Street Art Photography Workshop, Shoreditch, East London
In May I was back in London again and I took the opportunity to participate in one of the photography workshops offered by Shoreditch Street Art Tours. I had enjoyed one of their evening street art tours last year and I decided I wanted to get to know Shoreditch and the street art to be […]
Bookshop tour of Bloomsbury, London
During my most recent trip to London I spent a day wandering around Bloomsbury, a leafy district known for its eminent publishing houses, museums and colleges, to visit three bookshops in the area, as well as the venerable British Museum. My first stop was Arthur Probsthain, an independent family-run bookshop that has been trading since […]
Street art in Shoreditch, East London
I made it to the Old Street tube station, where the underground trains stop in an area of London that was once known for its heaving slums, criminal characters and actors. Whitechapel Road was not far away, which was the haunt of “Jack the Ripper” and the Kray twins, a couple of infamous East End […]
Masmak Fort, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
I just spent two lively days in Riyadh, the capital city of Saudi Arabia, with my family. After traveling overland through the desert from al-Khobar on the Gulf coast, we reached our hotel at around 1 p.m. We stayed at the Four Points by Sheraton hotel on Al Imam Faisal Ibn Turki Ibn Abdullah road, […]
Arad Fort, Muharraq, Bahrain
Arad Fort lies on the northeastern corner of the Kingdom of Bahrain, in the town of Arad, on Muharraq island, which was the capital of the island kingdom until 1923. The name “Arad” possibly comes from a Roman word for Bahrain, “Arathus,” which was used by the Egyptian-Roman writer Ptolemy in the second century CE. From […]
Day trip to Windsor, Ontario, Canada
During a recent week-long trip to Flint, Michigan, I drove with my family toward the city of Detroit and crossed Detroit River by way of the Ambassador Bridge that connects Detroit to Windsor in Ontario, Canada. There is also a tunnel that connects the two cities, but the bridge offers the more scenic route. Since we […]
The San Jacinto Battleground and Monument to Texas Independence
On a cold and overcast morning in mid-December we headed east – my wife and I – on I-10, past the towers of downtown Houston and industrial plants, and then south on the 610 east loop, over the ship channel bridge and then east again on Texas Independence Highway. We drove through the industrial landscape […]
Family day out on the al-Khobar corniche
This article features some of the photographs I took over the last four weekends, during which I took my family to the corniche in the city of al-Khobar. This is one of the three main cities in this part of the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia; the others being Dammam and Dhahran. All three cities […]
dr. Cafe Coffee on the al-Khobar corniche
The weather has been great recently in al-Khobar, on the Arabian Gulf, in eastern Saudi Arabia. The temperature has been in the mid-70s (around 25 Celsius) during the day, I would say, and the evenings have been considerably cooler. For the past few weekends I have taken my family to the corniche and we have enjoyed […]
Europe in London: The Courtauld Gallery
The Coutauld Gallery is a lot less well-known than some of the major art galleries in London, such as the National Gallery and National Portrait Gallery in Trafalgar Square, Tate Britain on the Thames embankment, near Westminster, and Tate Modern on the south bank of the Thames, across from the main financial district known as […]