive to her guesthouse in the small village of Adiragawa. The Adira region is famous for mikan (mandarin oranges) and the area is chock full of steeply terraced mikan orchards. Guesthouse Moriamon sits nestled…
Shoyu
Post by Ella After our hike yesterday we took a train from Kainan to Yuasa. We had about an hour to kill before the owner of Guesthouse Moriamon cane to pick us up so we wandered around the town. Yuasa is the birthplace of Japanese soy sauce (shoyu) and has been designated as a historical…
Okay, that was brutal
Yesterday we checked our bags at the hotel, loaded our daypacks, and left Osaka to begin our four day hike on the Kumano Kodo Kijii, aka the Emperor’s Trail, aka the Land of Death. Two trains got us to the Shimizu-Ura platform where we began following the printed directions in a booklet Ella had printed out…
On the trail
Post by Ella We finished our first day on the trail. Steep up, steep down, rainy, lots of slippery rocks. Guess who fell twice? Not me! Are you asking what trail? Where the heck are you? To answer…The Kumano Kodo, the trail of the Emperors. It is an ancient trail, or rather set of trails…
Osaka Underground
I’m not saying that Japan is unduly haunted by the history of aerial bombing that took place in World War II, but in taking the Osaka Train Station escalator down from street level to the subway kingdom of avenue wide tunnels jammed with shopping outlets and eateries I can’t help thinking that if I were…
A dazed breakfast
Post by Ella Time: We are 15 hours ahead of New Mexico. Who knows what time our bodies think it is. Breakfast: our hotel offers a choice of Japanese style breakfast and western style breakfast. We went Japanese of course. Picture below. Tomorrow maybe I’ll remember to take the tops off before taking the picture. Like…
Jet Lag Jackhammer
Post by Grubb Whoa…we left LAX Monday mid-afternoon and, after a twelve-hour flight, landed in Osaka in the early evening on the next day. My body was prepared for an early morning stretch and now it was dazedly doing nighttime maneuvers negotiating a very large airport terminal where a very large crowd was lined up for…
Silently in Japan
Post by Ella. Silence? That’s what we hear. Hmmm. We will get to that. Japan is a place full of natural beauty, shrines (Shinto) and temples (Buddhist), and superb public transportation. There will be crowds to navigate – especially the big cities like Osaka and Tokyo. Mountains, active volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis (hoping we don’t have…
The French road to Barcelona
Post by Ella We are on our way back to the States. Reluctantly. Waiting in Atlanta for the final flight. I usually try for a wrap up at the end of each trip. Grubb describes the trip as a medieval to modern Gothic journey crowded with ghosts. I describe it in bits. The French love…
Barcelona photos
Post by Ella Some random photos.
Casa Vicens
After the overwhelming experience of Gaudí’s La Familia Sagrada, we thought we’d come back to earth by visiting Casa Vicens, the house he built in the 1880s. It had a nice mixture of oriental modernist design. I loved the tiled turrets rising above the top floor veranda. It just proved there were places for sublime…
Peaking at La Sagrada Familia
I was ready to visit Gaudí’s famous chapel on our last day in Barcelona. I figured a modern Gothic landmark would be a nice capstone to our trip. But I’ve always been influenced by photos of the exterior and the design seemed too busy in an ornamental way. And when we approached the building, the dull brown terra…
Sagrada Familia
Post by Ella Perhaps Gaudi’s finest. A giant of a basilica. Construction begun in the late 1800s and is ongoing today with a target completion of 2026. The largest unfinished Catholic Church in the world. On the outside, the most distinctive and creative interpretation of Gothic architecture ever, anywhere. Every curve, every line flows. Sculptural…
Catamaran ride
Once we had taken in the large warships in the Marine Museum (the size of the oars, the image of being in the galley rowing—yikes), it seemed like we should cruise the bay in a catamaran. Get refreshed by the sea breeze, gaze at the splendor of the city sweeping by. Looking down from the upper…
Atop Las Arenas de Barcelona
Post by Ella On our way to the Museo Nacional d’Art Catalunya the other day, I noticed an elevator going up to the rooftop of the distinctive Las Arenas de Barcelona. Now shopping complex, it was once a bullfighting arena but was reconstructed in 2011 for less violent activities. Who doesn’t love a glass elevator…