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Wow Place #316: Prambanam Temple, Indonesia Growing up, I was almost-magnetically drawn to adventure films like Indiana Jones. I ate up pretty much anything that involved swashbuckling archaeologists battling cannibals, boa constrictors (and yes, Nazis), all in search of hidden, supernatural artifacts. When, in my 20s, I started traveling around the world in earnest, I […]

Until I went apple picking in Hirosaki, Japan (Wow Place #18), I never thought much about fruit gathering as a popular recreation. I mean, the trees just sit three. Now, if there was a windstorm, with my fruity targets darting in and out of reach, that would be a challenge! Or if the tree tried […]

One of the pleasures of a trip to Europe is touring all the grand manors and estates, with their classic architecture and their manicured gardens. You just don’t find many of those places in the U.S. – and most certainly not in Northern California. Filoli is the exception. Also known as the Bourn-Roth Estate, Filoli […]

When you grow up with a disabled parent, you tend to develop a certain degree of patience. At age 17, my father, Walter, contracted polio. Although he was one of the lucky ones to survive the illness, he spent much of his adult his life battling PPS or “Post-polio syndrome” – a gradual breakdown of […]

“Dave, on our way to Portland, I’d like to scatter my mother’s ashes on the Shakespeare stage in Ashland” “You what, Michelle?” “You heard me. My mom adored Shakespeare. I’d like to scatter her ashes at a place she loved.” I first visited the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) back in my 20s. As an English […]

Minutes after arriving in Japan, pretty much the second you leave customs at the airport, you’re likely to encounter your first vending machine, or “jihanki.” A combination of “自販 (jihan)” meaning “self-selling” and “機 (ki)” meaning “machine,” jihankis are everywhere! My question is: why?!! Why are there so darn many vending machines in Japan? And […]

In the early 17th Century, Miguel de Cervantes wrote a Spanish novel called “The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha,” otherwise known simply as “Don Quixote.” Literary scholars generally agree the book is one of the founding works of Western Literature – perhaps the first modern novel. A unique blend of humor, tragedy, and […]

A few weeks ago, I wrote about Sainte Chapelle, a compact, tiny-house-of-a-church hidden in the heart of Paris. What struck me while visiting it was its intimate approach to worship. At Sainte Chapelle, you can imagine your god sitting right next to you, sipping a cup of tea, bathed in warm, tinted light streaming down […]

I’m not someone who thinks much about where my pleasures come from. Take my morning cup of tea. After boiling water in a kettle, I reach into the pantry and choose from a box of either Earl Grey or Rooibos Chai, drop a tea bag in my favorite mug, and dowse it with hot water. […]

As a tourist, I do my research. Consulting a guide book before I arrive in a city, I decide on my top-five sights to visit and chart them out on a map. Whatever happens, I’m going to make sure I visit those five locations because I’m a man on a mission! Next I identify my […]