Northern lights - and the Fjords, in Norway

Saone River, France

Swans gliding silently 

Balea Lac Hotel of Ice, Romania

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Overnight, on blocks of solid ice,  and Dracula's castle, Bran Castle, Brasov Romania

Harbin China

Being the only European tourists at the very end of season, 40 degree farenheit below zero, seeing scale size Wall of China, Taj Mahal, Kremlins, and other world features in Ice and Snow, snow sculptures, using sign language (only) to get help from the taxi drivers going to and from the winter showgrounds.

Mekong Delta

Trying to understand the hyperabundance of the brick factories lining hundreds, overall, of kilometers of the Mekong Delta in Vietnam and verging on Cambodia

London - Swan Lake Ballet, and the Phantom of the Opera.

Viennese Opera, and, also, in Budapest.

Falkland Islands

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Seeing tame wild penguins in the rookeries, including King, Macaroni, Gentoo, and Rockhopper 

Beagle Channel, Straits of Magellan

Sea lions and light house

Guatemala

Sunrise at Templo Mayor, Tikal.  Swimming laps, almost 3/4 mile one way, across an alligator infested lake, that I later found out was a mortal threat, and being so scared after the fact I couldn't sleep.  Climbing Agua, the extinct volcano, swimming in Lake Panajachel, having tea with Sarito and listening to the sound of my friend's bongo drums, learning about Maximon, the cigar smoking and whiskey drinking effigy, 

Guatemala - Poas Volcano - sliding down the deep ash slope, with cinder filling our socks and hiking boots, feeling the heat and the power of the sonic fumes, close enough to smell the sulphurous fumes, of the live active volcano.

Bosphorus Straits - Turkey. 

Listening to a family friend, Rose Hayden, play the grand piano during sailaway, as the sunset and we had a history lecture of the region.

London

The Lion King puppets and music.

Kairouan, Tunisia

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Taking a carriage drive around the rampart walls

Carthage, Tunisia

Learning about the 700 year Cult of the Baal, and the Romans sowing salt and burning Carthage to the ground, in revenge. 

The Cothon, and the Carthage Museum, and, the Bardo.

Tibet

Seeing and learning about sky burial.  Watching the faithful make a religious pilgrimage  the monks chanting, and yak butter tea.  three weeks on the Tibetan plateau.

Irian Jaya: 

Flying in from Yogyakarta, and visiting Borobodur  - learning about the life of the Buddha -  and Prambanan temples, where we saw a live performance of the Ramayana, by way of Bali, talking the Indonesian police chiefs into giving us permission Passes, taking a missionary flight and landing in the Baliem Valley, that only less than 50 years prior western missionaries had experienced their first encounter with true headhunting cannibals. 

Seeing the Michael Rockefeller Museum in Jayapura, learning of his fate, along with Dani, Asmat and Yali people, in the local vegetable and goods and local handicrafts market. 

Seeing the phallocrypts everywhere.  Hiking in, unaccompanied but for one trusted travel companion, into the Valley, participating in a roasted pig feast - spontaneously, not arranged for us, as we just happened to wander into this territory at the right time.​

That night, we were given the chieftain's hut as a symbol of honor, for our brave arrival into this territory which still had outbursts of headhunting activity, and I remember distinctly, the conditions were so terrible, that we laughed until we cried.  The mosquito nets, dirty, unmended, and suspended over a hard board bed rack, with no mattress or coverings of any kind, just a bare board...the nets that were meant to protect us, shook with the movement of the voluble rats' feet as they clambered across the eaves, raining down roaches and rat droppings, mites and lice into our hair and onto our sweat soaked hiking clothes.  We had no place to bathe or change, so we slept in our mud soaked gear.  I spent that cold night, shivering, awe inspired, humbled, worried about stomach trouble, and mostly sitting upright hugging my knees for warmth and to minimize the landing space for the lice and roaches that were falling and tangling themselves into my long hair.

Seeing the Dani war widows - when they lost a son or male relative, the finger bones, starting with the first joint, and then, if circumstances arose, the second joint of the fingers, of the female relatives, including young children, would be crushed and broken off with dull, terrible stones on the day of the mourning feast ritual.  Smoking cheroots, and watching the women and children forage for pig scraps after the better tidbits were first thrown to the hunting dogs.  I was allowed to poke my head inside a round thatch hut and see the half shadowed figure of the desiccated, smoked mummy of a revered chieftain, in rigor mortis in a sitting position, accompanying living male warriors who were passing an idle afternoon out of the heat of the day's sun, and asked that he be brought out and examined, so I could photograph him (whereupon a photo tithe was expected, and given).

Gozo, Malta

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Making friends with a tame wild octopus during a check out dive in the bay.