Category Archives: Places

I’m always traveling or always trying to travel somewhere. There’s such a lot of world to see (and therefore a lot of photos)! Check out my travel blog, www.mytravelhats.com, to see where I’m going/ where I’ve been.

Places

Tanzanian Safari!

Cheetah resting on a rock, judging.

I’ve been a *little*busy recently (sigh!) but finally found a chance to post some of my favorites from Tanzania.

Few places could be more exotic than places like the Serengeti, Ngorongoro, Manyara, all which come with some fantastic names as well. We went on a grand camping safari through those places before we flew to Dar es Salaam and then to the magnificent Arabian island of Zanzibar. There was so much to see and too much to photograph, but I did my best. I also can’t remember the specific names of all the animals, so I’m not going to try to label them all here. You can read about how to safari in Tanzania on my other blog, www.MyTravelHats.com. Check back for pictures from Zanzibar next! Enjoy!

Quiet over the Serengeti

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Places, Random

Janice, uncensored.

This is my childhood friend, Janice.

She’s a clothing designer by trade and spent many years in corporate fashion dictating what mainstream Americans should wear. She went from New York to San Francisco, dressing America. And then she got fed up by all the politics, bureaucracy, and having her creativity limited by budgets (i.e. 9 pleats instead of 18, black buttons instead of silver, etc), quit, and traveled the world.

On a recent trip to San Francisco, I got to spend some time with one of my favorite and inspirational friends whose craziness not only finds her in South America and Thailand, but donning a feather boa and gloves (because it was cold outside) and then buying a $5 bridesmaid dress on a street corner garage sale during a block party in the Mission. She didn’t feel like taking it off after trying it on over her clothes, so on she paraded home, with a few onlookers and people taking pictures of her. Myself included. Here are some of them.

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Places

Kenya!

A car appears. Olmaroroi Village, Kenya.

What a long, strange trip it’s been. Jon and I went to Kenya in early August to do some volunteer work with the International Volunteer Headquarters and were assigned to the Olmaroroi Primary School (grades K-8) in the Maasai village of Olmaroroi, about an hour outside of Nairobi. Down the dustiest, bumpy pot-holed red dirt road we traveled precariously to spend a week with a Maasai family of 13 kids, two wives and one head of household, in a village that was seeing a swift transition from very old traditional Maasai way of life to a modern way of thinking in just one generation. They still didn’t have running water or electricity, so we grew fairly dusty and dirty by the end.

Where we stayed was like a step back in time, to a simpler way of life, I suppose. It was an extraordinary experience and a beautiful land barely touched by more than people, animals and an occasional bicycle. Three matatus (public mini-bus) traveled down the road a day to pick up passengers, and a motorbike or a taxi might swing by as well. We saw a lot more goats, cows and even giraffes than vehicles on any given day. Kenyans generally do not appreciate having photos taken of them without permission, but the Maasai are also very curious people who rarely see pictures of themselves, so showing them digital images was a treat they really enjoyed. Here are some of what I captured in Kenya.

The Great Rift Valley

Jon by the family compound

Olmaroroi Primary School

Some of the host family kids

Our host mama, Grace

Watching themselves on a digital camera

Giraffe at the Giraffe Centre (African Fund for Endangered Wildlife) with Nairobi cityscape in background

Medicinal tree outside family compound

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Places

Baltimore: A waterview walk

See, Baltimore’s not so bad. At least I tell myself that every day as I grip my pepper spray into position and hope nobody is trying to steal my lunch bag which looks like an Italian purse on my way to work. We chose this part of town, Fells Point, for its accessibility to the waterfront (sans tourists), length of restaurants serving oysters and entrees made of crab, and its cute skinny& tall townhouses that date back to 1850. There’s a nice little waterfront promenade that I like to run along, when my ankle’s not sprained. On one hot summer evening before sunset, Jon and I went out for a little stroll with my camera while he protected me from any villains, so I could capture a part of Baltimore that explains why people, like us, choose to live here (that and the cheap housing prices). Note: I refuse to watch The Wire if I ever want to leave my house in peace.

The ghost of Baltimore’s past: Voting against prohibition seemed to work well since there are a lot of bars in Fells Point.

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Places

Prideful.

There’s nothing quite like spending a morning in Union Square and unknowingly stumbling upon the Gay Pride parade before lunch. There’s a  New York moment for you. Hundreds, if not thousands, marched down Fifth Avenue last weekend on floats, bicycles, and on foot wearing anything from police uniforms to feather boas to stilettos to not much at all. In any case, one can’t help but start cheering on the people who came out to support the people who came out, and also cheering on those bold enough walk proudly for who they were. It was fantastic.  I was blocked by a number of much taller people, but I managed to capture a few photos.

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Kids and Families, Places

Take me out to the ballgame!

The White Sox (my husband Jon’s team) were in town playing the Washington Nationals this past weekend, and I had never seen him make such a thorough and quick turnaround in researching times, seats, prices and secure us five tickets for the game (it would be nice if he *cough* did that with a lot of other stuff around the house *cough*). We went with my sister and her little family out to the ballgame on Saturday. It was 96 degrees and we had seats around right field facing the blazing sun. For that reason I didn’t get to take many pictures of the game itself, although Jon used my zoom lens as binoculars for a while and ended up taking a handful of blinding photos.

Nationals Ballpark, as it’s formally called, is only three years old, as is the team itself. The park is very red, white and blue, more in a Disneyland kind of way than a patriotic way. Here’s a few pictures I snapped that day, including the metro ride to the stadium.

 

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Places

My kind of town! Chicago is.

Oh, Chicago! I had a love-hate relationship with this city when I was living there, getting my master’s degree at Northwestern. Chicago tried to trick me into believing its lake was an ocean. It tried to compensate for an exceedingly cold, windy winter with an exceedingly hot, humid summer. However, it does have amazing architecture, excellent food and it raised someone who became my future husband. 

I was back in Chicago this past weekend for a wedding and managed to squeeze in a couple of kiddo photo shoots. Here are some Chicago highlights I caught en route to various wedding activities. Stops include the Chicago River, this round sculpture by the NBC building (yes, that’s me and my sister, who was also in Chicago for a meeting!), an arts/ crafts fair, and most notable, the souvenir section of the Walgreens on Michigan Avenue .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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