Steven and Torrey World Travel

World Travels of Steven and Torrey Paulson

Diaries by Torrey and Steven Paulson of their trips to countries around the world, showing what we saw, who we met and what we did.

HAWAII

Hawaii is like a diamond. The more you look into it, the more you discover what it has to offer.

                The adventurous traveler in paradise may discover he’s short on time and long on things left undone. There is always another luau, nightclub act or cultural spot to visit.

                Travelers may be suffering from jet lag’s cumulative, temporary effect while approaching Hawaii. Layovers and the gain of six hours can blitz even the hardiest. There is a five-hour difference between the East Coast and Hawaii, plus the gain of another hour since the 50th state is not on Daylight Savings Time.

                Hawaii can be a joy even to the cynic. Soothing Pacific waves stretch into blues of various shades no poet could adequately describe. Majestic mountaintops awe travelers who have not seen the combination of jagged rocks muted with the luscious green of tropical foliage.

                Often the volcanic formations are hidden behind clouds, even in the late afternoon on a hot summer day.

                On a Saturday morning, groups of surfers bobbed with the waves a half-mile from shore. Joggers scrunched and squished through the coarse sand, which has surged with the tide since the islands’ formation.

                One young man clad only in swim trunks, with a red knapsack by his side, slept blissfully before the morning sunlight broke around the beachfront hotels.

                Honolulu surprised us. How could so many people live on an island so far away from the rest of the world, 2,400 miles from California?

                Honolulu now has scores of hotels, businesses and skyscrapers, tourist kiosks and good local food if you get out of the downtown area. You can find meals like poke, the salad topped with raw tuna, poi, made from purple taro root, or kalua pig cooked in an underground oven. For a small price, you can take a bus around the entire island, including Pearl Harbor, where oil still seeps out of the USS Arizona, which sank in the World War II bombing.

                A short flight away on the Big Island of Hawaii is Volcanoes National Park, with its yawning volcano, where the Hawaiians worshipped “E Pele El O, goddess of the burning stones. Life for me, life for you.’’ The ancient people sought to appease the angry volcano with human sacrifices. They sought her cooperation so more volcanoes would not erupt, destroying everything in the path of the molten lava.

                Hundreds of sulphur-spewing steam jets vent into the sky. The smell is hard to ignore. Signs warn tourists not to wander. There are also earthquake fault zones.

                Mother Earth becomes a strange, almost barren wasteland. Picking up rocks is forbidden, and folklore says people who take the lava rocks must bring them back or suffer bad luck.

JAPAN

                After landing in Tokyo, we immediately traveled to Nikko. Unless you speak Japanese, you will have trouble understanding and communicating, because contrary to popular opinion, most Japanese do not speak English, but there are ways to get information and a smile.  Young children will giggle and point, while the adults try not to stare.

                Nikko is a small city, largely unspoiled by the 5 million visitors who go there every year. It is famous for the 42-building Toshogu shrine complex, built in 1617, devoted to Tokugawa Ieyasu, who founded the Tokugawa shogunate that lasted 250 years. The buildings include shrines, gates and temples that are colorful and beautiful against the green, wet mountainside. The rushing Daiya River roars underneath the sacred red lacquered Shin-kyo Bridge.

                The shrines provide colorful illustrations, and the priests chant and sing, sitting cross-legged in front of the huge Buddhas. They beat a drum and ring a huge bell, using a log on a rope, to get the gods’ attention.

                Around the shrines are white paper pieces tied to bushes and trees. These are handwritten good wishes and prayers for the dead.

                Ancestor worship is prominent, with small stone figures symbolically dressed in clothes, to allow the dead ancestors to have clothes with them. Offerings include money, flowers, food and tea.

                We stayed in a small hotel called a ryokan, where we slept on the floor on futons, and ate on small tables sitting on cushions. There isn’t much furniture, and we had to take off our shoes to walk on the tatami mats. The Japanese have communal baths with separate baths for men and women, where people wash themselves with buckets and soap, then sit in a hot spa to soak and relax.

                In Tokyo, our first stop is the Tokyo Train Station, with everything from local trams to speeding bullet trains that you can take to all the main cities. Underground there are many restaurants and shops, many with outside window displays featuring realistic plastic replicas of the dishes inside, that are art forms in themselves. The train station even has a dentist’s office.

                Nearby are “capsule hotels,’’ a small tube with two or three tubes stacked on top of each other, with a curtain and a futon. Because of long work hours and long commutes, many businessmen just spend the night for about $20 a night.

                Rush-hour crowds are appalling, with hundreds of people waiting to jump into trains. There are more people who want to get on the trains than there is room, so there are guards who push people inside to fill up the train, including any extremities that are hanging out of the doors. Sometimes they take a running body-slam. There are piles of shoes that are waiting for passengers to come back and pick them up. Torrey was jammed so hard by a crush of people one time that it ripped her blouse at the elbows.

                Friday nights are especially bad, because businessmen, known as “salary men,’’ are required to stay late and have drinks with the boss. It’s a way to let off steam, because they have to be polite to each other during work hours. On Friday night, they can get away with yelling at their bosses, and it’s excused because they are drunk.

                The Imperial Palace is in central Tokyo, surrounded by a moat. The most beautiful time to visit is when the cherry blossoms are blooming.

                After seeing Tokyo, we went to Kamakura and the Kotoku-in Temple’s Great Buddha, a 100-foot-tall bronze statue still standing after a tsunami in 1495 washed away the temple that covered it. At the front of the building is a sign: “Stranger, whoever thou art and whatever be thy creed when thou entered this sanctuary, remember thou treadest upon ground hallowed by the worship of ages.’’

                We then decided to climb Mount Fujiyama, which was more dangerous than we anticipated. We started out at Fifth-Station climbing up the 12,300-foot mountain, with our walking poles and backpacks, and only a bottle of plum wine, and a bag of green watermelon candies thinking it was be a short hike up and a short hike down.

                We also had not realized how dangerous the physical exertion and winter weather conditions would be as we went higher up the mountain.

                We ignored the warning that said winter was approaching, and began our trek up the mountain. The path got steeper and steeper, and at one point we had to pull ourselves up with chains like real mountain climbers. High winds made climbing even more dangerous. Rocks were used to hold down the tin roofs of small huts that provide shelter for climbers seeking refuge from the treacherous conditions.

                There are a number of huts erected for climbers, and at each one, you get your walking stick branded by a caretaker using a brazier. It took six hours for us to reach the 6th station, where we spent the night in the cold, damp hut, sleeping on futons. Hikers kept coming in throughout the night. The caretaker felt sorry for me and Torrey, and we borrowed jackets and gloves because of the freezing temperatures and which we later returned on our descent. Several people die each year trying to make the climb without the proper equipment. We didn’t realize that when we started out.

                Before dawn, we resumed our climb, and we could see climbers wearing miner’s hats bobbing up the mountain below us.

                We reached the top at sunrise, and there were groups of Japanese climbers who wanted to take pictures of us. They also shared their bottles of sake wine. It was a time for celebration, with a number of religious relics including large Torii, a traditional Japanese gate most commonly found at the entrance of or within a Shinto shrine, where it symbolically marks the transition from the mundane to the sacred.

                 The trip down was much easier. The side of the volcano is covered with sharp jagged volcanic cinders and rocks, and with each step, we slid down about 10 feet. It was like skiing down the mountain, and we made it in several hours, worrying about breaking our legs and falling down the mountain.

                The best way to find your way around in foreign cities is to get the locals who speak English to write down your destination, which you can show to taxi drivers or helpful passersby. In Japan, some of them went out of their way for blocks to show us how to find our destinations.

                Kyoto is one of the crown jewels of Japan. It is famous for its numerous classical Buddhist temples, as well as imperial palaces, Shinto shrines and traditional wooden houses. It’s also known for formal traditions such as kaiseki dining with multiple courses, and geisha, female entertainers who serve you meals and tea.

                Kyoto served as Japan’s capital and the emperor’s residence from 794 until 1868.

                In the City of A Thousand Shrines, Kinkaku-ji Temple, commonly known as the Golden Pavilion, sits in the middle of a large pond, the crown jewel of its surroundings. The temple gets its name from the gold leaf which covers the entire exterior of the top two floors.

                Nijo Castle, the residence of Tokugawa shoguns, shows the power that the shoguns wielded over the emperors throughout the Edo Period.

                In 1601, Tokugawa Ieyasu, the founder of the Tokugawa shogunate, ordered all the feudal lords in Western Japan to contribute to the construction of Nijo Castle, which was completed during the reign of Tokugawa Iemitsu in 1626.

                The Ninomaru Palace served as the residence and office of the shogun during his visits to Kyoto. The palace has multiple separate buildings that are connected with each other by corridors with so-called “nightingale’’ wooden floors, as they squeak and chirp when stepped upon, as a warning of assassins and intruders.

                We were awed by the craftsmanship in local shops. Men and women labored over Satsuma, Cloisonne and Damascene vases. Jewelers worked with intricate inlay with silver and gold.

SOUTH KOREA

                The contrast of Seoul, South Korea, is jarring. Bright window displays and bright lights line some of the downtown streets, while a short way away women squat on sidewalks selling gum and candy. Outdoor stalls sell paper-thin slices of fish grilled on an open fire.

                On the ride into town from Kimpo Airport, we saw thousands of soldiers in green fatigues, surrounded by tanks and rockets, because Seoul is only 35 miles from North Korea, and they are still at war, even though they signed a truce in 1953. Panmunjom, in the middle of the demilitarized zone, is only an hour-long trip from Seoul.

                We stayed in a “yagwon,’’ a small guest house that had covers on the floor for sleeping, and a small table with no cushions. There was not a whit more. It was $3 a night.

                Most of the food is spicy, including ginger and sesame oil with bulgogi short ribs, and kimchi, a fiery mix of cabbage and other vegetables sometimes fermented in the ground.

                We visited the Gyeongbok Palace, the main royal palace of the Joseon dynasty. Built in 1395, it is located in northern Seoul. In the early 20th century, much of the palace was destroyed by Imperial Japan, but a few main buildings have been restored.

TAIWAN

                Twenty bird cages line the side of a wall, filled with brightly colored birds. Scooters roar through town, forcing bicyclists out of the way. Food stalls spring up at night, offering vegetables, noodles and fish. The Taiwanese come out in droves to enjoy the food and company. Open-air stalls sell medicines like ginseng root and dried seahorses.

                The Confucius Temples are the most ornate we have seen. They are gaily colored with dragons and figurines on the sides and roof, and a small carving of Confucius. The temples are crowded, and some have tables filled with food, including a five-star green vegetable, and even a watermelon.

HONG KONG

                Landing at Kai Tak Airport was an adventure. The city is so crowded, as the plane landed, we could see people inside their apartments next to the runway eating dinner. Hong Kong was building a new airport farther out of town.

                Hong Kong is the best place to shop for ivory. We saw an entire truck load of tusks being unloaded, waiting to be carved into pagodas, intricate balls that were carved inside balls and inside more balls, some as big as 12 layers thick. One was a carving of a boat nearly 5-feet long.

                It was also a consumer paradise, with cameras, jewelry, jade and even snuff bottles that were once used for opium.

                Neon lights are everywhere. Hand-made suits were a bargain.

                Bargaining for the price is another matter.

                For dinner, we took a sampan to the Jumbo Floating Restaurant, where we had shark fin steak and bird’s next soup, made from real bird’s nests and everything in them. Desserts included double-boiled milk, mashed red beans with lotus seed, and iced bean curd with cream. Restaurants also serve duck-web soup, and braised abalone with goose wings.

                The city is crowded, and the washed clothes are hung out on porches. Air conditioners hang dangerously out of windows many stories up, a disaster waiting to happen. People throw pails of water and garbage out of high-rise buildings onto gardens below, sometimes hitting the sidewalks and people below.

                Temples abound and are filled with coils of incense and elaborate carvings.

                There are many herb shops with medicinal plants, with recipes for healing that date back millenniums.

                There are chickens and ducks and even pigs, red roasted with spices, hanging from restaurant windows. Fish swimming around are plucked from tanks inside the restaurants and sent to the frying pans and woks. 

                In Aberdeen, people live on junks, which are small boats, and you can see people hanging clothes from front to stern and cooking on the decks. They threw leftovers over the side into the harbor. If you want to catch a water taxi to the floating restaurant, several of the junks or sampans have to move out of the way to make room.

                A water taxi driver grabbed us and held on until we got into her boat. Then she tried to charge us $5 U.S. currency instead of the 5 dollars Hong Kong she promised, which was about a dollar. After a lot of screaming, she settled for the Hong Kong dollars.

                We went to the Lantern Festival in Victoria Park, where there were red and white paper lanterns filled with candles. Some were shaped like butterflies, fish, and even a bunny rabbit. People picnicked on the grass, enjoying the festivities. The festival originated from moon worship thousands of years ago. Some of the lanterns caught fire and burned. A large, 100-foot red and gold dragon danced through the crowd, powered by men holding the dragon costume above their heads. People chewed on mooncakes made from ground lotus, sesame seeds, dates and eggs.               

                The imperial court launched a lantern festival in the Tang Dynasty, 618-907 AD, when an emperor named Ming Huang was commissioned to build 30 enormous lantern towers to mark the 15th night of the first moon. Some of the lanterns were shaped like dragons and phoenixes, tigers and leopards and rabbits.

                The rabbit lanterns symbolize the jade rabbit that legend says lives on the moon.

MACAU

                We rode the hydrofoil to Macau, where there wasn’t much to see. We went gambling in the casinos, toured the former Portuguese colony and stood on the steps of the ruins of St. Paul’s Church, was destroyed by a fire during a typhoon on 26 January 1835.

                The ruins now consist of the southern stone façade—intricately carved between 1620 and 1627 by Japanese Christians in exile from their homeland and local craftsmen under the direction of Italian Jesuit Carlo Spinola—and the crypts of the Jesuits who established and maintained the church. The façade sits on a small hill, with 68 stone steps leading up to it.

                The carvings include Jesuit images with Oriental themes, such as The Blessed Virgin Mary stepping on a seven-headed hydra, described in Chinese characters as ‘Holy Mother tramples the heads of the dragon’. A few of the other carvings are of the founders of the Jesuit Order, the conquest of Death by Jesus, and at the very top, a dove with wings outstretched.

THAILAND

                In Bangkok, there was cow tongue soup, fried pig’s stomach and pickled, salted beef, all sold at a sidewalk restaurant across from Wat Phra Keo, a major temple complex in Bangkok. The smell of woks filled with fiery bird peppers, meat and vegetables was overwhelming.

                We went to visit Wat Po, the giant reclining Buddha showing him as he achieved nirvana. It is gilded in gold, some of it peeling off, but it is still impressive. His feet have mother-of-pearl swirls on his toes. Monks in saffron robes walked around with their rice bowls in hand.

                 Wat Phra Keo was most impressive, with dozens of buildings and temples, including the Grand Palace and royal buildings. But the most impressive are the multi-colored temples with glass mirrors, colored stones and semi-precious jewelry. The detailed work was magnificent. We also got to see the emerald buddha, which is actually made of jade, sitting high on an altar.

                Leaving Bangkok, we took a short trip by train to Ayutthaya, about 40 miles north of Bangkok. It was the capital of the Kingdom of Siam, one of the wealthiest in the East. It was subject to many attacks, and destroyed by the Burmese in the great elephant war in 1767. At Wat Lokaya Sutha, there is a large reclining buddha depicting Buddha at the time of his death.

                At Wat Panancherang, the assembly hall (Vihara) houses a majestic Buddha image built 26 years before the establishment of Ayutthaya.

                It was built of stucco and was magnificently lacquered and covered with gold foil. It is still considered good luck to add strands of gold foil to the statue. The walls were indented to make chambers that enshrine 84,000 small Buddha images.

                After Ayutthaya, we made our way to Nakon Pathom with its giant Phra Pathom Chedi, the tallest stupa in Thailand. A stupa is a mound-like structure containing relics, typically containing the remains of Buddhist monks or nuns, and they are places of meditation.

                At night, we went to a traditional Thai dance, with women wearing colorful silk clothes and men clashing with flaming swords, symbols from the Ramayana, an ancient Sanskrit epic which follows Prince Rama’s quest to rescue his beloved wife Sita from the clutches of Ravana with the help of an army of monkeys.

                In Bangkok, we saw the beautifully crafted Temple of Dawn – at dawn.

CHINA

                More than 1 million people worked on the Great Wall of China, stretching more than 5,200 miles to protect the kingdom from invaders. Construction began in 221 BC. China was composed of many small kingdoms before it was unified under the Ching Dynasty. It was the last imperial dynasty of China, ruling from 1644 to 1912.

                The Sung Dynasty, ruling from 960 – 1279 AD, was the golden age of pottery, arts, silk paintings and literature. Scribes wrote on bone, bronze, silk and paper in exquisite calligraphy. Ink was made by combining soot, putty, sandalwood soap, pearl dust and egg white.

                Many of the treasures are on display at the National Palace Museum in Taiwan, which became a refuge for members of the Kuomintang, who took control of the island in 1949 after losing control of mainland China in the Chinese Civil War.

                In Taiwan, we bought a marble “chop’’ in the shape of Buddha with our names carved on the bottom, along with Chinese writing forming our own seal, or signature that we use to stamp our writings. We also bought exquisite cloisonne vases, made by welding wire to ceramics and inlaying them with enamel.

                In Beijing, Steven saw the Temple of the Sun where emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties offered sacrifices to the sun god, and the Temple of the Moon, built in 1530 in the reign of Emperor Jiajing of the Qing Dynasty. It had an altar built with white glazed tiles to signify the moon. The Temple of Heaven was awe-inspiring, visited by the Emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties for annual ceremonies of prayer to Heaven for a good harvest.

NEPAL

                Landing at Kathmandu is an adventure. As the plane begins to land, sirens go off to get the goats off the runway. We said a little prayer when we landed.

                Heading into town, we hired a 14-year-old guide. He showed us around town, and bragged that he got his education “on the road.’’

                In town, we saw bright orange goat heads hanging from meat stalls.

                We saw the temple of the “living goddess,’’ a virgin 12-year-old girl secluded in a building she cannot leave. She was chosen for her fearlessness in the presence of cobras.

                When she reaches puberty, she must leave, and a new girl takes her place. The Nepalese believe the virgin girls cannot marry, because their husbands would die.

                There were nearby temples where animal sacrifices were made during the holiday of Pura Puja, where thousands of buffalo, chicken, goats and other animals are killed each year and their blood given to the gods.

                Sacred monkeys scamper around Swayambhunath Chaitya, a Buddhist shrine, with a stupa said to be a thousand years old. The monkeys are trained to steal cameras from tourists, and they are known to bite. The shrines are surrounded by dozens of prayer wheels, each containing a long coil of paper with written prayers. Spinning the prayer wheels amounts to saying a prayer each time you spin it.

                Durbar Square in Kathmandu has old pagodas, a garish red statue of Hanuman, a monkey god. A boy climbs up to put the rice thrown at the statue into the monkey’s mouth.

                There is the 17th century Royal Palace with ornately carved doorways and windows, and the Kumari Ghar, the home of the living goddess.

                Also nearby is the black statue of Bhairab, the god of terror. He is believed to be so powerful that criminals were brought there to be tried, and they would die if they lied.

                There is a popular pie and tea shop downtown, called, appropriately, “Mom’s Pie House,’’ with a sign asking people not to smoke hashish. They cater to westerners hungry for home cooking.They also serve water buffalo burgers.

                There were many children begging for money. Our guide said they were taught by their parents, and if you give a handout to one, you will have to deal with the whole neighborhood. Nearby, a woman begged for food, but she did not try to stop the monkeys from stealing her rice bowl. The monkeys are sacred, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

                The next day, we began our trek to Nagarkot at the base of Mount Everest. Face it, if you are not climbing Mount Everest, Nagarkot is the next best thing. On the trek you will pass through settlements with farmers working their fields, and women doing the laundry.

                The climb takes about four hours from the beginning of the path up the mountainside. When we reached the Nagarkot Guest House, they cooked dinner for us over an open fire, a piping hot bowl of dhal lentil soup, before we bed down for the night. They had no electricity, and used oil burning lamps. They relied on a rooster for an alarm clock.

                We woke at dawn, and the skies were clear, giving us a beautiful view of Mount Everest. Our guide pointed out a procession of family members up a nearby mountain, and told us a baby had died during the night, and they were carrying the body for burial.

INDIA

                Exiting the airport, we were immediately besieged by young kids who wanted to show us around. We didn’t have far to go. Near the airport is the Qutb Minar. Qutab-Ud-Din-Aibak, founder of the Delhi Sultanate, started construction of the Qutb Minar’s first story around 1192. In 1220, Aibak’s successor and son-in-law Shamsuddin Iltutmish completed a further three stories. It is now five stories tall.

                However, the best is inside the complex. Quwat-ul-Islam Mosque was built at the same time as the Minar, and the much older, mysterious, Iron Pillar of Delhi.

                The pillar is engraved in Sanskrit, and it has attracted the attention of archaeologists and scientists because of its high resistance to corrosion, a testimony to the high level of skill achieved by the ancient Indian iron smiths in the extraction and processing of iron. It has not rusted after centuries exposed to the elements. It was originally erected by Chandragupta II Vikramaditya (375–414 AD) in front of a Vishnu Temple complex at Udayagiri. It was later moved to the mosque. People put their backs to the pillar and link their hands, believing it will fulfill their wishes.

                The national symbol of India is a lion with four faces, looking in each direction and joined at the center. One of the best lion sculptures is in Varanasi, formerly known as Benares, on the Ganges River.

                On the river, people bathe, soaking in the religious waters. Women visit a temple containing a symbolic phallus in hopes of becoming pregnant. That night, they sleep with their husbands. Our guide told us the goddess Shiva is credited if a child is born as a result of the visit to the temple.

                On the banks of the Ganges, bodies are cremated on ghats. While taking a low-riding boat trip on the Ganges, we saw a body wrapped in cloth floating down the river with a bird pecking at its head.

                Women wore colorful saris, while men sometimes wore sack cloths around their waist. Some men carried bottles of urine, which Indians sometimes drink for good health.

                Because of the extreme heat, sometimes reaching 120 degrees Fahrenheit during the day, many people sleep outside at night. For those with air conditioning, frequent power outages make sleeping almost impossible.  Dehydration and diarrhea, also known by the vernacular “Delhi Belly,’’ are major concerns.

                We went to Udaipur, a quick transition from poverty to luxury where we stayed at the Lake Palace Hotel. It was built as a maharanah’s palace, or king of king’s palace, in 1754 in the middle of Pichola Lake. We took a boat to reach the palace. The walls and floors had beautiful inlaid marble and jewels, including amber and jade, and a diwan set in a cupola. Torrey and Steven took turns sitting in a swing with shiny brass chains adorned with elephants. At night, we had a great banquet with curries and sweets.

                Across the lake, back in town, is the Maharana Palace, called the “White City’’ because of all the marble in the Rajput-style palaces standing all around the lake. The palace has beautiful inlaid stained glass and stones and mirrors, giving shimmering colors to the inside rooms. The palace has its own sun statue where the Maharana could worship. The palace grounds were 11 miles long and had 11 gates. The palaces within the complex are interlinked through a number of chowks, or quadrangles with zigzag corridors, to avoid surprise attacks by enemies.

                Nearby is Jaipur, known as the “Pink City’’ for its trademark building color. It was built in 1727 by Prince Sawai Singh II, who was also an astronomer. A block-long pink facade lines the front of the Maharaja Palace, with scores of intricate, lace carved screens so women, barred from being seen in public, could look outside onto the streets. One woman called it the “window of 1,000 eyes.’’

                At the center of the city stands the opulent, colonnaded City Palace complex, and it is still a royal residence. Men lead their camels through town, with their heads wrapped in turbans with up to 10 yards of cloth, while women carry shiny brass pots on their heads to a communal water well.

                Torrey met a guru, who told her fortune. He said we would have three children (true), that we swam great distances under water (both of us are certified scuba divers), and that we would be millionaires. Well, two out of three isn’t bad. There was no way the guru could have known that we were both certified scuba divers, and the guru had a hard time describing it, because he didn’t know the word for it.

                We rode elephants to the top of the hill to the Amber Palace outside of Jaipur.

                The highlight of the visit is the Diwan-e-Aam or Hall of Public Audience, where the king used to sit and listen to the queries from his subjects. Opposite the public hall is the Sukh Niwaas Sukh Mandir, a hall made with sandalwood and ivory.

                We traveled by slow train cross-country to Aurangabad to see the Ajanta and Ellora Caves, featuring Buddhist monuments carved out of solid rock, dating from 200 BC. The Ellora caves are impressive, with many frescoes with warm colors, showing women and men wearing fine jewelry and head dresses. There were also carvings in friezes over the tops of the doors, showing elephants, bulls, lions and meditating monks. Inside the caves were large stone buddhas and religious symbols that were carved from the top down into the sides of the cliffs, with huge rooms.

                Ajanta is shaped like a crescent, with ancient monasteries and worship halls of different Buddhist and Hindu sects carved into a 250-foot wall of rock. The 30 rooms were a monsoon retreat for monks, as well as a resting-site for merchants and pilgrims in ancient India. There were two sects of Buddhism, Hinayana, where Buddha was not given human form and therefore worshipped by means of a stupa or large, bell-shaped cone, and the Mahayana sect, which gave Buddha physical form. Buddha is shown praying, meditating, assuring, donating and in some cases subduing subjects.

                In Agra, home of the Taj Mahal, we took the only reasonable option and hired two rickshaw drivers for the entire day, but they were very persistent and helpful. One was named Barney Ram, the other Jellad. They waited for us while we toured the town, and they waited patiently while we ate at restaurants. The rickshaw drivers say they sleep on their carts at night. Steve ate curry at a local restaurant, and when he asked the waiter what kind of meat they used, he pointed to a dog. He wasn’t kidding, as dogs are popular sources of food. We paid them well and they were delighted.

                The Taj Mahal is so beautiful, there are few words to describe it. It has marble inlaid with precious jewels, and the ivory-white marble mausoleum on the south bank of the Yamuna River. It was commissioned in 1632 by the Mughal emperor, Shah Jahan, who reigned from 1628 to 1658, to house the tomb of his favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal. We bought a block of the inlaid marble to remind us of the beautiful craftsmanship.

                Khajuraho, with its temples built in the 10th century by the Chandella kings, have literally hundreds of erotic carvings, with men and women in a variety of sexual positions. On a portion dedicated to war soldiers, love-starved soldiers take horses for their mates.

                In New Delhi, we visited the Red Fort, built with red colored sandstone by the Mughals. Inside there is beautifully carved marble, including a marble throne. It was the main residence of the emperors of the Mughal dynasty for nearly 200 years, until 1856. Outside, snake charmers with their reed flutes lure cobras from their baskets.

                Fatepur Sikri was built from scratch in 1571 by Akbar in honor of the Sufi saint Salim Chisti.

                It was only inhabited for 14 years, and it has a large parcheesi game board in the courtyard where women from the harem were used as game pieces. Outside, young men jumped into a small lake from the two-story towers to earn money. Inside is the Diwan-i-Khas, a debating chamber. Facing it is Ankh Michali, the treasury, which has mythical Hindu creatures carved on its stone struts.

PAKISTAN

                We only spent one day and night in Pakistan, landing in Lahore, where we visited the Badshahi Mosque, west of Lahore Fort along the outskirts of the Walled City of Lahore. It is decorated with carved red sandstone with marble inlay, and it has a huge courtyard that can hold 100,000 worshippers. It remains one of the largest of the grand imperial mosques of the Mughal-era.

                Near the entrance of the mosque lies the Tomb of Muhammad Iqbal, a poet widely revered in Pakistan as the founder of the Pakistan Movement, which led to the creation of Pakistan as a homeland for the Muslims of British India.

                That night we traveled to Peshawar, near the eastern end of the historic Khyber Pass, close to the border with Afghanistan. During the Soviet–Afghan War in the 1980s, Peshawar served as a political centre for the CIA and the Inter-Services Intelligence-trained mujahideen groups based in the camps of Afghan refugees. It was a bazaar of military weapons, where you could buy M-16 automatic rifles, Soviet Kalashnikovs, and even bazookas, mortars and rocket launchers from open stalls. We were shocked and rushed back to our hotel.

                The next day, we crossed over the Khyber Pass on a bus, once part of the Silk Road linking China to the Mideast and European countries. The Roman empires fought for control of the pass to protect access to the silk, jade and other luxuries moving from China to Western Asia and Europe. Heading over the pass, we saw armed tribesmen carrying bandoliers and their rock fortresses.  We slumped down in our seats to avoid suspicion. The bus driver collected money from all the passengers to bribe the tribesmen and we were back on our way, speeding through the barren canyons.

AFGHANISTAN

                We arrived in Jalalabad in Afghanistan, where we had roast lamb shish-kebab and flat bread cooked over a brazier before re-boarding our bus for the trip to the capital, Kabul.

                Kabul is a fascinating mixture of the old and the new – relatively speaking. After the Soviet and U.S. Afghan wars, much has changed.

                Before the fall of the Afghan regime, small shops competed offering fabrics, silver, jewelry including ankle bracelets, while donkeys laden with large burlap bags lumbered through the streets. Men walked the streets peddling medicine, based on what you told them about your ailments.

                Women wore burkas that are dresses that cover them from head to toe, with little webbed eyeholes for them to see. It is a Muslim tradition to keep men from seeing a woman’s face and body in public. Most of the burkas are black, but some are green, blue or mustard colored. Men wear turbans or lamb-skin caps. Sometimes mothers would have her children under the burka as she walked the streets.

                We passed a former embassy that was marked by bullet holes. We got scared while walking in the dark because we couldn’t see and did not know we were walking near the government armory near the Arg Presidential Palace.  During the 1978 Saur Revolution, Mohammed Daoud Khan and his family were assassinated by members of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan inside the Arg.

                A guard coughed loudly as we went past and he pointed his bayonet-rife at us. Then we heard them laughing, and Steven got a photo of the men standing together.

                The next day, we went to visit the “noon gun,’’ an old British cannon perched on a hill overlooking the city. It was fired around the middle of each day. In the early days, doomed prisoners were strapped across the front of the cannon and blown to bits.

                The Afghans are a rugged people, and they have fought off invaders for centuries. We were surrounded by the Hindu Kush mountains, and Muslim warriors who were not afraid of death and who embraced martyrdom, with promises of 72 virgins waiting for them in heaven if they died fighting infidels who refused to embrace Muhammad and Islam.

IRAN

                We flew into Tehran and Iran in tumultuous times. The Iranians were in an uprising against Shah Reza Pahlavi, who ran a secret spy agency called Savak where dissidents disappeared. President Jimmy Carter appealed to the Iranians to westernize, which was a big mistake. The Shah built large apartment buildings to try to bring Iran from the 16th century to the 20th century in a country where you could kill your neighbor in an elevator for asking about your wife. While we were there, a local newspaper was allowed to publish a photo of a Savak prisoner being tortured with a pail over his head while being hit with a hammer that left his head ringing. We knew then that there would be trouble.

                The entire country seemed to be having a mental breakdown, with cars littering the sides of roads because of drivers speeding along at 100 miles an hour, bumper to bumper, and students demonstrating in the streets. We knew trouble was coming when we ventured out of our hotel and students tried to stuff anti-government literature into our hands. We threw down the papers and ran when we heard metal shop doors being slammed down, a sign that rioters and policemen were coming up the street. From our hotel, we could see tanks rolling down Ferdowsi Avenue in the city’s banking area. We knew it was time to take shelter.

                Torrey and I got on a bus out of town and went to Shiraz. At a restaurant, women were forced to eat upstairs, while the men ate downstairs. Torrey and I were allowed to sit together, and we had a great meal of Chelo Kebab and fragrant rice. For dessert, we had a bowl of small noodles in chipped ice. We visited the nearby gardens, and a crowd of women insisted on taking a group photo with Torrey.

                At the Moshir Tea House, a former caravanserai where sheep, camels and horses were brought to spend the night, while their owners slept upstairs.  Tea was served on wood circular stands on glass plates. Steven smoked tobacco on a hookah, or water pipe, while drinking tea and sitting on cushions. The tobacco was lit by coals on top of the hookah by a man with a brazier. You could hear air bubbling as men draw smoke through the water and into the long pipes.

                We went to see the Mirror Mosque and were dazzled. Shah-e-Cheragh is Persian for “King of the Light”, and it was a monument to descendants from Mohammed. It contains the tombs of the brothers Ahmad and Muhammad. There were thousands of mirrors, and everything glittered. People threw money into the tombs that were covered in silver, and people walked around the tombs kissing the silver and the door. People sat in the corners reading the Koran. When you leave the temple, you have to back out in reverence.

                From Shiraz we took a bus to the ruins of Persepolis, with its ancient grandeur. It was once one of the greatest kingdoms in the world, and extended over parts of India, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and parts of Russia.

                It was built by Darius, the Achaemenid Empire king who lived from 522 to 485 BC. Massive stone blocks were quarried by hand and dragged into high hills by thousands of slaves.

                Marble smooth bas-reliefs and raised sculptures show daily life, so detailed that individual hairs can be seen in beards. There were also animals, and even pine cones carved on the walls. The men have sandals, and lions have claws. There are attendants holding an umbrella over Xerxes and a fly whisk.

                There are camels, horses, a giraffe and a lioness with two cubs. There are also mythical beasts which Xerxes defeats in a symbolic victory over evil.

                The bas-reliefs show the king’s attendants appear to step up the actual staircases at the palace complex. Dignitaries from across the empire are depicted bringing gifts of jewelry, money, weapons and animals as tribute. 

                In the distance, you can see the tombs for Darius I, Xerxes I, Artaxerxes I and Darius II.  

                Persepolis was the ceremonial capital of the Achaemenid Empire, beginning in 550 BC. Cyrus the Great chose the site of Persepolis, but it was Darius I who built the terrace and the palaces, and his son, Xerxes I, completed it 30 years later.

                The tops of the columns were made from animal sculptures such as two-headed lions, eagles, and cows, which were symbols of fertility in ancient Iran. Foundation tablets of gold and silver with details of the empire were found in the foundations of the Palace.

                After invading Achaemenid Persia in 330 BC, Alexander the Great sent the main force of his army to Persepolis. Ariobarzanes of Persis ambushed Alexander the Great’s army, inflicting heavy casualties. Alexander the Great outflanked and destroyed the defenders. After several months, Alexander allowed his troops to loot Persepolis.

                From Shiraz, we took a bus to Isfahan. It was Friday, the holy day in Islam, and most of the shops were closed. At the mosques, Torrey was forced to put on a sheet-like chador before they would allow her inside. Torrey was embarrassed and angry when two men started laughing and pointing at her, but she realized wearing a chador was an important part of their religion.

                In the southern end of “Naqshe Jahan Square” in Isfahan, we found the beautiful “Shah Mosque,” now called the Imam Mosque, that dates from the beginning of the 17th century. It was commissioned by the great Shah Abbas I, the fifth king of the Safavid Dynasty. The seven-color tile mosaics and the two minarets, dominated by their blue colors, sparkle in the afternoon sun.

                The Grand Bazaar is near southwest wing of the mosque, where you can buy almost anything. Torrey stood next to a brass tower on display that was more than 7-feet tall, and mountains of spices. Merchants sold prayer rugs for the Muslim worshippers who kneel on the rugs and pray five times a day: Salat al-fajr: at dawn, before sunrise, Salat al-zuhr: midday, after the sun passes its highest, Salat al-‘asr: the late part of the afternoon, Salat al-maghrib: just after sunset, and Salat al-‘isha: between sunset and midnight.

                Back in Tehran, newspapers warned that the unrest was spreading, led by students who were getting directions from Muslim clerics. A CIA spokesman said the unrest was caused by conservatives opposed to the Shah and his reforms. We made a special trip to see the crown jewels of gold, silver, rubies, diamonds, jade, rubies, emerald and pearls used for the coronation of the Shah in 1967. The collection was on display inside the Central Bank of Iran on Tehran’s Ferdowsi Avenue.

                As the riots spread, we jumped into a taxi and sped to the airport to catch a flight out of town. Our driver said we should lie down in the back seats because we were Americans. At the airport, we were given a thorough examination before we were allowed on our flight to Iraq.

IRAQ

                When we got to the airport in Iraq, they discovered we were journalists and we were put back on the first flight out of Baghdad. It was a plane-load of pilgrims headed back to Tehran from Mecca. We had confirmed tickets from Baghdad to Amman, Jordan, but it turned out that our travel agent had booked us on a flight that had not been in service for two years.

                In Tehran, we scrambled to make other travel arrangements, but there was a swarm of people fleeing Iran. We hid out in the Amir Kabir Hotel fearing for our personal safety, and finally got on another flight to Damascus, Syria, after paying three times the normal air fare, and endured another harrowing ride to the airport in the back of a taxi while students rioted around us. According to the newspaper, 11 people were killed and 30 were injured. A short time after we left, the students stormed the U.S. Embassy and took the diplomats hostage.

SYRIA

                Jingling bells heralded the arrival of a horse-drawn carriage. The bazaar was filled with people buying food and staples. If you admire something, many Syrians will give it to you as a gift. A guard saw Torrey admiring some roses, so he broke one off and gave it to her, then insisted we come into his guard shack for tea.

                A shop keeper directed us to a restaurant nearby, where men played “trick-track,’’ a form of backgammon. It turned out it was just a tea shop, but when we tried to order food, we were surprised when the shop keeper sent an employee out to get us some food.

                In Damascus, we saw the Chapel of Saint Ananias, an ancient underground structure believed to be the remains of the home of Ananias of Damascus, where Ananias baptized Saul, who became Paul the Apostle.

                We also went to the Omayad Mosque, with scores of prayer rugs, some sewn together. People bowed their heads to the floor in prayer, while clerics led them in prayer. The head of John the Baptist is supposed to be buried there.

                A short trip away we saw Palmyra with the temple of the Mesopotamian god Bel, worshipped with the lunar god Aglibol and the sun god Yarhibol, now virtually destroyed by ISIS.

JORDAN

                We took a taxi from Amman to the King Hussein Bridge, the crossover point into Israel. We had to pay baksheesh, a bribe, to get him to take us to the border. There we discovered we had to have an exit permit to leave the country, and we had to go back to Amman to get permission. It took two days to get the papers.

                While we were there, we took a side trip to Jerash. Jerash is the site of the ruins of the Greco-Roman city of Gerasa, also referred to as Antioch on the Golden River. Ancient Greek inscriptions from the city say the city was founded by Alexander the Great, and there are magnificent ruins, with the Oval Forum and Cardo Maximus in ancient Jerash, and a long street with colonnades. You can still see traces of the chariot wheels running through the streets.

                There is a temple to Zeus, two bath houses, a man-made lake for boat races. There are also ruins of a stadium that once held 5,000 people.

                We took another taxi to see the ancient city of Petra, one of the most interesting places in the world. At the Petra Rest House, we gaped at the restaurant located in a Nabatean tomb complex. Chisel marks are visible in the soft sandstone. In the heart of the ancient city, people can sleep in the cave tombs of Petra.

                We entered Petra through the winding, rocky gorge cut through sheer, towering cliffs. The gorge narrows, and suddenly your heart stops when you suddenly see the giant Treasury, several stories high carved out of sheer rock.

                The Nabateans began as a wandering Arab tribe that grew rich on the plunder of caravans coming from Arabia. They built and occupied Petra and its hundreds of caves from the 5th century AD.

                Hundreds of rock-cut tombs indicate reverence for honoring the dead. We found shards of pottery and other signs where people lived in caves. A tiny stream bubbles from the ground that once flowed through the intricate water channels cut in the sides of the rocks. The Nabateans cut vast cisterns in the rock to hold large water supplies.

                Once we got our exit papers, we crossed into Israel.

ISRAEL

                Throughout the centuries, millions of people have fought and died for this country. The city of Jerusalem is home to many faiths, and the city is divided into sectors. There are sectors for the Greek Orthodox, for the Christians, for the Catholics and for the Muslims, to name a few.

                It was in Jerusalem that Christians believe Jesus was tried and crucified, then buried and resurrected. We followed the Via Dolorosa and the 14 Stations of the Cross through the winding streets of Jerusalem, marked by plaques and signs on the doors. They begin with the first and second stations marking Jesus’ encounter with Pontius Pilate and the biblical account of Jesus’ subsequent scourging and crowning with thorns, and the second Pilate’s mocking taunts to Jesus, “Behold, the man,’’ trying to get Jesus to recant after he was condemned by the Jewish authorities for various accusations, including violating the Sabbath law by healing people on the Sabbath, threatening to destroy the Jewish Temple, sorcery, exorcising people by the power of demons and claiming to be both the Messiah and the Son of God. It was Pilate’s job to carry out the sentence.

                The Via Dolorosa ends at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where Jesus was crucified and buried.  Inside, it is a complex of more than 30 chapels and worship spaces, each claimed by different sects and religions, some claiming to be the rock where Jesus died and the rock split in two, and others where they found Jesus’ tomb.

                Inside the church there are three domes, marking the Rock of Calvary (the spot of the Crucifixion), the Stone of Anointing (where Christ’s body was prepared for burial), and the Tomb chamber (where Jesus was buried).

                Here is the order of the Stations of the Cross through the winding stone streets: 1. Jesus is condemned to death. 2. Jesus is given His cross. 3. Jesus falls down for the first time. 4. Jesus meets His mother Mary. 5. Simon of Cyrene is forced to carry the cross. 6. Veronica wipes blood off of Jesus’ face. 7. Jesus falls down for the second time. 8. Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem. 9. Jesus falls down for the third time. 10. Jesus is stripped of His clothing. 11. Jesus is nailed to the cross – the Crucifixion. 12. Jesus dies on the cross. 13. Jesus’ body is removed from the cross. 14. Jesus’ body is placed in the tomb, and after three days, rises from the dead.

                For Jews, the main place of worship is the Wailing Wall, the only remains of the Second Temple of Jerusalem, venerated by the ancient Jews and destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD. It is the place they believe David brought the Ark of the Covenant, the laws handed down by God to Moses. Jews lament the destruction of the Temple and pray for its restoration, and they stick pieces of paper in cracks in the wall with their prayers.

                The Muslims also hold the wall to be holy, because it is part of the Gold Dome of the Rock, where the Islamic Prophet Muhammad tied his steed, al-Buraq, on his night journey to Jerusalem before ascending to paradise, leaving his footprints in a rock while being led up a stairway of light into heaven.

                Jews and Arabs have frequently disputed control of the wall and, often, right of access to it. That conflict has been particularly heated since Israel won control of the city in the Six Day War of 1967.

                 In 326 AD, the church was built by the emperor Constantine I. He tore down a pagan temple and had Christ’s tomb cut away from the original hillside. Tradition says his mother, St. Helena, found the cross of Christ in a cistern not far from the hill of Calvary. The original church was destroyed by Muslims in 1009, and it was rebuilt by Crusaders in 1149.

                A bus ride away is the town of Bethlehem, where Jesus was born, marked by The Church of the Nativity. The grotto holds a prominent religious significance to Christians of various denominations as the birthplace of Jesus. The grotto is the oldest site continuously used as a place of worship in Christianity, and the basilica is the oldest major church in the Holy Land. A silver star in the grotto marks the spot where Jesus was born.

EGYPT

                We arrived late in Cairo and found room in a small hotel with a single bathroom at the end of the hall.

                The next day, we went to Giza, home of the great pyramids that have been standing for 4,500 years. We found a guide, who bribed a guard, to allow the guide to take us up to the top of the largest pyramid, Cheops. The pyramid is named for Khufu succeeded his father Sneferu as king. He commissioned the Great Pyramid, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

                We were scared climbing the crumbling rocks, some as high as our waists, where we had to pull ourselves up and over, then up and over, before we could reach the top, which was 500 feet high. People looked so tiny below us. It’s amazing that we survived. Our guide, who was about 15 years old, walked barefoot, leading us up the safest paths. Authorities warn that people die each year falling off the pyramid while trying to climb it.

                At the top of the pyramid, we could see the other two pyramids lined up in a row. Pharaoh Khufu began the first pyramid project in 2550 BC. It has more than 2 million stones, each weighing up to 15 tons.

                Khufu’s son, Pharaoh Khafre, built the second pyramid at Giza in 2520 BC. His necropolis also included the Sphinx, a mysterious limestone monument with the body of a lion and a pharaoh’s head. The third of the Giza Pyramids is smaller than the first two. It was built by Pharaoh Menkaure in 2490 BC.

                After climbing to the top of the pyramid, we wanted to see the burial chambers inside. From the bottom of the pyramid, we climbed up a long, inclined dark tunnel to the King’s Chamber. Three granite monoliths protected the door to the King’s Chamber. Inside is a red granite sarcophagus. The lid and the mummy are missing, along with any treasures that were left inside.

                It was a 12-hour, grueling train ride from Cairo to Luxor and the tombs and temples of the Egyptian pharaohs and kings. Water from the Nile River makes the land green, while feluccas, small sail boats, ply the river. People are using straw to make bricks for their homes, while herds of sheep meander around them.

                Before we went to see the City of the Dead and the Valley of the Kings on the west side of the Nile, we walked through Luxor and saw the Temple of Karnak on the east side of the Nile, dwarfed by the columns at the Hypostyle Hall with 134 columns, making it one of the largest religious buildings in the world. Torrey used a guide book to try to translate some of the hieroglyphs on the columns and the obelisks, but had trouble because each king scratched out the words and names and chiseled in their own names and accomplishments.

                Karnak contains the northern group of the Theban city temples, called in ancient times Ipet-Isut, “Chosen of Places.” The southern temple, which has a horseshoe-shaped sacred lake, was devoted to the goddess Mut, wife of Amon.

                In between is the Hypostyle Hall, with giant columns engraved with Egyptian writing. It covers about 54,000 square feet and was decorated by Seti I in 1279 and Ramses II in 1213.

                Historical reliefs on the outer walls show the victories of Seti in Palestine and Ramses II defeating the Hittites at the Battle of Kadesh.

                Luxor has a history dating back to the 27th century BC, and rose to prominence under the god Amun Ra. It is part of the ancient city of Thebes, capital of one of the mightiest empires of ancient times. 

                We also visited the Temple of Luxor nearby. The temple at Luxor was built about 1400 BC, on the east and west banks. Four of the major mortuary temples visited by early travelers and tourists include the Temple of Seti I at Gurnah, the Temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el Bahri, the Temple of Ramesses II and the Temple of Ramesses III at Medinet Habu. Unlike the other temples in Thebes, Luxor temple is not dedicated to a cult god or a deified version of the king in death. Instead Luxor temple is dedicated to the rejuvenation of kingship, where many of the kings of Egypt were crowned.

                A scene at Medinet Habu shows Ramses III in his chariot, inspecting piles of hands his soldiers cut off from their enemies. Queen Hatshepsut, the fifth pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt who came to the throne in 1478 BC, put up an obelisk that says “I put up this great monument for the sight of all visitors and of the generations that shall come after to admire my work.’’

                The Valley of the Kings, where King Tut was buried, is on a barren hillside over a mountain reached by donkey. The kings took care that their tombs would not be discovered by grave robbers, risking the chances of the king to cross over to the afterlife, by burying them in their tombs deep underground.

                Most of the tombs have already been looted, but inside, the walls are inscribed with hieroglyphics appealing to the gods to let the kings into heaven. There are also scenes of everyday life including dancing girls, banquets, and harvests. There were pictographs of Anubis, the jackal-headed god who assisted in judging the dead with a scale and feather measuring the heart and soul of the king, Osiris in the netherworld, and Hathor, who wore the cow horns. Opet represented the pregnant hippopotamus, and Ra, the sun god, was dominant on a radiant disk held high by the king.

                Several wall carvings showed kings receiving the ankh, the symbol of the breath of life, from the gods, who sometimes pushed the symbol into the pharaoh’s nostril. 

                There were also the tombs of Ramses VI, Ramses IX, and Amenhotep II. Then we climbed a very scary cliff edge to Deir el-Bahari, built by Queen Hatshepsut as a mortuary chapel. It was finished by Thutmose III, who obliterated the queen’s name.

                Hatshepsut was a daughter of King Thutmose I. Hatshepsut became queen of Egypt when she married her half-brother, Thutmose II, around the age of 12. Upon his death, she began acting as regent for her stepson, the infant Thutmose III, but later took on the full powers of a pharaoh, becoming co-ruler of Egypt around 1473 BC.

                In Cairo, we visited the Egyptian museum, with mummies and the golden mask of King Tut. There were also funerary items including chariots, amulets and other things they might need in the netherworld.

TURKEY

                Istanbul is a city for romantics. It has more than 400 mosques, with beautiful inlaid mosaics and rows and rows of prayer rugs where people pray and chant day and night.

                The Blue Mosque, built by Sultan Ahmet in the 17th century, is the only mosque in the world with six minarets.

                There is the stunning stained glass in the Hagia Sophia across the way, converted from a church and mosque to a museum. Each turn has something new to see. It is covered in mosaics, mostly imperial portraits and religious images of Christ.

                It was built in 537 AD at the beginning of the Middle Ages, and it was famous in particular for its massive dome. It was the world’s largest building and an engineering marvel of its time. It is still considered the epitome of Byzantine architecture. From the date of its construction in 537 until 1453, it served as an Eastern Orthodox cathedral and the seat of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, except between 1204 and 1261, when it was converted by the Fourth Crusaders to a Roman Catholic cathedral under the Latin Empire. The building was later converted into an Ottoman mosque from 1453 until 1931, when it was secularized and opened as a museum.

                Between the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque is the Hippodrome, built in 203 AD, an ancient horse race course.

                Near the Golden Horn is the Topkapi Palace of the Ottoman Turkish sultans. The library holds priceless Greek and Arabic manuscripts. There are gold and silver robes of the sultans, and jewels of the treasury, including an 80-carat diamond, emeralds and rubies.

                The harem is lavishly decorated with cushions and canopies. The ceiling of the throne was studded with jewels, along with floral patterns accompanied by the depiction of the fight of a dragon, symbol of power, with simurg, a mythical bird. There was a separate hall for the eunuchs who served the Sultan, and separate rooms for each woman. There is an audience chamber for people to petition the Sultan for relief.

                The giant bazaar is one of the largest bazaars in the world, with 61 covered streets and over 4,000 stalls. You can buy clothing, along with gold, brass embossed plates, meerschaum pipes for smoking, and beautiful rugs. It has one mosque, 19 fountains, a mausoleum, and it is protected by 18 gates.

                A Turkish bath is a luxury. There are separate baths for men and women. A masseuse will wash you with a rough cloth, and you get a small basin to rinse off from flowing fountains of cold water. You can then enter the marble steam room wrapped in a towel, with a domed ceiling with windows open to the sky. The baths are also social meeting places.

GREECE

                We arrived in Greece and headed for the port of Piraeus, where we boarded a rusty ship headed for Heraklion, Crete, to visit the Palace of Knossos, the home of the great King Minos and the minotaur and the labyrinth.

                The Minoan era began about 2800 BC, and ended in 1230 BC. The Cretans were rulers of the sea, and they had a great influence on Greek culture. Aristotle refers to them, along with tales from Homer and the Iliad and the Odyssey. It played a major role in the Trojan war by contributing 80 ships, led by King Idomenea, a descendent of King Minos.

                When Darius invaded the island from Persia in 1100 BC, his army ravaged the island.

                There are still secret passageways and corridors and stairways, and holes in the floor where the king hid his valuables. They were covered by stone tiles lined with lead, and they were filled with hundreds of clay tablets that were written in the Linear B script, a syllabic script that was used for writing Mycenaean Greek, the earliest attested form of Greek. The script predates the Greek alphabet by several centuries.

                There are magnificent frescoes. Some of them are in the wonderful museum in Heraklion.

                The Minoan civilization was most intriguing and mysterious. The double-edged ax symbol was common. Their jewelry of amethyst was smooth and polished. There were lots of sarcophagi, imprinted with red and black geometric and pictures of nature. One pictograph showed a man being gored by a bull. The “mother goddess’’ figure, a woman often with prominent breasts, appeared to be highly revered. There were also figures of naked men. Some of the clay figures were simple and looked like they were made by children.

                There were ivory combs and mirrors of copper, along with seal rings and cylindrical seals with exquisite engravings that were used to imprint on clay tablets. One showed a horse being led onto a ship being rowed by many men. There were a lot of frescoes of the minotaur, the huge horned bull that ruled the Palace of Knossos. One man is grabbing it by the horns, one is standing on his hands on the bull’s back ready to flip off, and a third is waiting in back of the bull waiting to jump on.

                In Athens, the monuments speak to you from the past. Beginning as early as 507 BC, the Athenians gathered on the Pnyx hill to hold their popular assemblies, making the hill one of the earliest and most important sites in the creation of democracy.

                The Parthenon dominates the hill of the Acropolis, with tales of Athenian life on panel friezes that surround the top of the columns depicting the annual Panathenaic procession of citizens honoring the goddess Athena.

                On the east, the frieze portrays the birth of Athena and, on the west, her contest with the sea god Poseidon for domination of Athens.  It is the culmination of the development of the Doric order, the simplest of the three Classical Greek architectural orders.

                The columns are optical illusions, tilting slightly so when you look up at them, they look straight.

                Directed by the Athenian statesman Pericles, the Parthenon was built by the architects Ictinus and Callicrates under the supervision of the sculptor Phidias. Work began in 447 BC, and the building itself was completed by 438. The same year a great gold and ivory statue of Athena, made by Phidias for the interior, was dedicated.

                During the bombardment of the Acropolis in 1687 by Venetians fighting the Turks, a powder magazine located in the temple blew up, destroying the center of the building.

                On another side of the Acropolis is the Erechtheum, an ancient Greek temple dedicated to both Athena and Poseidon. On the south of the building is the famous “Porch of the Maidens”, with six draped female figures called caryatids that are supporting columns of the temple.

                The Odeon of Herodes Atticus is a stone theatre structure located on the southwest slope of the Acropolis. You can almost visualize the Greek and Roman plays that took place on the stage. We also sat on the high priest’s throne in the center. Marble barricades were erected by the Romans to protect people from the gladiator spectacles held there.

                Most Athenians at the time lived in the Ancient Agora, the market place of Athens at the base of the Acropolis, an area that has been continuously inhabited since antiquity. It has the magnificent Temple of Hephaestus and the Stoa of Attalos on the Athenian Way.

                It also has a council house, assembly house, and senate house, where the council of citizens gathered to confer and decide about public affairs.

                After that, it was off to Delphi to find our fortunes. Delphi was an important ancient Greek religious sanctuary sacred to the god Apollo. Located on Mount Parnassus near the Gulf of Corinth, the sanctuary was home to the famous oracle of Apollo which gave cryptic predictions and guidance to both city-states and individuals. Archaeologists say Pythia, the priestess who sat on a tripod, inhaled ethylene gasses, and muttered incomprehensible words the Greeks believed foretold the future.

                In Apollo’s sacred precinct nearby, every four years, starting in 586 BC, athletes from all over the Greek world competed in the Pythian Games, one of the four Panhellenic Games, precursors of the Modern Olympics. The victors at Delphi were presented with a laurel crown which was ceremonially cut from a tree by a boy who re-enacted the slaying of the Python.

                We continued on to the Acropolis of Mycenae, a fortified late Bronze Age city located between two hills overlooking the Argolid plain of the Peloponnese, Greece. As we climbed the mountain leading to the Acropolis, we were reminded of the Atreids, whose first king, Atreus, is believed to have reigned around 1250 BC.

                Atreus’ son Agamemnon is believed to have been not only king of Mycenae, but of all of the Archaean Greeks, and leader of their expedition to Troy to recapture Helen.

                In Homer’s account of the Trojan War in the Iliad, Mycenae is described as a well-founded citadel, filled with gold, verified by the recovery of over 33 pounds of gold objects recovered from the grave shafts in the acropolis.

                   A monumental entrance, the Lion Gate with an 18-ton lintel topped by a lion, was testimony to the power of the Mycenaens.

AUSTRIA

                We arrived in Vienna on a flight from Athens to a welcome of four inches of snow. We toured the Ringstrasse where we saw the Opera House, the Palace of Justice, and the Hofburg Palace, home to the Hofburgs. The Hofburg is the former principal imperial palace of the Habsburg dynasty rulers and today serves as the official residence and workplace of the President of Austria.

                It is located in the center of Vienna and was built in the 13th century and expanded several times afterwards. It also served as the imperial winter residence, as Schonbrunn Palace was the summer residence.

                Built right before the adjacent Court Library, on the south-east side of Joseph Square, lies the baroque Augustinian Wing with the Augustinian church and monastery. As the palace expanded, the church and monastery became an integral part of the building.

                The Augustinian Church was used by the Habsburgs as their court church and also for weddings. In a side chapel is the Hearts’ Crypt, a semicircular-shaped annex separated by an iron door, where 54 hearts of House of Habsburg family members are kept in individual silver urns.

                The best was saved for last. We saw the 44 rooms of the Schonbrunn Palace, the main summer residence of the Habsburg rulers, located in Hietzing, Vienna.

                The palace has more than 1,400 rooms. The rooms on display include a number in the palace’s West Wing, home to the sumptuous apartments of Emperor Franz Joseph and his wife Elisabeth. Richly furnished in 19th-century style, the rooms include the Emperor’s Audience Chamber and the Walnut Room, named after its rich walnut paneling from 1766, a highlight of which is the candelabra carved out of wood and covered in gold.

                Another highlight is Franz Joseph’s Bedroom with the simple soldier’s bed in which the Emperor died on November 21st, 1916, after a reign of 68 years.

                Other highlights include Marie Antoinette’s Room, after Napoleon paid a visit, with its celebrated portrait of Francis I displaying the insignia of the Order of the Golden Fleece; the Nursery with its portrait of Marie Antoinette and the Yellow Room with its white marble clock, a gift from Napoleon III to Franz Joseph I.

                There is also the Great Gallery, once home to glittering Imperial banquets under ornate ceiling paintings, and Maria Theresa’s private salon, paneled with precious rosewood, ornamented with gilt carvings, and home to some 260 Indian and Persian miniatures. There is and the Hall of Mirrors with its crystal mirrors in gilded Rococo frames, and a room that looks like pure porcelain.

FRANCE

                Next stop: Paris, city of lights

                We spent the day at the Louvre and saw its treasures, including the Mona Lisa and the Code of Hammurabi, from 1754 BC, one of the first codified law steles 8 feet high that displays Babylonian Laws prominently, so that no man could plead their ignorance. The Mona Lisa was painted by Leonardo da Vinci, using a technique of his own devising called “sfumato” in which he layered coats of semi-transparent paint washes one on top of another to create a sense of three dimensions using light and dark.

                The Louvre has more than 380,000 objects and displays 35,000 works of art at a time, with rotating themes.

                Other top displays include the world-renowned Venus de Milo, over 2,000 years old, with the iconic missing arms, the Winged Victory of Samothrace, and the painting of Liberty Leading the People, the famously bare-breasted female personification of Liberty as she leads fighters during the “July Revolution” of 1830 in France.

                Other attractions include Sleeping Hermaphroditus, a marble carving with male and female sexual organs, and the colossal winged bulls with the heads of men that protected Assyria around 3000 BC.

                After the tour, we went to the nearby restaurant Louis Quatorze (Louis the 14th), where we had a sumptuous meal and wanted to top it off with strawberries with crème fraiche. The menu said 4 francs, about a dollar. The menu was a misprint. It actually cost 10 times that amount, but amazingly, it was worth it. We ate dinner at La Tour D’Argent, a rare, Michelin three-star restaurant where they let us in wearing our good clothes and sneakers. Steven had the pressed duck, Canard à la Rouennaise, that consists of various parts of a duck served in a sauce of its own blood.

                We spent the evening on the Boulevard St. Germain on the Left Bank of the River Seine. The boulevard gets its name from the church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés which dates back to the Middle Ages. It was the center of Paris nightlife, home to a number of famous cafés, such as Les Deux Magots and Cafe de Flore.

                The Saint-Germain quarter was the center of the existentialism movement best associated with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.

                The side trip to Versailles was also a highlight of our visit to France. It was the palace of King Louis XIII, who used the palace as a hunting pavilion, and was transformed and extended by his son, Louis XIV, when he installed the Court and government there in 1682. A succession of kings lived there up until the French Revolution. In 1789, the French Revolution forced Louis XVI to leave Versailles for Paris.

                A small hamlet was created for Marie Antoinette, the last Queen of France before the French Revolution. A growing number of people disliked her, accusing her of being profligate and promiscuous and of harboring sympathies for France’s enemies, particularly her native Austria. She also played an important role in aiding the American Revolution by securing Austrian and Russian support for France and its war against the American colonies, and helped George Washington defeat the British.

                On August 10, 1792, the royal family took refuge at the Assembly in Paris, and they were imprisoned in the Temple Prison. On September 21, 1792, the monarchy was abolished. Her trial began on October 14,  1793, and two days later Marie Antoinette was convicted by the Revolutionary Tribunal of high treason and executed by guillotine. The phrase “Let them eat cake” is often attributed to Marie Antoinette, but there is no evidence that she ever said it.

                The opulence is visible from the outset, with a giant golden sun above the gate at Versailles, honoring “Le Roi Du Soleil,’’ the sun king, Louis IV. Inside, on the first floor, are the lavish apartments of the king and queen as well as numerous salons for entertaining guests and members of court.

                The most famous room in the palace is the Hall of Mirrors. The gallery extends more than 230 feet and has 17 wide arcaded mirrors opposite 17 windows that overlook the gardens below. Glass chandeliers adorn the arched, ornately painted ceiling, upon which Le Brun depicted a series of 30 scenes glorifying the early years of the reign of Louis XIV.

ENGLAND

                Then it was off to London, where Steven wanted to buy a London Fog coat _ until he found out he had been freezing in the cold for nothing, because they are made in the United States.

                Besides Buckingham Palace, home of Queen Elizabeth II, and the royal guard that tourists try unsuccessfully to get them to laugh, the biggest attraction is the British Museum. It is the home of the Elgin Marbles, taken from the frieze on the Parthenon in Greece, and the Rosetta Stone that helped archaeologists decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics.

                At the British Library in London we saw the Magna Carta, a charter of rights agreed to by King John of England at Runnymede, near Windsor, in 1215.

                It was drafted by the Archbishop of Canterbury to make peace between the unpopular King and a group of rebel barons.

                It promised the protection of church rights, protection for the barons from illegal imprisonment, access to swift justice for the common people, and limitations on feudal payments to the Crown.

                The food in Britain is unremarkable, with “bangers and mash’’ (sausage and potatoes), and fish and chips, which are really French fries, which we ate on our trip to Stratford on Avon, to see the home of Shakespeare. That night we saw a Shakespearean play, Coriolanus, based on the life of the legendary Roman leader Caius Marcius Coriolanus, a Roman who hated the Romans, and he was banished from Rome. In revenge, he joined his former enemy Tullus Aufidius and the Volscians. Together they marched on Rome. He establishes peace, but he is killed by the resentful Volscians. It was one of only two Shakespearean tragedies. The other was Romeo and Juliet.

                For Steven, this was his third trip around the world. In addition to the afore mentioned countries, some of the other countries he visited included Scotland, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Russia, Luxembourg, Lichtenstein, Andorra, Portugal, Monaco, Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, Australia, Fiji, Canada, Nicaragua, Panama, Colombia, Brazil and Argentina.

                His father was under contract with Pan American World Airways and the Air Force Eastern Test Range to handle U.S. missile tracking around the world, and one of the benefits was unlimited flying on Pan Am as a dependent for three months each year for one $30 service charge. Steven took dozens of flights, including one trip that included 64 countries.

                Here are some of his stories:

NICARAGUA

                The Nicaraguan earthquake struck like a thief in the night in 1972, and Latin Americans quickly mobilized to send a relief flight to Managua. I volunteered to go for the Orlando Sentinel newspaper, and I boarded a rickety propeller powered air travel club Sky Safari plane, converted to carry cargo, for the six-hour flight over Cuba and the Caribbean.

                We were met at the airport by Luis Samoza, the nephew of Managuan dictator Anastasio Samoza. He took us to his uncle’s home, where he and his relatives discussed rebuilding Managua. We met with Anastasio, who described the earthquake, and the buildings and even his swimming pool shaking.

                When we got ready to leave, Luis invited me into his Jeep, and gave me a machine gun. “What am I supposed to do with this,’’ I asked. “The Nicaraguan people are hungry and desperate. If they storm the Jeep, shoot them,’’ he said. I got a photo of an old woman begging for food outside of a warehouse stocked with supplies. Soldiers were told to shoot looters on sight.

                After I joined the Associated Press, me and my family were transferred to Tokyo. I was sent to cover the anniversary of dropping the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, and I wondered if the victims were still getting cancer. I was given the name of a doctor doing research, and he directed me to the living survivor who was one of the closest to ground zero when the bomb went off. She was wearing white clothes that day and had gone to the rest room in the telephone exchange where she worked. She survived, while 100,000 others did not.

                When she emerged from the restroom, most of the building had been demolished around her, and there was devastation as far as the eye could see.

                Many victims who did not survive jumped into the river to cool their burning skin, which was peeling off from the heat. During the ceremony at night, hundreds of people turned out to put candles in paper bags and put them into the river to comfort the souls of the departed.

TANZANIA

                While in Africa, I took a trip to Uganda, where Idi “VD’’ Amin was preparing to go on a rampage. I visited Uganda to see the Murchison Falls Game Preserve with its elephants and crocodiles and the most deadly of all, the hippopotamus.

                I was dumb and did not realize how dangerous going on a photo safari to see wild animals could be. I rode the steam train to the game preserve and checked into the hotel. I was even more excited when a bull elephant with long tusks wandered up to the door of the hotel. I grabbed my camera and began taking pictures. With a wide-angle lens. From three feet away. The pictures were great, but the other hotel guests held their breaths.

                The safari trip into the game preserve at Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania south of Nairobi was like a trip back in time. The crater is a large caldera left from a volcanic explosion about 3 million years ago that keeps wild animals trapped inside, making it easy to track down lions, rhinos and other wild animals on photo safaris. From the time your Jeep winds its way into the dormant volcano until you confront rhinos, zebras, and lions living with the Maasai tribesmen trapped in the crater, you are catapulted into the days of Livingston and the famous, “Doctor Livingston, I presume’’ explorations. The Maasai have also adapted to the modern world. The guide warned me not to give them beer, but when one of them pointed his spear at me and pointed at the beer I had in my hand, I wasn’t going to argue.

                I also got to attend the Bolshoi ballet in the Kremlin, with a lot of Russian dignitaries. Steven does not like ballet, but this was stunnning.

                My trips to other countries were uneventful.

                We missed a lot of Europe, and we returned several years later to see what we missed. We flew to Paris and bought Eurail Passes that allowed us unlimited rail trips throughout most of Europe for three months. We boarded a train in Gare du Nord in Paris, and our first stop was Alsace Lorraine, where we had wonderful wine and choucroute, an Alsatian dish of cabbage with sausages.

GERMANY

                Our next stop was West Berlin, at a time when the city was still divided into East Berlin and West Berlin.

                Both of us were filled with fear as we crossed from Checkpoint Charlie in the American sector and entered East Berlin.

                There were a lot of armed guards, and we saw large towers where we were being watched by armed guards with binoculars.

                Most people have few memories of the Cold War that broke out at the end of World War II, pitting the United States against the Soviet Union for world supremacy. Berlin was divided into Soviet, French, British, and American zones. Signs warned us we were leaving the American zone as we crossed from West Berlin, a vibrant, neon-lit metropolis, into East Berlin, a dark, gray, gloomy, barren city walled off with landmines and anti-tank barriers, and a lot of guard towers.

                Crosses on the east side of the wall were a testimony to places where people were killed trying to cross the border.

                While in East Berlin, we visited Alexanderplatz, a center where tourists are allowed to visit and take pictures, dominated by a huge television tower. We got there on the U-bahn underground railway, where we passed through long-abandoned subway stops patrolled by armed guards and German shepherds. We ate our lunch there, and quickly returned to Checkpoint Charlie to cross back into the American sector.

                From there we took the train to Munich, Germany, where we headed to one of the famous beer halls. There was a sign on the door, urging people to watch out for flying chairs from drunken patrons. The beer was served in giant steins called a Mass, which contains a liter of beer. Steve had three, and Torrey had to take him back to the hotel on three different subway trains. Still don’t know how she did it, because even Torrey will admit she is geographically challenged.

SWITZERLAND

                In Switzerland, we ate fondue and admired Lake Geneva, then took a cog railway train to Zermatt. It Zermatt, we took a gondola and skis and headed up the Klein Matterhorn, where we walked through an ice cave to ski down the glacier on the side of the famous mountain. To get to the piste ski runs, we had to ski down a narrow path, avoiding the sides that dropped hundreds of feet. After a day of skiing, we ate raclette, a cheese that is melted under a broiler on top of a sliced potato, served with pickled onions and cornichons, which are small pickles.

ITALY

                It was a treat going to Italy, riding a train through tunnels to Lake Como and on to Milan and Rome.

                Getting off the train in Rome, we decided to grab a slice of pizza before heading out. We were so hungry, we ignored the cat walking across the pizza slices.

                In Rome, we saw the Colosseum, the large stadium that the Romans used for gladiator battles. On one occasion, they even filled it with water for a battle of boats filled with soldiers.

                From there it was a short walk to the Roman Forum, the site of triumphal processions and elections; the venue for public speeches and criminal trials.

                There is the Senate House, known as the Curia, that served as the council house for the Roman Senate and a site for various political events.

                The Temple of Saturn was built around 500 BC and is considered one of the earliest temples in the Roman Forum. This building was dedicated to Saturn, the god of agriculture, and was used as a treasury, where Rome’s money was managed and kept.

                The Arch of Titus was erected in 81 AD by the Emperor Domitian to honor his brother, emperor Titus, who was victorious in the Siege of Jerusalem. The Temple of Vesta was a circular-shaped temple that was dedicated to Vesta, the goddess of hearth, home and family, and the Rostra was a platform that people could stand on to give speeches.

                Nearby stands the Marmertine prison, where according to tradition the apostles Paul and Peter were held before their trials.

                In the center nearby is the Column of Trajan, commemorating Roman emperor Trajan’s two military campaigns in Dacia, now called Romania. There are 2,600 figures carved in low relief spiraling around the column, with 155 key scenes from the campaigns in Dacia with Trajan himself present leading the army, judging prisoners, and holding councils of war.

                From Rome we went to Florence, the art center of Italy. The Duomo is a cathedral with a terracotta-tiled dome engineered by Brunelleschi and a bell tower by Giotto. The Galleria dell’Accademia displays Michelangelo’s “David” sculpture. The Uffizi Gallery displays Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus” and da Vinci’s “Annunciation.”

                Venice was a whole other world. It is built on more than 100 small islands in a lagoon in the Adriatic Sea. It has no roads, just canals – including the Grand Canal thoroughfare – lined with Renaissance and Gothic palaces. The central square, Piazza San Marco, contains St. Mark’s Basilica, which is tiled with Byzantine mosaics, and the Campanile bell tower offering views of the city’s red roofs.

                We went back to Rome and took the train to Pompeii. Pompeii was buried under many feet of ash and pumice after the catastrophic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. Parts of the city are almost totally preserved, with several thousand buildings including: shops, large villas with mosaic tiles and frescoes, temples, taverns, baths, public latrines, a market hall, schools, water towers, a basilica, brothels and theatres. There are also hundreds of small shrines to all kinds of deities and ancestors and around forty public fountains.

                Inside there was a museum, with many of the items preserved when the town was suddenly buried. One of the displays showed a man and woman laying down, locked in embrace, preserved in stone forever.

                We boarded a train for Spain, and stopped off in Cap D’Agde, a beach for naturists. People wore no clothes, not even in the cafes eating dinner. We only spent one night. Torrey was extremely uncomfortable being there.

                We went by train and on the way to Madrid, we met a French couple. We had just purchased a bottle of Grand Marnier, a fiery orange brandy, and the woman indicated she wanted a swig. She apparently did not realize it was strong brandy, and everyone laughed when she took a big drink and began to sputter.

SPAIN

                In Spain, we saw the dazzling display of works by the great European masters at the Prado Museum. There were paintings from Velázquez, Goya, Raphael, Rubens, and Bosch.

                A visit to Toledo was rewarding. There were medieval Arab, Jewish and Christian monuments in its walled old city, and it was also the former home of the famous painter El Greco.

                The Alcazar, a military fort, is famous for its defense by the Nationalists in 1936, one of the most heroic episodes of the Spanish Civil War. Cándido Cabello, a Republican barrister in Toledo, telephoned the governor of Toledo, Colonel José Moscardó Ituarte, say that if he did not surrender the Alcázar within 10 minutes, he would shoot Luis Moscardó, the Colonel’s 24-year-old son, whom he had captured that morning. They put his son on the phone with his father, who said “They say they will shoot me if the Alcazar does not surrender.” “If this is true,” replied Moscardo, “then commend your soul to God, shout Viva Espana, and die like a hero. Good-bye, my son.”  “That I can do,” answered Luis, “Good-bye, my father.” The son was then executed.

                On the way out, Steven bought a set of Toledo swords that hang proudly on his wall.

                Steven and Torrey then boarded a train for the long hot, dusty ride to Tarifa, Spain, to take the ferry to Tangiers, Morocco. The only food available was a dry sandwich called a bodega, which had nothing but dry bread and meat, dry as sawdust, sold to train passengers by townsfolk through the train windows. To this day, we can’t eat one.

MOROCCO

                In Morocco, we boarded the Marrakech Express, a train to the wonderland of the Jemaa el-Fnaa square, with dancing monkeys, snakes, water boys and acrobats doing flips. On the trip, we were in a train car with several youths headed to the same place we were going. One was extremely thirsty, and begged Torrey for a drink from her canteen. Torrey said she had no water left, then turned her canteen upside down to show him and water began dribbling out. By the time we realized it, the water was gone.

SPAIN

                The ferry back to Spain was jammed shoulder to shoulder, and we had to stand most of the way. We boarded a train to Madrid, where we caught a steam engine train headed to Pamplona for the running of the bulls.

                Pamplona is a 24-hour-a-day party, that begins with a lot of wine and ends with even more wine. The hotels were full, so Torrey and I camped in our tent by the Agra River outside the city walls, along with scores of other people. People partied all night long, making it almost impossible to sleep. On one visit, Steven went bar-hopping with a group of fellow-travelers. One would buy a drink, and sneak tapas, the tasty bar appetizers, from hand to hand to the other members of the group waiting in the street. It was a cheap meal for all of us.

                The next morning we awoke early. Steven put on his red hat and red sash, and we went to the Encierro for the first of seven bull runs.

                Steven gave Torrey his press pass and put her on a fence where she could see the bulls thundering up the road, headed toward the bull ring. She expressed her deep concern and wondered why on earth anyone would risk their lives to run with bulls.

                The rules are simple. Buy a red beret and a red bandana, drink lots of wine and stand in the street waiting for a herd of stampeding bulls to run a mile from the river to the bull ring. The bulls can do it in two minutes. Do the math. 

                I knew the drill after making the run nine times. Let the scattered, scared drunk crowd of runners run past, wait for the bulls, then run with them for 100 feet and bow out.

                The only rule was that you could not leave the streets until a cannon sounded, signaling the bulls were all in the bull ring and the streets were clear. Runners who tried to climb over the wooden fences before the cannon sounded got beaten and thrown back into the streets with the bulls.

                Before anyone runs with the bulls, they need to know the protocol. Carry a rolled-up newspaper and it might save your life. If a bull gets separated it becomes dangerous. Wait for the bulls as the crowd surges ahead, run into the herd and after a short way, drop back.

                If a bull gets separated, snap the newspaper open, throw it in front of the bull and bury your body in a gutter until the danger is past.

                On one occasion, Steven got caught in what became known as the Nine-Minute Encierro, when a bull running up the street got distracted running up the street by a man who stuck his head out of a door. The bull crashed into the door, where it got caught on his horns, and the bull got turned around and ran back down the road, crushing runners with the door as it roared past. It took nine minutes to get the bull back into the ring.

                On another occasion, a drunk Frenchman grabbed Steven’s leg as he ran with the bulls, and Paulson had to drag him into the gutter to avoid being gored.

                Don’t get carried away and follow the bulls into the ring. The gate got slammed behind me and I heaved a sigh of relief as the bulls were herded into the chutes. For the uninformed like me, the fun was just beginning. Small bulls with leather sheaths on their horns are released into the crowd of bull runners who ran inside the bull ring after the main event and the animals chase the runners around the ring, scraping them off the walls.

                The more experienced runners form a pile in front of the bullpens and let the young bulls slam into them full-speed as the crowd roars. It can be a shock for runners like me who thought the thousands of people in the stands were cheering because we finished our run in the bullring.

                Torrey hated the bull fights and covered her eyes while Steven watched the matadors taking on the bulls. After the bull was killed, it was hauled out of the ring by horses. At night, people eat bull soup in the restaurants.

                After another long, tiring trip, we took the train to Madrid and flew home.

                We couldn’t stay away from Europe and decided to go back one more time, for a wine tour of France.

                We flew to Brussels on an inaugural flight filled with dignitaries. In Brussels, we saw the landmark small bronze sculpture depicting a naked little boy urinating into a fountain’s basin, and we rented a car and spent the night in a muddy field that was reserved for camping.

                The night was not an entire waste _ we spent the evening in a local bar, drinking some of Belgium’s finest beer, Trappist Beer, brewed by Trappist Monks with a 16 percent alcohol content. Heady stuff. We spent the night sleeping in the bathrooms of a nearby stadium while the rain continued.

THE NETHERLANDS

                A short drive away, we went to Amsterdam to see the canals, eat at a waterside restaurant, and visit the museum of Anne Frank. Torrey flinched as she held open the bookcase that served as the hiding place for her family from the Nazis. Anne Frank and her family were later found and executed, but her book showing a young girl growing up is a must-read.

FRANCE

                Living out of our small car, we drove to Paris, where Steven tried to navigate the narrow streets. We revisited some of our favorite haunts, including the Louvre, then headed for what we called our wine tour.

                Our first wine destination was Champagne, where we visited the caves of Dom Perignon. The effervescent wine was discovered at the end of the 17th century.

                While the “terroir” or taste from the rich soil gives the character to grapes and the aging process brings out the flavor, it’s really each house’s different formulas for mixing and using three types of grapes — Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Meunier — to create unique champagne tastes. The bottles are then stored in chilly caves, where they are turned upside down and rotated to create a secondary fermentation that creates the bubbles. Torrey and I had a wonderful lunch in Champagne, with, of course, a bottle of champagne.

                It takes about four hours to drive from Champagne to Beaune, the next stop on our tour. Before reaching Beaune, in Burgundy, we took a break to visit the vineyards of Gevrey-Chambertin on the Cote de Nuits, where we bought a bottle of wine and a loaf of bread and cheese, and we had a picnic on a large hill in town. Unfortunately, we ran out of gas and had to coast down the hill, where we were lucky to find a service station.

                In Beaune, we went to the Marche aux Vins, housed in the former 15th-century Cordeliers Church. They have barrels for tables and samples of all the wines _ Cotes de Nuit, Cote de Beaune, Hospices de Beaunes and Dijon wines. They weren’t happy to see us because most Americans sample all the wines but don’t buy them by the case, and we had to argue in French to get inside. They put the cheap glasses of wine at the beginning of the tour, and they  leave the good wines for the end of your visit, hoping you will be too drunk to have any more wine. We left the best for last.

                From Beaune, we headed to Lyon and the Rhone Valley, and we stopped off enroute at the abbey in Cluny, but there wasn’t much to see. The Romanesque Basilica of St. Peter and St. Paul, built principally between 1088 and 1130, was the largest church in the world until the erection of St. Peter’s in Rome. Cluny’s basilica was in great part demolished in the early 19th century, but the ruins of the main southern transept, dominated by a great belfry tower, testify to its former glory.

                The Rhone Valley is home of the Cotes du Rhone wines. There are 22 grape varieties that winemakers can use to make the blend. It’s mostly always Grenache as the primary grape for reds and Marsanne and Rousanne for whites. If you get a good vintage, you can taste some of the different grape flavors as you swill the glass.

                We made a nice meal buying bread, meat and cheeses that we drank with our wine. At one restaurant, Steven had a wonderful dish of lapereaux du miel, rabbit in honey sauce, that he has never been able to duplicate. It must be the local honey that gave it the great flavor.

                It was about 200 miles from Lyon to Bordeaux, but we had to see the vineyards. We went to the syndicat d’initiative, which is basically the chamber of commerce, and bought tickets for a tour of Chateau Figeac, a Premier Grand Cru Classe, making it one of the finest wines in France. Apparently the chamber of commerce messed up, and when we showed up with a bus load of visitors, the owner was surprised and wasn’t expecting us. Instead of turning us away, he welcomed us all as his guests, invited us into his dining room, and went down to his cellar to bring up a bottle of his oldest and best wines. That’s hospitality.

                We also enjoyed seeing the town of St. Emilion, with its red-tiled houses. It is one of the principal red wine areas of Bordeaux along with the Médoc, Graves and Pomerol. As in Pomerol and the other appellations on the right bank of the Gironde, the primary grape varieties used are the Merlot and Cabernet Franc, with relatively small amounts of Cabernet Sauvignon also being used.

                From Bordeaux, it was a 200-mile trip to the Loire Valley, home of dozens of beautiful castles, including Blois, Amboise, Chenonceau, Chambord, Villandry, and Azay-le-Rideau.

                The most beautiful, in my opinion, is the chateau of Chambord, built in the middle of the forest of Boulogne on a lake, with its bulbous towers. There were up to 2,000 people in the chateaux to feed, and they relied on hunting and game for food.

                Another fine chateaux was the castle of Chenonceau, one of the Loire Valley’s most famous and romantic chateaux, with arches jumping over the River Cher.

                The medieval castle of Chinon was built from the 12th century on a rocky outcrop above the Vienne River. Chinon is closely associated with French history, particularly from the 12th to the 15th centuries. This is where Joan of Arc claimed to have heard heavenly voices and met the French king.

                The town of Sancerre is perched high on one of the undulating hills, with a magnificent panorama of the Loire Valley, with vineyards as far as the eye can see. We had dinner at a restaurant on the hillside, with a Sancerre wine, of course.

                From Sancerre, we took a side trip to Rouen, Normandy, to see the Church of Saint Joan of Arc, om the Place du Vieux-Marché. This is the place where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake for heresy in 1431, and there is a large statue marking the spot.

                In Normandy, we also saw Mont St. Michel, with its gravity-defying Abbey, built on a rocky tidal island. At the top of the shopping street called “la Grande Rue”, there are 350 steps to go straight up to the church. You have to time your visit carefully. The road to the island floods daily with the tide, washing out the highway, and you have to wait for the tide roll back out to get back to land.

                From there, it was back to Brussels and back to Orlando.

                Our wanderlust continued and took us on one more foreign trip _ a quick flight from Orlando to Merida on the Yucatan Peninsula _ or so we thought.

MEXICO

                In Yucatan, we were introduced to the Mayan and Inca cultures on a visit to Chichen Itza.

                Chichen Itza is a complex of Mayan ruins on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. A massive step pyramid, known as El Castillo or Temple of Kukulcan, dominates the ancient city, which thrived from around 600 AD to 1200. Graphic stone carvings survive at structures like the ball court, Temple of the Warriors and the Wall of the Skulls, where losers of the ball game were executed.

                Torrey and Steven climbed to the top of the pyramid, pulling ourselves up step by step using a chain.

                Seeking to know more about the Mayan culture, we went to Uxmal, which was built in 700 and lasted until 1000 AD. There are astronomical observatories, and it’s organized in relation to astronomical phenomena like the rising and setting of the planet Venus. 

                There were a lot of carvings on the monuments. Mayan writing consists of symbols called glyphs. Of the hundreds of Mayan symbols, some appear more often on the carved stelae and temple walls in Mayan cities, revealing their importance to the culture. Glyphs of animals were powerful symbols to the Mayans, especially the jaguar and the eagle.

                The Mayan feathered serpent deity Kukulkan was known to other Mesoamerican cultures like the Aztecs and Olmecs who worshipped the god under different names. The myth surrounding this deity mentions the god as a creator of the cosmos in the Popul Vuh, the Kiche Maya sacred book.

                The serpent god is also called the Vision Serpent. Feathers represent the god’s ability to soar in the heavens, while as a serpent the god can also travel the earth.

                Kukulkan cult temples can be found in Chichen Itza, Uxmal and Mayapan. The serpent cult emphasized peaceful trade and good communication among the cultures. Since a snake can shed its skin, it symbolizes renewal and rebirth.

                The jaguar, to the Mayans, was a powerful symbol of ferocity, strength and valor. Since the big cats can see well at night, it symbolizes perception and foresight. As a god of the Mayan underworld, the jaguar ruled the celestial forces of night and day. As such, it represents control, confidence and leadership. Mayan warriors wore jaguar skins into battle as a sign of honor and courage. The Mayans held the jaguar second only to Kukulkan in religious importance.

                Further intrigued, we decided to take the long trip through the jungles of Guatemala to visit Tikal, an ancient Mayan citadel in the rainforests of northern Guatemala. On our trip we went through Belize to Belize City, a rough and tumble town on the ocean. There we boarded a bus to take us to Guatemala. The bus caught fire enroute, and people were jumping over us and climbing over seats to get out. Thankfully, everyone survived.

GUATEMALA

                We boarded another bus, and when we reached the edge of the jungles of Guatemala, we were met by armed rebels who boarded our bus and demanded passports. For some reason, they waved us through and we made it to Tikal.

                Tikal flourished between 200 and 850 AD and was later abandoned. Its iconic ruins of temples and palaces include the giant, ceremonial Lost World Pyramid and the Temple of the Grand Jaguar.

                The Maya kept incredibly accurate calendars, some engraved in stone, that recorded cycles of time based on the movements of the heavenly bodies, including Venus’ orbit and events in the Milky Way, where the Mayan Lords lived.  The Mayan mathematicians and astronomers considered the passage of time sacred, and kept three sets in Tikal, made from two different calendars, which when combined, yielded a date in a third element called the calendar round.

                The site’s major structures include five pyramid temples and three large complexes, often called acropoles, temples and palaces for the upper class.

                One complex looming out of the tops of the jungle has numerous buildings beneath which have been found richly prepared burial chambers. Pyramid I is topped by the Temple of the Jaguar and rises to 150 feet. Just west of Pyramid I and facing it is Pyramid II, standing 140 feet above the jungle floor and supporting the Temple of the Masks. Pyramid III is 180 feet high. Near the Plaza of the Seven Temples stands Pyramid V, at 190 feet. The highest of the Tikal monuments is Pyramid IV, 215 feet high, the site of the Temple of the Two-Headed Serpent. Pyramid IV is one of the tallest pre-Columbian structures in the Western Hemisphere.

                We’re glad we traveled while we were young, but it was more dangerous and frightening than we realized. We would do it all over again if we could. It opened our eyes to whole new worlds, but we were glad to get home.