Welcome!

What a difference the distance of three sea days between Cape Verde and Madeira makes!  The country of Madeira, like Cape Verde, also discovered and settled by the Portuguese, is the opposite of Cape Verde...

INDIA VISIT OVERVIEW

Susan and I have completed one month of our seven-week visit to Mumbai, India.  This is the longest time that Susan will have ever spent in India.  In my approximately fifteen visits to India over the years, I generally stayed for around a month and twice for two months.  As a result of these many visits, we have many friends here, most of whom are musicians or music lovers.  Our goal for this seven-week stay was to enjoy our friends and the great food while playing as much music as possible.

Malta is nicknamed the “navel of the Mediterranean” since it is in approximately the middle of the Mediterranean Sea.  Its location has made Malta the object of conquest, starting with the Phoenicians, and followed by the Carthaginians, Romans, Greeks, Arabs, Normans, Aragonese, the Knights of St. John, French, and finally the British in 1813-1974, when Malta became an independent neutral country. 

In traditional Moslem culture, all marriages are arranged. Once the bride and groom’s families complete their negotiations on dowry terms (the money and goods paid to the groom’s family as compensation for assuming the “burden” of supporting the addition to the groom’s family), the marriage ceremony is arranged. Marriages are a time for large celebrations featuring conspicuous consumption.

2018 marks the sixth conference in Jordan of the Middle East Nurses United in Human Caring. The conference was started by nursing pioneer Dr. Jean Watson, together with nurses from Israel and Palestine. Jean, who holds now 12 honorary international doctorates based on her Caritas. . .

Montenegro is the smallest of the six countries that emerged at the breakup of Yugoslavia (Croatia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Serbia, Albania, Macedonia) after the death of Yugoslav dictator Marshall Tito in 1980.

At every Viking port, several different excursions with local guides are offered.  We didn’t want to visit another winery or cattle farm.  So we chose a city tour which included a tango performance.  Our local tour guide began by acknowledging that Uruguay is not a tourist “destination”...

As we traveled across the Denali Highway, the 105 mile dirt road through this incredible wilderness, with higher elevation came fresh snow.

We have been very blessed to be hosted on this trip by our dear friend Lajo Gupta, first at her home in Dubai, and afterwards in Mumbai, where she flew to host us in her wonderful apartment there. I met Lajo forty years ago(!)