Jordan and Petra

Let's get this out of the way right off the bat.

This most famous site in Petra is the Treasury, and they really make as much of the Indiana Jones link as they can. I was a bit disappointed to learn that there is only a single room inside this structure, but most of the structures in Petra were only facades. The ones with anything more also only had a single room. Granted, it couldn't have been easy to carve those rooms out of the stone. Maybe one room was enough.

This is the Monastery, and I was much more impressed by this structure than the Treasury. You can see how much bigger it is, but the Treasury is much more intact. The Monastery has a big crack running horizontally and some signs of erosion, but it's still in remarkable condition.

I had no idea how enormous the Petra site is and the wide variety of structures in it. There were quite a few carved into colorful stone that were simply amazing.

The dry climate no doubt helps preserve the site, and you can even see the remains of the original piping that brought water deeper into the site. The tiles and mortar are still in place.

Something that didn't survive so well...

Sri Lanka

It's great to have friends all over the world thanks to my job. In March, I visited Sri Lanka to catch up with friends I hadn't seen in several years, and we went to a mountain-top (hill-top? not sure how tall something needs to be to qualify as a mountain) ruin called Sigiriya and cave temples at Dambulla.

Ruins of the villages formerly surrounding the fortress are all around the main site. After climbing about halfway up the left-hand side of the mountain, we found an imposing set of feet, making one wonder what the original visitors used to be greeted by.

The cave temples were similar to ones in Thailand and Southeast Asia, but I hadn't seen any with such reverence for snakes. I don't know that I'd want to be sitting on a giant cobra.

Stop in the Maldives

While visiting friends in Sri Lanka, I was happy to learn that the Turkish Airlines flight had a required stopover in the Maldives. I figured why not get out?

Christmas and New Year's in Malta

With so many places in Europe that I haven't been to, I probably should have found another place to spend Christmas and New Year's, but I really enjoyed Malta the first time I went. I was only there for a couple of days that time, and this time, I spent a week and got to see a lot of what Malta has to offer.

I can't believe that I didn't see the Co-Cathedral of St. John on my first trip, and I was more disappointed when I saw how incredible it was.

I learned that the Maltese cross has eight points because there is one point for each of the eight "langues" of the Knights of St. John. Each langue came from a different geographic area of Europe, and each one had a specific alcove inside the cathedral. Nearly all contained crypts of Grand Masters from that langue and impressive displays of paintings and sculpture. Each of the rectangles on the floor of the cathedral represents a knight buried in the cathedral. Simply amazing.

The altar was beyond belief. The light level in the cathedral was quite low, and I'm glad the camera in my phone can take such great pictures. I may finally have been convinced to give up the separate camera and only use the phone.

On my previous trip, I spent a day on a hop-on hop-off bus that went through a fishing village called Marsaxlokk. I wanted to see other places on that trip, so I didn't hop off, but I spent a couple of hours this time. Enough time to learn how to pronounce the name -- Mar-sa-shlok.

The village square:

This time, I also really got the sense that the norther end of the island was almost entirely fortified against attack. This picture of Birgu is a good example.

And there was a nice sunset:

Thanksgiving in Prague

I spent a few days in Prague several years ago, and I thought it was one of the most beautiful cities I'd ever seen. The Thanksgiving holiday coincides with a couple of local Albanian holidays, providing an easy way to have a short holiday, so I went back to Prague. It was cold, but very enjoyable.

One thing that was important to do was to buy a new t-shirt from the Kafka museum. Naturally, I had to check out the museum the first time I was in Prague, but the shirt I bought shrank in the wash (intentionally?). Also, strangely (or perhaps not?), the Kafka statue is nowhere near the museum.

The Prague castle has one of the best museums I've seen, describing the history of Prague from the first settlers, and the Cathedral of St. Vitus is incredibly striking.

The Christmas markets opened the weekend of Thanksgiving.

This is the main square in Prague's Old Town.

This time, I also visited several of the synagogues in Prague. They were organized so that each one told a different part of the history of Jews in the city. This is the Old Synagogue.

The Spanish Synagogue was spectacular for the amount of artistic detail and craftsmanship. It's called Spanish, but it's possible to tell that the style of design is Islamic. I've seen similar architectural details on buildings in Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, and Turkey.