So: we’re looking for the palace of the Doge, to prepare for a trip the next day.
Venice is a disorienting braid of fascinating streets packed with fascinating distractions; when moving down lanes running between medieval buildings. This is a subtle city, and it’s easy to get lost.
We were sitting at a lovely restaurant, beside the harbour in Chania, in Crete. Mornings there were cool in the shadows, hot in the sun.
Initially, the Minoans built and used this same facility; then the Egyptians. The Venetians expanded and developed it further, as the tides of empire and the Mandate of Heaven shifted to the ones most worthy to bear it. Now, It has a a number of excellent restaurants and a marina with pleasure boats gently testing their moorings.
My lovely wife discovered a new talent while we were walking though Boston Common in Massachusetts on Christmas Eve: she could talk to squirrels.
This delighted her (and I) no end.
There's a memorial in the middle of town, to the 20 people killed by the good people of Salem, during the witch craze in the spring of 1692.
It's an affecting site – especially when you look slightly more into the story. Further details that have since emerged that the allegations, trials and murders showed once again, the motives were more upon the earth, rather than under it.
From one perspective, Christianity is basically an operative necromancy within a reskinned Egyptian pantheon and a monopolistic orientation.
The Medici Chapel in Florence reinforces this perspective: a magnificent structure to memorialise this most incredible bloodline.
The Hall of the Princes is magnificent, and well worth seeking out. It is personally challenging for the sheer audacity, of the balls of these guys. Truly, this is a place of the Glorious Dead.
The Accademia Gallery in Florence is a lot of things: the home of Michaelangelo's David and other sculptures, an exceptional collection of musical instruments, and exhibit rooms full of early renaissance paintings. It is magnificent.
Perhaps foremost of these – at least for me – it's a temple to the development of symbolic and representative realism.
This slammed into my awareness on actually seeing the things, with that rending force particular to occult insight: reality changed when Europeans learned to accurately represent three dimensions on a two-dimensional plane.
Catholicism permeates everything here in Porto, Portugal. In its native context – total, monumental, and all-encompassing – it seems a completely natural reflex, articulated through architecture as well as artistic output.
It offers the last word on everything, with the monopoly of cause.
An example of how this works – in Igreja dos Clérigos, or The Church of the Clergymen, there is a quote on the wall that explains how, given God creates all, including the faculty of artistic expression, the artist cannot help but express the glory of the divine.
The Rialto bridge is one of the landmarks of Venice. It's a magnificent piece of architecture.
We crossed this a lot, as we explored the twisting mediaeval streets of this most unique city.
A local myth, directly aimed at tourists like me, suggests this is the outcome of a demonic pact.
New Orleans is famous for a lot of things – foremost among these is its particular expression of Voodoo.
This was one of the things that struck me about New Orleans on previous visits, and now, with a deal more supporting knowledge, I was keen to learn more about.
I'm also frequently surprised at the degree to which this, and other religions in this family, is misunderstood, misrepresented, and maligned, particularly within media.
On our first full day in New Orleans, we start with brunch and cocktails at Jeff Beachbum Berry's Latitude 29. This is one of the pilgrimage points of the modern tiki revival.
In short order, my lovely and intrepid wife and I find out why. After several cocktails, and taking a delicious and potent zombie cocktail to go (due to New Orleans' curious rule about being able to drink while walking to the next bar), we end up at a riverboat.