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Showing posts from June, 2019

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Seville

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SEVILLE Sevilla After living up to some wonderful moments at Granada, the birthplace of the renowned Spanish poet and playwright Federico Garcia Lorca, we decided to further our coadventure through the heartland of the southern Iberian Peninsula, composed of lowlands, mountains and valleys. You’ve got it right. To arrive at Seville, we traversed the fascinating Spanish heartland. The landscape presented some vistas composed of rustic plains, lowlands, winding roads through the Sierra and then vast stretches of olive orchards. About 200 years back, a couple of decades after Napoleon’s army plundered and destroyed parts of Alhambra, an American diplomat and writer, Washington Irving and his Russian counterpart traversed the path from Seville to Granada. It was highly adventurous then, because of the fact that the transport system at that time was horse-drawn carriages and muleteers. It was such that they could ‘wander among the romantic mountains of Andalusia’ (Tales of Alhamb...

Singapore --- The Smartest Megapolis

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Founded in 1819 as a trading outpost of the British East India Company, Singapore was only a small dot at the tip of the Malay Peninsula, the southernmost part of Asia. For almost half a century, Singapore was ruled by Calcutta. The small colonial post grew so rapidly that in 1965 it was formally declared as an independent city-state. Today it has turned into a global trading hub and has made the entire world its hinterland. Right from stepping into Changi International Airport, indisputably one of the world’s classiest airports, Singapore appealed to us for its crisp, warm and vibrant character. We went there last in 2018 to meet our younger son, a post-doc in Economics at NTU. Our flight touched down in the wee hours of the morning. When we reached our son’s house near Commonwealth metro station, it was still dark outside.  After keeping our baggage in his house, Arjun took us to a neighboring marketplace for tea. Pleasant surprises ...