After a dinner out with friends last Friday, we decided to walk home from West London all the way to London Bridge. It’s an hour long stroll along the riverbank and is probably my all-time favorite thing about this city; the walking.
London is the only place that I’ve lived where you can wake up on a Saturday morning, walk to breakfast, walk to the park, walk to coffee, walk to the museum, walk to dinner, walk to drinks and walk all the way home all in one day. If you’re blessed enough to have the opportunity to live in the center, this weekend walk will encompass some of the most beautiful landmarks that the city has to offer: the Tate Modern, Saint Paul’s Cathedral, the Millennium Bridge, Tower Bridge, Big Ben etc.
This is what old Europe can offer that no North American city (barring NYC) can: a walking culture amidst small cafés, hidden green spaces and old buildings. Every day is a history lesson.
I’m in London for the next few weeks and it feels like deja vu from last summer. August in this crazy city I used to call home. It feels different these days; a stronger hint of violence in the air, a little more crowded and chaotic, people less available and more hurried than before. It has changed. Or maybe I have changed.
A few days before I flew out, I was having lunch with a friend who had the opportunity to transfer here for work for six months. We mused about London as if it were an old lover, our voices laced with desperate longing as we spoke about our old haunts, past friends, and the pure, addictive energy of the place.
I lived my twenties here. The weeks were novel and sleepless. I’ve never played and worked so hard in my life. There was always a new friend to meet, another new destination to visit.
These days, I meander the city with a quieter peace inside me. Sometimes I can’t decide if cities shape people or the other way around. I feel like I’ve experienced it both ways. Today, I see past the big monuments, touristy red phone booths and new hipster hangouts. These days, I notice the subtle beauties that sit quietly on the fringes.
This wall, for example, sits behind Guy’s Hospital near London Bridge tube station. I think it’s meant to hide the hospital boiler room. I’ve walked by here countless times during previous visits and hardly noticed a thing. How great is the texture of this wall? And how amazing that it sits in an anonymous street in the back alley of an ugly old hospital? So great.
Santorini is a dark beauty located in the southern Aegean Sea. An island perched on the rim of an ancient volcano, it s a hot, romantic paradise that is unlike Asia’s tropical beaches. There is an eerie juxtaposition between the honeymooning couples that litter the island every year and the seemingly bottomless caldera that it hugs. The terrain is rough, parched and unforgiving and arriving here for the first time, it is nothing like we expected.
From the ferry ride, it rises out of nowhere, massive cliffs of land jutting from the sea. In the summer heat, the ferry terminal is almost always fogged in from humidity, the kind of humidity that hits you like a brick the moment you step outside.
It’s best to rent a car if you’re staying several days and want to explore the excellent beach bars around the island. The roads are hilly and steep, and with the evening winds, a ride home on a scooter would border on dangerous.
This photograph was taken during a pre-dinner stroll along Oia’s main pedestrian walkway. Hot, breezy evenings are what make this place so incredibly romantic. Dinner on the terrace after a day of sunning on the beach. Rinse and repeat.
I know, I know, it’s Macau again, but seriously, the city is a treasure trove of gorgeous photographs. It is blessed with the most beautiful, paint chipped, sun damaged, rotten walls. Buildings have a texture here. You can almost describe them as crunchy. Crusted, chipped and dry, they are beautiful in any light. If this apartment block were a cookie, it’d fall apart completely in your mouth into a thousand pastel pieces of dilapidated Asian architecture deliciousness.
Marrakech is the most photogenic city I’ve ever visited. The walls of the medina, with its ancient clay and red earth origins, transformed the day’s light and turned every nook and cranny into a work of magic. No matter what the hour, light just seemed to dance here. Walls, doors, balconies and seemingly inanimate objects morphed into beautiful tableaus of gorgeous art. It’s the kind of the city that makes you appreciate the simple things, like the way an old bicycle can look so perfectly beautiful beside a rusty chair.
There is a feeling of timelessness in this city, a strong sense that civilizations have come and gone for thousands of years before me and will continue to do so long after I have gone.
Taken during a crisp February weekend, this photo symbolizes everything that I love about the city of love. Whimsical, dreamy and romantic.
Paris photography holds a special place in my heart. Robert Dosineau’s Hotel Kiss was my first real introduction to portrait and travel photography. I saw it during a poster sale at my university. During that time in my life, I had no idea what love meant but Robert’s photograph gave me something to believe in and hope for. The urgency in their kiss, the way the world seemed to stop for just that instant. It was the first time a photograph affected me in such an experiential way and from then on photography took on a new meaning in my life.
The Islamic Arts Museum in Kuala Lumpur is one of my favourite museums in the world. I was in KL last year for several weeks in transit to India. Unfortunately, my Indian visa didn’t come through soon enough to enable me to head to Kerala as planned.
My first real contact with Islam came a few years prior during my time working for GOOG launching products in the European and African emerging markets; namely Egypt, Turkey, Dubai and Israel. It’s a faith that revealed itself to me from a multitude of angles. Hotly contested in Jerusalem on the foot of The Dome of the Rock. Hauntingly beautiful in the early morning call for salah in Istanbul. Mysterious and shrouded on the streets of Cairo amongst burqa’d women in the boiling heat.
I can’t ever claim to know everything there is to know about Islam. And I’m hesitant, even, to talk of what I’ve seen and heard during my time in these Muslim countries. What I do know is that it’s a faith surrounded in breathtaking art.
The mosques, the calligraphy, the intricate floral designs – all of it is astoundingly beautiful. You can’t look at Islamic art and deny that it was inspired by man’s personal relationship with the divine.
This photo was taken two years ago and is a testament to Dubai’s remarkable growth. I had very mixed reactions about the place but no one could deny the exponential boom that the city was undergoing during that time. On a rooftop pool deck in a residential apartment building we were witness to the growth of Dubai’s concrete jungles. The cranes were so close that we could literally wave at the construction workers as we drank our margaritas.
When we travel, the simplest bits of daily life become magical somehow. The stray dog on the street, the fruit stands in the market, clothes hanging to dry on balconies and windows. Sometimes it takes a journey half way around the world to help us see the beauty in ordinary things. Travel is wonderful that way.
A year ago today, I was living in Buenos Aires learning Castellano (Argentine Spanish). It was Fall in South America. The nights were breezy and warm, perfect for (very) late dinners out.
It’s nice to remember that life. Time slowed in Argentina. Days were long and languid. Meals stretched for hours. Time with friends and family dictated working hours, not the other way around.
We all need a little bit of the exotic to feel alive. Moving to the other side of the world for love and language was definitely exotic for me. We took things slow, we relished the simple joys and kept top of mind what was most important: family, friendship and gratitude.
Something to ponder today.
