At long last! My first visit to Paris

The icon of Paris, early evening

Somehow... somehow... despite my love of fine food and good wine, despite my appreciation for classic architecture and design, and despite my great affection for traveling, I had never been to the world's most-visited city until 2014. I'm not quite sure how that all happened, but I'm awfully glad to have rectified it. Paris, even in the dead of winter, was a delight. And I learned a few things I didn't know about, either.

Indeed, strolling along the Seine, and taking in the wide boulevards, tree-lined parks, neighborhood cafés, and fashionable streets bounded on either side by buildings of similar style, structure, and height, it may seem as though this archetypal Parisian scene has long been enshrined in the city’s historical legacy. In actual fact, however, the Paris of today is relatively new when viewed in context with the French capital’s lengthy history, something of which I wasn't even remotely aware until this visit (and an especially enlightening walking tour I took one fine day). Prior to the middle of the 19th century, Paris was indeed not a particularly pleasant place to live or visit, a medieval city of confusingly interweaving streets and alleyways, cramped buildings, and desperately poor sanitation and hygiene standards.

All that changed dramatically under the reign of Napoleon III, who in 1853 launched a massive public works undertaking on a scale that even today defies belief. Together with his appointed prefect of the Seine, Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann, Napoleon III effectively tore down and rebuilt Paris, increasing the size of the city in the process via annexation. It was a colossal citywide renovation program that brought clean water, sanitation, improved passageways, and a large number of open spaces to a city that had, in the five decades prior, become increasingly important on the global stage, cementing itself as not only the center of power, finance, and culture in post-Revolution France, but as a leading city of the Enlightenment that swept across Western Europe – hence Paris being known even still today as the "City of Light." (Nope, doesn't have anything to do with lamps. Ha ha.)

Wrought-iron balconies, dormer windows, and garret rooms lend their
forms to the quintessentially Parisian architectural landscape

Uniformity of height
and appearance

So in just 17 years’ time, the French emperor and his prefect utterly transformed the French capital into a stunning city of art and culture, very much laying the foundation for the Paris of today. Haussmann dictated strict codes and standards for the new Parisian buildings fronting the wide boulevards: they had to be the same height, follow the same basic design, and be faced in the same cream-colored stone. Standards also required owners to clean and refresh their building’s façade every 10 years. These building standards created in central Paris a distinctive unified urban landscape, an appearance it still maintains today. Lower floors had higher ceilings as those dwellings were occupied by the city's elite. With each successively higher group of floors, the ceiling height diminished, until the sixth or seventh floors – the height mandated under the new plan – was oftentimes little more than an attic space with garret rooms and dormer windows (perhaps for servants). Very little was left to chance, and the buildings became part of the street, forming a relatively uniform "wall" along each side, typifying what would become the defining "idea" of Paris. Well, that plus that big iron broadcast and observation tower that Parisians initially despised.

Napoleon III also wanted the city to offer its residents plenty of green spaces for relaxation and recreation and ordered that large parks be placed at the four primary compass points in the city and where major boulevards intersected, with numerous smaller parks complementing them throughout the newly enlarged city, with the idea that no neighborhood should be more than a 10-minute walk from a park. The changes wrought by the vision of Haussmann and the French emperor have profoundly impacted the daily lives of Parisians and tourists to the city even to this day.

So there's a very brief snippet of Paris's lengthy history, and this tiny parcel of knowledge made wandering around the city (well, mostly in the First and Seventh Arrondisements) all the more enjoyable as I was able to appreciate all that had been done under Haussmann's grand vision.

The Obelisk of Luxor
in the heart of Paris

I landed at Charles de Gaulle airport and, after an initial spell of complete bamboozlement trying to sort out how to get from point A to point B – in French,no less... sacre bleu! – I took a pair of trains to my destination, the station at the Place de la Concorde. Another fun fact: I emerged from underground in the city of Paris for the first time right at the spot where the French Revolution reached its apex (or its nadir, I suppose, depending on your perspective) with the public execution of King Louis XVI. It was cloudy, lightly raining off and on, and cold; naturally, I was disoriented and unsure of the direction to go to reach my hotel, the lovely Mandarin Oriental, which was proclaimed as "only a five-minute walk from Concorde station." Never mind that the station has multiple exit points and there was no direction given. However, before heading off with my luggage in tow and getting progressively cold, wet, and lost, I snapped this photo, rather liking the strong vertical elements present in the composition. The obelisk in the center, as I later learned, is the genuine article, a staggeringly old artifact given to France by the leader of Egypt in 1829. The 3,300-year-old obelisk had previously marked the entrance to Luxor Temple, and its hieroglyphs represent the reign of Ramses II. Getting the 280-ton granite monument to Paris proved to be a significant challenge in the early 19th century, so the diagrams on the pedestal base of the obelisk recount and detail the transportation feat. After over three millennia standing sentry in Egypt, the obelisk has now presided over the Place de la Concorde for close to two hundred years. In the miserable wet cold that heralded my arrival, it felt like it took very nearly that long to finally track down my hotel. A providential nip into the nearby Westin paid handsome dividends as they kindly printed off a map and pointed me in the right direction of the Mandarin.

A top memory of my time in Paris, during which the sun remained shyly hidden behind a veil of gray clouds and the temperature hovered between 40-45°F (about 4-7°C) was – on more than one occasion – getting a fresh, warm baguette from one of several boulangeries near my hotel. It wasn't that uncommon to see people walking around in their coats and scarves, with a small baguette in hand, eating it plain. Good bread is one of life's simplest pleasures, and it's not hard to find loads of those pleasures attached to culinary pursuits while in France. When adjusted to a common currency, it's said that Paris has the most expensive bread in the world. That is likely so, but I was still able to score half-baguettes, plenty for my needs, for half a Euro or so, which is only eight times as much as a similar offering in Kuala Lumpur, but hey: It's freaking Paris, whaddya expect, right?! So, piles of outgoing cash notwithstanding, it goes without saying that the food was j'mazing. J'incredible. J'worth the trip for that alone. Get a tissue to mop up the drool: I'll group most of the food shots together here... :)

Apart from eating out, one delight was
bringing fresh bread back to the room
(along with a bottle of wine, of course)
and making a delicious sandwich

Little explosions of berries and fruit at the patisserie
just down from the hotel

Custards, cakes, crème brûlées... though I don't have
much of a serious sweet tooth, I can't deny this
was a tempting line-up!

Breakfast in the hotel... fine French cheeses,
berries, salmon, mini-baguettes, yogurt, and more:
this was a meal not to be rushed at all!

I had never seen this before... basically spiral-shaved cheese,
done by a tool called a girolle, which creates rosette-like
slices of this particular variety of cheese,
the Swiss Tête de Moine

Making crêpes in an open-air shop near the Trocadéro,
directly across the Seine from the Eiffel Tower

Of course, it was no surprise that Paris consistently delighted me with great food and wine. It's just an inseparable part of the culture of France, and it was a common sight, even in the dead of winter, to see friends sitting outside a café under a radiant quartz heater, enjoying a bottle of wine in the cool, damp air.

All French, all the time: a staggering selection of rosé,
red, and white in a small supermarket I visited

In the supermarkets, the country's bond with wine was perhaps even on greater display. Even in a small neighborhood supermarket, it was still a vast wall of wines that greeted me, stretching the entire length of an aisle and comprising nearly exclusively French wines... a few other countries would be represented, but perhaps only 5% of the total stock in the stores into which I wandered.

I saw rather a lot in my relatively short time in Paris (just four days and three nights), but among my favorite places surely must have been the Louvre. Quite apart from the priceless collection of art contained within, the palace itself – built, expanded, destroyed, and rebuilt and augmented repeatedly over a seven-century span – is a stunning treasure beyond belief. The architecture, history, and craftsmanship on display simply boggles the mind... and that's before even wandering into the vast museum, a place in which you could easily spend days and days and still not see everything.

In the oldest courtyard of the Louvre Palace

One of the smaller glass pyramids outside
the Louvre

In the Cour Carrée ("square courtyard")
of the Louvre

Pavillion Mollien in the "new" wing,
still some 200 years old

The last addition to the Louvre, the glass pyramids, completed in 1989

Pavillion Turgot

Pavillion Denon and barren trees contrasted by
surprisingly green grass in the dead of winter

Ohhh, the anguish!
Is he distraught because he's rather
humiliatingly being used as a perch,
or because of his wee tiny penis?

A close runner-up, though, would surely be the Cathedral of Notre-Dame, located on the southeastern quadrant of the Île de la Cité, one of the two remaining natural islands in the middle of the Seine. Construction on Notre-Dame started in 1163 and continued for nearly two centuries (though most of the building was completed by 1250), culminating in what is today widely considered one of the premier examples of French Gothic architecture to be found anywhere. The cathedral, to put it mildly, is stunning. Having undergone an extensive and delicate restoration begun in 1991 (and which may still be underway, but was definitely so as of 2010), Notre-Dame looks terrific today. I eschewed the typical wide-angle shots we've all seen a thousand times in favor of some different compositions, and frankly, the dismal weather didn't lend itself well to the sweeping images of the cathedral's eastern and southern façades, with those graceful flying buttresses, so I stayed on the western side and shot from there. Even for a non-religious person like me, Notre-Dame is a spectacular place to visit, truly one of the most important and historically rich buildings in all of Paris, which is saying something!

All the little saints, lined up in a row...

I know Notre-Dame isn't the only place to
use gargoyles as rain gutter spouts, but it
may have been among the first

On my second day in Paris, I made what was unquestionably the best purchase of the entire mini Euro-odyssey: a quality scarf and pair of "Thinsulate" gloves from a newsstand around the corner from my hotel. The gloves were good to have, I suppose, but really, it was that scarf that made the difference. I noticed that nearly all the Parisian denizens bopping about on the streets were "bescarved," so I presumed there was something to be said for the things. I've never really been much of a scarf-wearer, personally, but I found that insulating that gaping space where your neck pops out of your under- and over-garments really helps. And so it was that my €4 scarf became an indispensable part of my travel wardrobe.

I was only in the City of Light for a scant four days, and though I squeezed in quite a bit (not everything generated blog-worthy photos), the time sailed by, and soon, I found myself navigating my way through the city, with considerably less clumsiness than days prior, to the Gare de Lyon rail station to catch the high-speed TGV train to Barcelona for the second part of my holiday. A few final photo memories, though...

This was a special memory. I was in the 7th
arrondisement one evening – really just wandering –
rounded a corner, and this was what I saw. Nothing
like a big, unexpected steaming pile of Eiffel Tower
to remind you that you're in Paris, eh?

After the chance sighting, I made a more
purposeful course correction to catch the famed
tower in the last lingering vestiges of winter's
deep blue daylight

The awning, the warm neon, the 1920s
cabaret-style font in the signage... this was
too much to let my camera pass up

The sentinel of the Seine

Though I indeed stayed at the excellent
Mandarin Oriental Paris, I was not quite privileged
enough to stay in the finest suite there, though I did
get a peek... this is the view from the bathtub... :)

The entrance and clock tower of the Paris-Gare de Lyon
railway station

At Paris-Gare de Lyon, just before boarding the TGV for
the high-speed rail trip to Barcelona!

And this was another splendid memory... from my seat onboard the
train, a baguette from a French boulangerie, stuffed with salami and Dijon
mustard, a bottle of Evian, a bottle of pretty respectable Bordeaux, and
a Kindle full of reading pleasures...

And there it is, my first visit to the storied city of Paris, France. I myself can hardly believe it took well into my 40s to get there, but it didn't disappoint and certainly piqued more than enough interest and desire to merit another trip, though preferably at a warmer time of year.

Next stop... Catalonia and the historic Mediterranean city of food, fun, and a boundless zeal for life that has made it a destination beloved worldwide: Barcelona, Spain.

Back to Langkawi: Adventures with Aeolus

The New Zealand crew unfurls their
spinnaker and harnesses the wind

Yeah, nobody's going to read this one because the title won't be understood by anyone not possessing at least a passing acquaintance with Greek mythology, so I'll keep it light on the text, throw in a few pictures, and move on to the European vacation entries.

A few weeks ago (in mid-January), I was invited up to enjoy the spectacle of the 12th Annual Royal Langkawi International Regatta, yet inexplicably, they never use the word "annual" in the title of their event, which strikes me as odd. It's been held every year for 12 years now, at around the same time each year. So why is it not referred to as an annual event? Nobody seems to know, but for whatever reason, it's just the "12th regatta" there. Whatever. I've long given up on trying to understand the peculiarities and nuances of Malaysian English.

Being at the regatta was a great experience for me. I'm always happy when I'm on the water, and the gorgeous scenery in the waters around Langkawi Island never fails to impress. Speeding away from the sheltered harbor at the Royal Langkawi Yacht Club courtesy of a pair of 200-hp Yamaha outboards, it took us less than 15 minutes to reach our destination: just outside the race course for the thrilling action of, yes, the 12th Royal Langkawi International Regatta (RLIR). Drawing some 350 sailors crewing 44 yachts from 16 countries, this year’s regatta saw terrific weather and race-friendly winds on virtually all five racing days during the competition. Set against the beautiful backdrop of the cluster of Langkawi’s many islands and the emerald waters of the Andaman Sea, these nautical speedsters harnessed the brisk winds and put their considerable sailing skills on display. The spectacle of a small fleet of sleek yachts listing precipitously into the wind, with their crews deftly maneuvering the sails and unfurling billowing spinnakers to harness the power of the wind was seriously adrenaline-charged sight to behold. For me, of course, the challenge lay merely in getting a few good shots while bouncing and bobbing on the choppy seas.

Their sails backlit against misty mountains rising from
the Andaman Sea, the sailors are ready to race!

The crew of Jelik move as one with discipline and
experience to capture the full power of the 24-knot winds

Crews from New Zealand, Hong Kong, and Malaysia
let their spinnakers fly to narrow the gap late in the race

I'd never seen racing yachts with their sails full of wind zipping across the sea like this, turning their main sails into the stiff winds and, to this layman's eyes, looking many times as if they were perilously close to capsizing. I was particularly impressed with how fast they could stow the huge spinnaker once they pulled it down. Typically, from start to finish, the exercise took less than 30 seconds and the massive sail was not only down, but completely out of sight.

The crew and yacht that would ultimately claim the top prize,
the Australian-based Oi!

The grandeur of a masthead spinnaker on full display, as the entire
crew of Jelik take their position on the starboard side for balance

Jelik carves a path through the sea

It was a real treat to be on hand for the RLIR, both for the days at sea, and also the dinners, cocktail parties, and events each evening, held at different venues around the island (though all close to the yacht club). The competition drew sailors, enthusiasts, and media from 16 countries, including relatively distant New Zealand, Russia, and Australia. In the end, it was a seasoned crew of Aussies (on a yacht named Oi!, naturally enough) who bagged the top prize, with a sizeable Hong Kong crew manning the sails on the regatta's largest boat and runner-up, an impressive 77-footer called Jelik, a vessel to which my camera was continually drawn. Malaysia had a handful of entrants, too, the most notable being the pair of boats often called "the twins" for obvious reasons seen here.

Malaysia's twin racers, Utarid and Uranus, race by in tight symmetry

Surely, the exhilaration of competing in the waters surrounding Langkawi – apart from its eponymous main island, the archipelago actually includes dozens of smaller islands – must ascribe some of its pleasures to the sheer beauty of the area. With the blue-green waters of the Andaman Sea and northern extreme of the Straits of Malacca punctuated by a host of densely forested islands and dramatic limestone karsts, with sea eagles and Brahminy kites circling lazily overhead, the scenery here is certainly a visual feast. Langkawi rightly receives much praise for its laid-back island vibe, luxurious resorts, and fine beaches, but stepping off the land and going out to sea here, for me at least, added an entirely new dimension to the appreciation of this island.

The seamanship of Malaysia's naval crews on display

The crew of Oi! cheer at the dockside trophy presentation...
you'd think that thing would be a bit bigger, wouldn't you?

The 77-foot Jelik under full sail

Sunset at the harbor on the final day, just before the
big awards dinner

Honestly, I always enjoy my visits to Langkawi, but this one was special simply because I got to do something really new and different. I can only imagine the sense of accomplishment and teamwork that comes from successfully manning a racing yacht in a competition like this. It was a fun few days, I learned a little about sailing (mostly, though, I just learned how very little I know), and made some really good memories... and hey, managed to get a few decent snapshots, too!

Aeolus, by the way, was the Greek god of the winds... naturally a deity much-revered at any regatta!

The 2013 Retrospective, part two

For all the traveling I did in 2013, I think I only added one new place to my passport, and that was Vietnam. I expect 2014 will be much better on that front as there are trips planned to France and Spain, with New Zealand, the Maldives, and Myanmar all distinct possibilities as well, all of which would represent new stamps in the passport. As for the second half of 2013, however... strap in for another long entry and loads of photos! Be sure to click on these to enlarge them. And away we go...

Fresh Cameron Highlands strawberries

One of the highlights last year was a terrific weekend up at Cameron Highlands. This is a hill station district in Malaysia, about 120 miles by road from KL, but owing to the winding road to the Highlands once you get off the main highway, it's easily a three-hour drive. This was the first time I had been to Cameron Highlands since early 2010, I think, and it's still just as refreshing and enjoyable. Because of the altitude of the three townships comprising the Highlands – Ringlet, Tanah Rata, and Brinchang – temperatures here seldom rise much above the mid-70s (Fahrenheit), about 23-25°C, and nights routinely bring blissfully mild temperatures of 14-16°C (around 60°F). It's Peninsular Malaysia's highest point accessible by car, and a true tropical highland climate. Fruits and veggies well-adapted to temperate climates flourish in Cameron Highlands, where the altitude ranges from about 3,600 ft to 5,200 ft above sea level. Strawberries, cantaloupe, sweet corn, and perhaps the area's most famous crop, tea, all do quite well here.

Tea plantation in the rolling hills of Cameron Highlands

We stayed at a very nice place called The Lakehouse, a boutique hotel with plenty of Colonial charm and history. Nestled against a bucolic green hillside near the town of Ringlet, this Tudor-style country inn was a special place to call home for a weekend. They even washed my car every day we were there... definitely a treatment you'd not get at a larger property. We ate fantastic food, had what I believe was the very best sweet corn on the cob I've ever had in Malaysia, made fresh strawberry jam, had a very proper English high tea in the Lakehouse's library (next to a mammoth woodburning fireplace), saw the tea plantations, browsed around in the nearby towns, and just thoroughly enjoyed a respite from the urban jungle of KL. It's curious that with all the travel that I did last year, one of the most memorable trips was the one just up the road.

A delicious salmon dish complemented by nothing but
locally grown veggies

From the patio of The Lakehouse

Evening's last light from the "front yard" of
The Lakehouse

Who doesn't love a freestanding,
claw-footed, deep bathtub?

Misty hills in the distance added to
the wonderful ambiance

Scones, sandwiches, cakes, and fresh fruit...
a marvelous English high tea

Tea plants covering the hills like carpet (photo courtesy of Will Ellis)

Last year saw a handful of excursions up to Langkawi, definitely one of my favorite Malaysian getaways. It's just a short one-hour flight to this laid-back island up near the Thai border, and is probably among my most-frequented domestic holiday destinations.

One visit was just a media trip to Berjaya Langkawi Resort, but those are usually pretty enjoyable, even though they are unquestionably work-related. Since everything is sponsored, we are beholden to a fairly full itinerary, with the idea behind the trips being an introduction of the resort and/or destination to members of the media. So there's generally a full slate of meals, activities, press conference-type assemblies, etc. This one also featured a spa visit and a leisurely mangrove tour, so hey, nobody was complaining!

Flying over Penang en route to Langkawi, the new 24-km (15 mi) Second
Penang Bridge, set to officially open in February 2014, is clearly visible
in the foreground, with the original bridge in the background

A picture-perfect view from the lobby deck at Berjaya

The over-water chalets of Berjaya Langkawi Resort dot the shoreline

Langkawi's UNESCO Geoforest Park is a true treasure... the lazy boat rides
along the mangrove forests are always enjoyable and educational

Bringing in the boats under unsettled skies

Looking northward, though, a more docile view

I chose to go back home to Colorado in 2013 during my favorite time of year, which is autumn. September and October in the Rocky Mountains are just magical months. I went in late September and stayed for about two weeks, which of course just flew by. Some of my friends here in Malaysia often express surprise that I flew back home at that time rather than at Christmas. I simply show them some of the photos from the trip, and everything is made clear to them. Not only did we have postcard-perfect weather virtually the entire time I was there, I got two new lenses for my Nikon (one of which is a manual-focus 8mm fisheye lens) and had a blast breaking them in and trying them out. I always enjoy my trips home... visiting family and friends, seeing my parrot Shiloh, and soaking in all the beautiful Colorado scenery.

My mother and I had a number of attempts to visit the mountains thwarted because of devastating floods that had ripped through the northern foothills of the Front Range of Colorado just before my arrival. Plenty of roads, including some fairly major thoroughfares, were washed away, and most of the affected towns were still very much in full recovery mode, so not only could we not visit those areas, we couldn't even go through them. So on one particularly fruitless day, we had no fewer than three different routes end up as non-options for us. In the end, we grabbed some food in Longmont, a delightful small city north of Denver, and enjoyed the brilliant skies and sunny weather. A much more productive trip a day later took us southwest of Denver, where we marveled at the riot of color courtesy of the changing aspens. While Colorado doesn't have the extreme autumnal variety of reds and oranges that New England's stunning deciduous forests display, there's something special about the electric yellow of the aspens set against the deep green of the ponderosa and lodgepole pine forests, all under a brilliant deep blue Colorado sky. After snapping loads of photos of all this spectacular scenery, however, we came through Idaho Springs and were met by a monstrous, barely-moving traffic jam on Interstate 70 heading back to Denver. Accident, construction, we didn't know, but it didn't look promising, so we go on the highway going the opposite way and went over Guanella Pass and came the "back way" into Denver. It was a detour few would make, because it's a solid two-hour slog over a very high mountain pass and then down a winding highway into the foothills southwest of Denver. But it seemed to be a good choice, as the jam on I-70 was pretty epic, and in the end, we made it to one of my favorite Mexican cantinas in Denver, Jose O'Shea's, just in time to catch the last few minutes of happy hour, a frosty margarita (or two) and plates of hot tacos our well-earned reward for the grueling drive back to civilization.

Mom in the Jeep, courtesy of the new fisheye lens

Boulder's ever-impressive Flatirons jutting up from the plains

Here's my baby! Shiloh, my parrot, now around 16 years
old, but she doesn't look a day over 10!

Heading up Guanella Pass with a dense palette of greens
and yellows at every turn

Colorado's wide open spaces, shot with the 8mm lens

A log home against a tree-covered hillside... quintessential Colorado

A Colorado bluebird posing on a rustic fence suddenly makes
me extra-happy to now have a 300mm lens

Talk about posing! This "camp robber" bird was just biding his time
at our picnic site before swooping down for any bits of food he could nab

Vast forests carpeted in pine and aspen

Whether a painter, a cyclist, a hiker, a photographer, or whatever – people
out in nature soaking up the wonder of Colorado is a common sight,
and is part and parcel of the state's immense appeal

Sun-splashed aspens at their peak color burn with
an orange-tinted yellow under a cloudless sky

For me, the defining photo of the trip, capturing everything that I love
about autumn in the Colorado Rockies

At the summit of Guanella Pass, with 14,060-ft Mt. Bierstadt looming
in the background

Generously sized margaritas, chips & salsa, and spicy tacos
at Jose O'Shea's... ample recompense indeed for our long
and winding detour back home from the mountains

Wanting to cap off a wonderful year of travel with a near-total absence of panache and luxury, my friend Ryan and I booked a "backpacker-style" trip to Kathmandu, Nepal, leaving a couple of days after Christmas and staying through the New Year. After a spectacularly long slog to get through possibly the most woefully inefficient immigration queues in the world, we made our way to our guesthouse, a place called Dipankara Holiday Home. Now, this is not a fancy place, but a couple of issues notwithstanding, it was a really nice place to base ourselves for a few days. However, the first night did not forecast that in any way at all. We were in an upstairs room (US$12.50 per night) and had no heat, no hot water (lukewarm only with roof-mounted solar water heaters), and much of the time, no electricity. This is a common theme in Nepal, where only 40% of the country even has access to electricity at all, and even in Kathmandu, rolling power cuts are the order of business, particularly in the chilly winter months. The power cuts sort of follow a schedule, but it's not really one you can rely on. After the first night, we "upgraded" to a downstairs room which the proprietor cheerfully gave us for $20 per night, and this room had a gas-fired water heater (hot showers make a huge difference!) and a halogen space heater, which is only slightly better than nothing, in all honesty. If you're looking for an incredibly inefficient heater, this may be your best choice. Little more than an 800-watt halogen light bulb, this thing lit up the room like a small nova and merely radiated heat as long as the power was flowing to it. Had it been outfitted with a small fan to blow the heated air out into the room, it would have made it significantly better. However, it was certainly better than having nothing at all, and the room was really quite nice. Very clean, fresh quality linens, and once again: hot water. One fine morning around 3am, the power came back on and the heater sprang to life and I woke up shortly thereafter, thinking it was the morning sun blazing through the windows. Alas, however, it was just the super-bright halogen heater doing its thing.

Terraced fields atop the rugged mountains of Nepal

I guess you'd call this "Suburban Kathmandu"

The ubiquitous momo – stuffed with various meats and
spices, and prepared in a variety of ways (steamed,
pan-seared, deep-fried), we couldn't get enough

The succulent contents of a buffalo-stuffed momo

Fresh noodles with plenty of veggies

The charming Dipankara Holiday Home,
our home away from home for five days

Our bright and sunny downstairs room,
clean and comfortable

While we were there, there was scarcely a cloud in the sky. In fact, it hadn't rained in a few weeks prior to our visit, so everything seemed to be coated in a very fine layer of dust. It wasn't that problematic in the city, as you tend to expect such things, but on a half-day excursion to Nagarkot, the site of some of my best photos from last year's trip to Nepal, the dryness and dustiness rendered all the foliage, typically a lush palette of greens, a dull shade of mediocrity. Disappointing, but despite this – and apparently going at the wrong time of day (morning is best, as we were told after the fact) – I still managed to snap a couple of good photos of the supremely impressive peaks of the Himalayas... no captions required!

Among the more memorable times on the trip were seeking out rooftop cafés and eateries. Always involving a fun climb up a few flights of precipitous steps, these rooftop venues were a consistent source of pleasure, offering tasty local food, surprisingly good coffee and tea (pots of hot milk coffee became a mainstay for us in the chilly December evenings), and a sense of escape from the bedlam of the city three to four stories below... truly, a good rooftop café in Kathmandu becomes an oasis in the city.

A common scene in Kathmandu, taken from atop
one of the several rooftop cafés we visited

The dustiness of a dry city can be seen in this ultra-wide angle view

Ryan, squinting in the bright midday sun, at a great
rooftop café we found near Patan Durbar Square

The snowcapped peaks of the Himalayas peering over the rooftops
of Kathmandu

A yummy hot caramel latté, the
perfect drink on a chilly afternoon

Another particularly memorable place for us was Boudhanath. Only a 10-minute walk from our guesthouse, this area is just special. A large circular promenade surrounding a behemoth Buddhist stupa, I liked Boudhanath on my last visit to Nepal and loved it on this one. Owing to its proximity, we spent time here every day, oftentimes enjoying the sunset over the Himalayas from our favorite rooftop eatery, a place we frequented throughout our time there.

Prayer flags adorning Boudhanath Stupa

A massive Buddhist prayer bell backed by wildly colorful buildings
at Boudhanath – one of my favorite pictures from the trip

Our most-frequented eatery, the outstanding
Himalayan Café: excellent food, pots of steaming hot
milk coffee, friendly service, and free Wi-Fi

Prayer flags whipping in the afternoon wind

Another favorite photo: So much going on here, including a monk on the
veranda, just left of center, and a surly cat, perhaps wondering how to
get one of those two dozen pigeons on the rooftop at lower right

Bidding goodbye to the sun, as well as to its warmth... always a mixed
bag of feelings with the beautiful sunsets during the trip.

The best day of the trip, without a doubt, was December 31. We wandered out from Dipankara Holiday Home in the late morning and didn't find our way back until just before midnight. We spent the day wandering around Kathmandu Durbar Square (there are three "Durbar Squares" which collectively comprise the UNESCO Heritage Site; I've now been to all three), and then making our way to Old Freak Street, a great area of shops and funky cafés and pubs that hearkens back to the hippie backpacker days that really put it on the map. We settled in at a place called Firefly, ordered some giant bottles of beer (at 650mL, each was well more than a full pint) and some tasty bites, and just enjoyed the atmosphere. After that, we made our way (on foot) to Thamel, a touristy enclave just northwest of Kathmandu's rather ill-defined center. After shopping for scarves and singing bowls, we happened upon a wonderful pub/restaurant called Heritage Kitchen & Bar and took up residence there for the last few hours of 2013, enjoying the great live music and delicious food, and, as the evening wore on, the increasingly vibrant and celebratory ambiance. At exactly 9:45pm, which coincided with the stroke of midnight back in KL (Nepal is oddly 2 hrs and 15 min behind Malaysia), we raised our glasses and welcomed in 2014 for the first time – we even had some noisemakers and confetti bombs for the occasion! We kept warm with a tray of some sort of fuel bricks, and thank goodness we had that, because the temperatures at night often dropped down to a very chilly 0-3°C. Presently, we grabbed a taxi and made our way back to the guesthouse, where we arrived at about 11:45pm, just in time to crack open the bottle of champagne I had brought from home and ring in 2014 according to the Nepalese clock.

One of the temples at Patan Durbar Square

Bold examples of 16th-century craftsmanship at
Kathmandu Durbar Square

Cerulean window shutters
provide a visual treat

Kathmandu is a pretty large city, so scenes like this
were not at all uncommon

And neither were scenes like this... vendors selling all
manner of foods and various goods lined the streets
throughout the city, trying to keep warm between sales

Kathmandu Durbar Square temple

An ornate 100-year-old building, stunning against the
cloudless blue sky, stands in stark contrast to the
considerably older buildings nearby

The sign says it all! A great place to hang out

A wide-angle view from the window by our table...
note the masks at left

Did not expect to see this in Nepal!

Transport in central Kathmandu: by foot, by trishaw, by motorbike

Prayer candles at a tiny street-corner "temple stall"
around sunset on New Year's Eve

Love this photo! Check out this absolute mass of humanity, all trying
to get their day's business attended to in the final hour of daylight

Nepal's unique flag, the only
non-quadrilateral national flag in the world

A vast collection of handmade singing bowls

We saw this inviting place from a rooftop café we were at across the
street, and knew this was the place to spend our New Year's Eve!

Looking into the courtyard from the restaurant area

A complimentary basket of fine
chocolates to go with our Everest
beer? Why certainly!

The tables filled up as the night progressed... note the live band at left

And this is what kept us warm!

The next day was our last, so we made one last visit to Boudhanath, ate some lunch, bought our last-minute souvenirs, and with that, headed for the airport, where we boarded a widebody A330 with, I kid you not, some 350 Nepalese workers (for whom many this was clearly their first time flying), and winged our way back to KL. We figured that, the flight attendants notwithstanding, there were maybe only 5-10 women on that entire plane. Quite the experience, and a brilliant end to a very interesting and largely enjoyable 2013!

Farewell Himalayas, farewell 2013