Author name: craigduff

My apologies for being off line for a while. A few days into my trip to Turkey, the Turkish government decided to block all access to wordpress.com. Apparently someone said something on a blog they didn’t like (I don’t think it was me). So we have some catching up to do: It’s my prerogative as […]

Here are some shots from Göreme in the Cappadocia region of Turkey, where castle rocks abound, and for centuries people have carved churches, homes and now pension rooms into the conical rocks. After arriving at dawn on an overnight bus yesterday, I spent the morning meandering among the rock-hewn Byzantine churches of the Göreme Open-Air

Guidebooks have short half lives. By the time one goes to press, its prices, and a lot the info in it, may have changed. The bookstore in Cairo rarely has the latest editions. Since my guidebook was printed, the Turkish Lira has dropped six zeroes – in a bid to fit all the numbers on

Last evening, I was having dinner at a terrace cafe in the Sultanahmet neighborhood of Istanbul, with a view of both Aya Sofya and the famous Blue Mosque lit up in rotating colors. On the domes of the mosque, there was a laser light display of a whirling dervish. Visitors to Atlanta (my home for

I’ve escaped to Turkey. Arrived late this afternoon and took the metro and tram system to my hotel, which is about a quarter mile from the most famous sites in the city — Topkapi Palace, Aya Sofya and the Blue Mosque. Took a long walk at sunset along the Sea of Marmara and walked among

The shippers came. But they left the boxes behind. They’ll come tomorrow to pick them up and send them on their way. Today, I moved my electronics to J&K’s pad, and E got all the plants. We moved everything in a little Peugeot taxi in two trips. The plant trip to Mohandiseen (about three miles)

This will be the hardest thing to ship: a painting by Magda, who also happens to be the mother of a well-known journalist and blogger in Cairo. I once bought a painting at a gallery in Baghdad – an abstract, almost cubist, trio of musicians – and, in order to get it home, I had

It’s been with me all over the world. The famous Tilley hat. Provider of shade. Collector of dirt. Protector of the delicate head. Here, it rests on a lamp at the seashore in Dahab, Egypt. Below, some boys look out at the horizon at dusk before the full moon rose and I prepared to dive.

Here in Dahab, on the Sinai peninsula in Egypt, I sit in a cafe that has a wifi connection and work and answer emails while sipping mango juice and looking out on the Gulf of Aqaba and the coast of Saudi Arabia across the water. Last night, I did the final dive in my advanced