Back in July, we went to Kentucky for a long weekend. On the way down, we stopped into a zoo we hadn’t visited in almost ten years. We had last been to Cincinnati Zoo in 2010, when we went to visit my friend Andrew who lived there at the time. I remembered it being a beautiful place, very hilly and well-landscaped, with lots of old brick buildings. I’m happy to say that it was as lovely as I remembered, and even though it poured rain a good portion of our visit, we had a great time and took some good pictures.

Sleeping Red Panda, Cincinnati Zoo

Sleeping Red Panda, Cincinnati Zoo

The red panda exhibit was a lot like Detroit zoo’s, with the pandas on a little island surrounded by a ditch and a low fence. The pandas were up in the trees and very visible, especially this lazy fellow who just wanted to sleep.

Lemur Huddle

Lemur Huddle

Apparently, a group of lemurs is called a conspiracy. 😂 These guys looked like they were up to something. I really like these kinds of exhibits, where the animals are at eye level, high up on a rocky island surrounded by a moat.

Sunbittern

Sunbittern

The name “Sunbittern” is appealing on many levels. Just saying it makes me think of morning in some dappled jungle, sunlight streaming through the leaves and the scent of fruit and rain in the air. Also, “bittern” makes me think of “bitters”, so I picture a veranda and a pitcher of gin and tonics. None of this says anything about the bird or the zoo, so let me tell you that Cincinnati has a lovely walk-through jungle aviary and this guy lives there.

Fiona Smiles

Fiona Smiles

Fiona is, of course, the reason we came. She captivated the world (or maybe just the Midwest?) a few years ago, as the first prematurely-born hippo baby to ever survive in captivity. The zoo has really marketed the hell out of her, which is appropriate because she is adorable. You’ll be happy to know that you can buy a #TeamFiona t-shirt in the gift shop. It was raining like crazy when we came through Fiona’s exhibit and there was a crowd of people hiding under the roofed area in front of her. There was no roof over Fiona’s quarters and she seemed to alternate between stoic and annoyed. Resting her head on her mama’s back, she gave the crowd a wistful hippo smile.

Here are a few more pictures from Kasbah Leila, our desert hotel in the Erg Chebbi dunes of eastern Morocco.

Kasbah Leila Morning

Kasbah Leila Morning

We got up very early in the morning to take photos of the sunrise over the temporary lake at Kasbah Leila. Watching the sun set over the dunes is one of my best memories of Morocco, and standing here on a little rise between two lakes, with Kasbah Leila in the distance and Michelle by my side, is another.

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Back in February we flew to Newburgh, NY for a long weekend in the Hudson Valley. The weather was cold but the river and mountains were beautiful, and the small towns were charming.

Here are a few pictures from Walkway Over the Hudson State Historic Park, a former railway bridge converted into a park and walking trail.

Poughkeepsie in the Morning
Downtown Poughkeepsie is full of sturdy, timeless brick buildings that glow beautifully in the morning sun.
Walkway Over the Hudson
High above the icy river at Walkway Over the Hudson State Historic Park.
Hudson River at Poughkeepsie
A mile or so downriver, the elegant Mid-Hudson bridge carries US Highway 44 and NY Highway 55 across to the town of Highland and the Shawangunk foothills beyond.

Four months later, the part of my Moroccan trip that I remember most vividly is the day and night we spent in the Sahara. We drove east from Tinghir, changed to a four-wheel drive at Rissani, and went south and east into the desert until we left the road behind. There was nothing all around us but horizon and sand.

Erg Chebbi
Erg Chebbi

And then, suddenly: dunes! They were enormous, literal mountains of sand. All around the base stood a ring of camp-hotels, hugging the dirt track. One of these, Kasbah Leila, would be our home for the night. The heat was stifling; it was a hundred degrees in the shade, and there was hardly any of that.

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Morocco, Old and New

In Marrakesh, the closest grocery store to our hotel was in the basement of the Menara Mall. It was pretty much what I expected: a bunch of wannabe-Western stores selling day-glo shirts and overpriced shiny shoes, a food court with mediocre food sweltering under fluorescent lights. There was even a Chili’s in a prime location on Mohammed VI Boulevard. In these surroundings, it was no surprise that our fellow shoppers favored polo shirts, skinny jeans and halter tops.

What was surprising was that no matter how far into the country we got, the skinny-jeans crowd never completely died out. Even in Rissani, 500 kilometers from Marrakesh on the edge of the Sahara, jeans and djellaba mixed freely.

Every day we saw crowds of students trooping to school, dressed western-style in t-shirts and jeans, slacks, or track pants. The girls rarely wore head scarves, but lots of them had on miniature lab coats over their outfits. Watching them go to school was like following a young pharmacists’ convention.

Older people were all over the map; most women wore the hijab, but dress for men and women ranged from shapeless djellabas or caftans to the latest western fashions. Urban or rural, rich or poor, Arab or Berber; I can’t say exactly where the dividing line might be. Maybe it’s down to personal preference.

I was also surprised to learn that alcohol is widely available, although it’s very expensive. A bottle of beer costs $4 or $5, and a mixed drink $7, in a country where a high-end dinner out (or a ripoff tourist meal) costs $15. Our driver Youssef told me that some bartenders might refuse to sell to Muslims (especially Muslim women), but from my observations, it’s a flexible rule.

One last tip about drinking in Morocco: stick to beer. Every bartender we found was hopeless at even simple drinks. I ordered a whiskey sour one night and was given a tall Coke with some whiskey in it. A confused exchange in pidgin French and English ensued, and my server returned a short time later with a glass of, I would guess, two-thirds lime juice, one-third alcohol. At least he got the spirit of it right.