Alexa’s Elixir (Five Thomas Dambo trolls and a Golden Rabbit)
A trip to the Fargo, North Dakota area (or NODAK as we say!) meant a short drive to beautiful Detroit Lakes, Minnesota and a quest to find more trolls created by Thomas Dambo and...
Category: Travel
Malin’s Fountain (Thomas Dambo troll, Pease Park)
Finished in March 2024, Malin’s Fountain is an 18 foot tall troll made of recycled materials resting in Pease Park in Austin. She can be found just north of the bird’s nest structure in...
Cenotes in Yucatan
A simple internet search for “cenote” provides pictures of many seemingly magical turquoise paradises – like the photo below, taken at Yukzonodot cenote by us in 2013. But the cenotes of the Yucatan peninsula are...
Normandy World War II Sites
In my fairly large collection of books on World War II (most of which are in storage at the moment) there exists all manner of perspectives on the Normandy World War II D-Day invasion....
Monet at Giverny
For reasons I do not recall, my mother ran an art enrichment program at my elementary school (good ole Valley Oaks Elementary, part of the Spring Branch ISD in Houston). She would bring in...
Canal Saint-Martin: A River Cruise in Paris
Boat ride on the Canal Saint-Martin in Paris on a beautiful day in July 2022
Saint Petersburg, Russia
Of all the many places we visited in Russia, Saint Petersburg is the one we wish we had more time, and will hopefully return to again. Three days is just not enough; I doubt...
Texas Capitol Monuments and Markers
Living downtown in Austin means that we see the Texas Capitol at the north end of Congress Avenue almost everyday. During the pandemic we had to walk up to get mail at our office...
Fabergé Eggs and the Fabergé Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia
Of the 50 Fabergé Imperial Easter eggs, 44 have survived. On our trip to Russia, we saw nineteen of the forty-four. We saw ten of them when in the Kremlin Armory in Moscow (where...
Map Translation – the Central Museum of the Patriotic War (ЦЕНТРАЛЬНЫЙ МУЗЕЙ ВЕЛИКОЙ ОТЕЧЕСТВЕННОЙ ВОЙНЫ)
The previous article on our series about Russia contains the translation from Russian to English of the main guide I got from our visit to the Central Museum of the Great Patriotic War in...