Devil May Care

The Supreme Court Project: Peru (September 23, 2010)

2011-10-08T20:21:00Z

(Click here for background on the Supreme Court Project)

Supreme Court of Peru, Palacio de Justicia, Lima, Peru
Address: Miguel Aljovin, Lima, Peru, by Estacion Central subway (Map)

Unlike our Ecuadorian adventure, our visit to the Supreme Court of Peru didn't feature any impromptu meetings with publicity officers. Our cab driver didn't know the way to the Supreme Court--and wondered why two foreigners wanted to go there--but he did know the Sheraton Lima, which faces right across the park from the fantastic Palacio de Justicia, and we could guide him from there.

Thus, we emerged into a sunny afternoon in front of a grand neoclassical structure that takes up most of a city block and houses the upper levels of the Peruvian judiciary. According to Wikipedia, the Peruvians modeled the building off of the law courts of Brussels, and the building does have a very heavy, European feel. Foolishly, I tried to walk up the steps to the front entrance, only to be rebuffed by a uniformed clerk who insisted that if we wanted to enter, we needed to go in the side door.

The Palacio de Justicia, at night

There are no signs advising where to go as a "visitor," although there is a public entrance on the north side of the building. Unlike the grand facade, these doors are more pedestrian steel affairs, and a small crowd of litigants, attorneys and document carriers milled around waiting for admission to begin at two o'clock. We were in no hurry, and so wandered in a complete circuit around the building. To the northwest, a dirty park sat forlornly across the street from a few cantinas. Surrounding the Palacio on the west and south are the offices of government and private attorneys, both of whom were privileged to use entrances limited only to officialdom. The private offices to the south are a particularly interesting mix. Some bore clean, polished bronze plaques announcing the name of the lawyers within, while the windows of other offices were festooned with dot-matrix banners annoucing "ABOGADO" in faded grey letters.

The public doors still hadn't opened when we made it back to the public entrance, so we made our way northeast up Azangaro street. Here the shops are most definitely lawyer-focused: I have not seen so many places to buy highlighters, binders, binder clips, printing services or other paper-based products in my life. Mixed amidst these are a number of cheap coffee and sandwich shops, where it would be hard to pay more than five dollars for lunch.

Feeling well fed on ham sandwiches, we returned to find that the public doors had opened in our absence. The crowd was now slightly larger, but also slowly making its way past security. A few attorneys (or perhaps employees of attorneys), sweating in the sun outside the door in navy blue wool suits, approached us to ask if we needed counsel. They were skeptical that the guards would let us in as tourists, but we actually didn't have much trouble. This may be because the guard asked if we were attorneys, we said "yes," and he let us by without inquiring further as to our business.

]]> Most institutions place grand public facades over less impressive interiors where work actually gets done. For instance, Capitol Hill looks picture postcard perfect from the Mall, and once inside everything is grand views and stern paintings of founding fathers. Few visitors ever guess that underneath squirms a maze of twisty concrete passageways, painted in dull institutional colors, that snake their way to various congressional office buildings. So it is with the Palacio de Justicia: as imposing as the facade looks from out front, the public entrance leads into a near-windowless basement, the entrance hall lined by clerks windows and what appeared to be shops, a bank, and several enterprising stalls selling instructional videos. I think these last were either BarBri-style examination study guides or CLE videos.

No one stopped us from heading further into the warren of offices, where every hallway held a new collections of Secretariats, Clerk's Offices and other administrative necessities. The rooms with glass windows usually revealed some small desk, perhaps with a computer but often with a typewriter, surrounded by enormous jenga-balanced stacks of paper. While U.S. courts and law offices are far from paperless, the sheer volume of paper, often taking up most of the interior space of a room, brought home just how much has changed in my lifetime with the near-ubiquity of online documents.

Another unexpected feature sits in the basement of the Palacio: a small chapel where those coming before the courts can pray. An older woman was, I think, making her way through a rosary, but otherwise it appeared empty.

The upstairs/downstairs nature of the Palacio becomes immediately apparent when you happen across any of the marble staircases leading upwards from the bottom level. Most of the basement is flourescent, contrasting sharply with the natural light that filters its way down the stairwell by reflecting off the white stone. Once up the stairs, ceilings are much higher, hallways form around broad courtyards, and institutional paint on concrete is replaced with marble, brass and stained wood doors.

I wish that we could have taken pictures inside the courthouse, as the Palacio is one of the most beautiful of those we visited. Sunlight that pours through stained glass windows depicting Justice and what were either saints or figures from Peruvian history, bathing the airy interior in light. Tall white columns with Corinthian capitals support the roof. Along the wide, well-decorated hallways in front of the judges' administrative offices sit display cases with antique firearms, aged leather books and other Peruvian historical paraphenalia. (I have only been able to find one picture of the interior online, this shot from a Peruvian singer.)

Towards the front of the building lie the courtrooms of the Supreme Court. Divided into three sectors--Constitutional and Social, Civil, and Criminal--each sector has its own set of rooms. The Constitutional sector did not seem to be in session on the day that we visited, but several of the Civil sector courtrooms were hosting hearings. I listened in on one from the doorway, and it seemed a relatively sedate affair. The courtroom held few visitors, although one side of the courtroom was occupied with a series of desks, each containing a black-suited young man, presumably a clerk for the court. An elderly lawyer, grey hair fading to bald, read his presentation from a document that he held in front of him. The justices let the attorney speak for about two minutes, while one member of the panel stared fixedly at the computer screen on his bench. Finally, one of the judges asked a question, politely and in a low voice, whereupon the attorney answered and continued his speech.

Unclear on whether non-litigants were allowed, we didn't go into a hearing itself, but instead made our way in a circuit around the various courtrooms, trying to make sense of the dockets posted on the walls. I admired the decorations: wall clocks set into the marble, and heavily-ornamented brass lamps rising from the railings on the second floor. We passed very few people, especially in comparison to the busy basement, and if anyone wondered what we were doing there, he didn't ask.

A few minutes later, we walked out the doors we'd come in, crossed the park, and had a look in the Sheraton Lima. At least viewed from the lobby, it's a fine hotel, and certainly convenient if you ever have business before the courthouse. Walk one hundred feet north of the Sheraton and you can buy a variety blended of pisco sours in the middle of an upscale shopping mall, assuming that all of the legal tourism has left you with the need for a drink.

We did manage to get some exterior pictures of the Palacio on our way to the airport as we left for Argentina. The building looks incredible at night.

The Supreme Court Project: Ecuador (August 30, 2010)

2011-09-22T04:06:00Z

(Click here for background on the Supreme Court Project)

Ecuador provided us with one of our most pleasant and unexpected encounters at the Tribunal Constitutional. We hadn't had much time to plan a visit to the Ecuadorian courts, as the idea to visit various supreme courts popped into my head a few days before we were leaving for Peru. In what would become my standard operating procedure for this project, we looked up some online background information on Ecuador's court system, found the addresses of the courts, and--in the absence of any tourist information--dressed fairly nicely and headed out to see what reception we would get. In places like Ecuador, this worked out better than expected. In other countries, I ended up being menaced by men with guns or indirectly bothering an attorney general. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Ecuador set my parameters for this project, both in where I would go and what I'd try to achieve. Like many countries, Ecuador has separated the court that functions as the highest appellate body (the Corte Suprema or Corte Nacional) and the body charged with interpreting the Ecuadorian constitution (the Corte Constitucional del Ecuador para el Periodo de Transicion). In every country, I tried to visit both the constitutional court and the highest appellate court.

Yet merely finding the Ecuadorian courts, let alone trying to understand them, proved difficult. We didn't always have internet access, and when we did, the Ecuadorian court websites seemed to be frequently offline. Pallavi's Spanish is better than my "donde esta el bano?" level, but neither of us is up to doing legal research in the native tongue. I quickly figured out that there was little way to conduct in-depth research for the Supreme Court Project, especially once we entered Asia or Africa and I had even less grasp of the language. So while I hope that these entries will be entertaining, and I'll do my best to provide links to useful sources of information, the Supreme Court Project is more a short excursion into gonzo journalism than a legal project. In other words, This Is Not Legal Advice (and for goodness sake, don't cite to it).

The Corte Nacional de Justicia, Quito, Ecuador

With that in mind, here's my tale of the high courts of Ecuador.

]]> The Corte Nacional de Justicia

Website: http://www.cortenacional.gob.ec/
Address: Av. Amazonas N 37-101 at Union Nacional de Periodistas

Unlike the presidential palace and the other government buildings in Quito's old quarter, the Corte Nacional sits in a upscale area of town. Although far from the backpacker nightclubs of Mariscal Sucre, the courthouse is only about a two dollar cab ride. Of course, it seemed like everything in Quito was a two dollar cab ride from everything else. [1] Upscale hotels and western brands are thick on the ground here, and most of the pedestrians scurry from place to place in suits. Wander a few blocks from the highest court and you can have lunch at Tony Romas.

We proceeded up to the yellow facade on the first floor, looked around to see if any tourist information was on offer, and asked if we could enter. Although the security guards at first turned us away, after I fumbled an explanation in Spanish they recommended that maybe we should try the court's law library, one door down on the outside. There, a kind law librarian offered to help us look up legal articles, but explained that there weren't any publicly available tours or brochures. Indeed, the only people going in and out of the Corte Nacional appeared to be lawyers and litigants. If trials were open to the general public, it wasn't immediately obvious to us.

Supreme Court Project: Corte Nacional, Quito, Ecuador

On the upside, what the courthouse lacks in public access, it makes up for in proximity to cheap and fun lunch options. Across the road, several strip malls hold fast-food operations peddling burgers, pizza, Chinese and other typical lunch fare. They're pretty fancy businesses, as well. We lunched in a burger bar whose schtick was iPod connectivity: several of the tables had speakers to which patrons could connect Apple devices. Fortunately, we missed the lunch crowd, so we weren't distracted by dueling musical numbers.

Corte Constitucional del Ecuador para el Periodo de Transicion

Website: http://www.corteconstitucional.gob.ec
Address: Av. 12 de Octobre y Pasaje Nicol�s Jim�nez

After lunch, we made our way across Quito to try our luck at the Corte Constitucional. Here we received an entirely more pleasant welcome. From the backpacking district of La Mariscal, the Court is a short walk away. First, wander down to the Avenue Patria, where artists sometimes display their wares outside the Parque El Ejido. Head south, past the Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana, until you get to Av. 12 de Octobre. Hang a right, and the court is a few blocks down the street, on the south side of the road.

It's not a very imposing building, especially compared to the Corte Nacional. Indeed, if you didn't know what to look for, the elderly brown high rise would be look like just another office block, or perhaps one of the administrative agencies located nearby. The abstract, scales-like symbol above the door is the only bit of ornamentation hinting at a legal function.

Supreme Court Project: Corte Constitucional, Quito, Ecuador

Given our earlier reception, we walked into the lobby with some trepidation. The two security guards behind glass, as well as the printed sign discouraging unannounced visitors, only increased my concerns. Nonetheless, we walked up and asked if they had any information for turistas who were abogados back in America.

The guards looked a bit flummoxed, but then a short auburn-haired lady in her mid-forties sprang out of a hallway and started asking us some excited questions. Were we lawyers? Tourists? There followed some very fast Spanish, which seemed to suggest that she wanted to take us to the Public Relations office, and she waved us past the guards as if we were expected dignitaries.

The lady kept a wicked pace, and I was almost out of breath two flights of stairs later, where she introduced us to a passing constitutional lawyer who spoke some English, and to whom she explained what we were doing here. He admitted that he didn't think a tourist had ever come here, and that they didn't have any pamphlets or explanatory brochures, but that the press officer might speak to us if we'd wait until her lunch break was over.

The lawyer and our friendly administrator both wished us well and left us standing along in a cluttered hallway outside the public relations office. Notably, we had no passes, no credentials, nor any way to explain to any security guard who happened by what we were doing there. But after about fifteen minutes, the door opened, and a very nice officer welcomed us into her office.

There followed a very interesting conversation, although I admit that I followed only about half of it. First, the public relations officer (who spoke only a little English, but was assisted by the return of the constitutional lawyer) asked if we were members of the "press." Due to an upcoming election, a press blackout was in effect, so they couldn't speak to journalists. I assured the officer that we weren't press, although we did have a blog, and she seemed satisfied. She then proceeded to give us a short history of the court's origins in 1996, some detail about its structure, and some other facts that I couldn't pick up with my minimal Spanish. She agreed that they hadn't had general tourists before, but after some thought she handed us a collection of essays on neo-constitutionalism in South America that they had lying around the office.

By this time, a number of other court staff had wandered in and introduced themselves to the unusual tourists. Someone asked whether there might be a judge who was willing to see us, but no one was around, nor were there any hearings or other court activity for us to observe that day. Still, some very friendly and interested staff members went out of their way to make us feel welcome, which ensured that this one of the most successful court visits of our trip. In case they're reading, many thanks to them.

A Miscellany of Items Related to the Ecuadorian Legal System

Relationships between the judiciary and the elected branches have often been strained. In December 2004, President Lucio Gutierrez and his allies in Congress removed all 31 Supreme Court judges and eight of the nine judges on the Tribunal Constitucional.
This rocky relationship features prominently in a recent decision by Judge Kaplan of Southern District of New York (Chevron Corp. v. Donziger), in which Chevron successfully sought to keep plaintiffs in an action in Ecuador from enforcing a judgment won in the Ecuadorian courts. (For commentary, see The Volokh Conspiracy and Opinio Juris.) The opinion contains a concise, if not entirely flattering, summary of the recent historical development of Ecuador's judicial system.
Shortly after we left Ecuador, President Correa was briefly taken hostage in a hospital by protesting policemen. Several months later, the editor of one of Ecuador's major newspapers printed an editorial accusing Correa of being a dictator, prompting a libel suit by the president. Now four editors have been sentenced to prison, the paper fined $42m, and one editor has fled to the U.S.

[1] An interesting fact that we've mentioned before: Ecuador dollarized its economy, so greenbacks are legal currency. Indeed, it seems like most of the Sacagawea dollars in circulation are now circulating via Quito cabbies.

Wonder if this is worth a room upgrade?

2011-09-20T23:29:00Z

TripAdvisor offered to send us a free "Top Contributor" tote bag. I don't normally use tote bags, but it might be funny to see the reaction of hotel staff if we walked in carrying one.

Kindle 3G: Even with Flaws, the Best Gift I Got

2011-08-22T01:20:47Z

In response to a New York Times Practical Traveler article on How to Beat the High Costs of Dialing Abroad, I wrote the author an email agreeing with her suggestions of a prepaid local SIM card and Skype. She'd mentioned that her next column would address data roaming charges, and I recommended that she note the Amazon Kindle 3G as a device for avoiding all data charges while abroad. My advice didn't make it into How to Beat Roaming Fees While Traveling Abroad, but did get edited into a brief letter published in today's Times.

I thought I'd expand on that a bit here, as I've already been singing the Kindle's praises all over the rest of the internet for the last few months but only Tony has blogged about it here. The $189 Kindle 3G was a generous Christmas gift from my parents, who were somewhat befuddled as to what they should give a daughter who was going to be living out of a suitcase for another seven months, and my older sister arranged for me to get it upon arriving in Hong Kong. It was almost immediately useful, but not as one might expect.

On the Amazon page selling this product, one of the features on which I'm focused is trumpeted loudly and repeatedly: "Kindle 3G, Free 3G + Wi-Fi, 3G Works Globally." As a result, most people who have considered buying a Kindle 3G are well-aware that "Built-in Free 3G connectivity uses the same wireless signals that cell phones use, but there are no monthly fees or commitments--Amazon pays for Kindle's 3G wireless connectivity. The added convenience of 3G enables you to download books anytime, anywhere, while on the go--without having to find a Wi-Fi hotspot connection. With wireless coverage in over 100 countries and territories, Kindle 3G is a great option for travelers."

The other feature, however, is easily missed, leaving the impression that the 3G can be used only for book downloads. But if you look closely, there it is: "WebKit-Based Browser - Free 3G web browsing (experimental)." The reason to underplay it is right there in the parenthetical; the browser feature is still in beta and thus far Amazon hasn't made it a major selling point. But it's what made the Kindle seriously helpful on this trip, beyond its capacity as travel guide storage. With free 3G web browsing available in most countries we visited, I could finally check email, Tripadvisor reviews, the news and a great deal more even when we didn't have Wifi.

My first realization of just how fantastic this was came on the Hong Kong subway, as I was running late to meet an old classmate for lunch. How to let him know that I'd gotten lost but now was found and would be there a few minutes after the appointed time? I knew he had a work-issued Blackberry, but I didn't have his cell number and in any case was trying to avoid using our emergency international cellphone, with its high rates, for anything other than an actual emergency. I clicked on the Experimental Features, opened the browser and went to Gmail. It was slow, especially if I didn't click the "HTML only" option, but it let me log on to my email and successfully send a message. Social disaster averted!

Using the browser, we could look up a hotel's phone number so a New Delhi taxi driver could be given directions; check on the best-rated restaurants in Granada just after exiting the Alhambra; and email my sister when we weren't sure if we had Egypt-India flights booked yet. If the internet made our type of loosely-structured, plan-as-you-go-along kind of round-the-world journey possible, the free international 3G browsing on the Kindle added that extra touch of "No need to worry about making all our decisions while we're getting Wifi -- I can look it up on the road."

I don't want to mislead anyone with my evangelism for the Kindle. The browser is much slower using the 3G network than it is on Wifi, and it can handle only one window at a time, which means you can't click on anything that pops up as a new window. The Kindle screen, built to handle text, does not show images from the web very well. The navigation, built for moving amongst text in a single size and type, sometimes gets confused by the variety of Web HTML. And all Kindles are subject to occasionally freezing up and requiring a hard re-start, though this doesn't seem to cause them to lose any data, not even the last page one was reading in a book.

Still, I can't think of anything better at a similarly reasonable price. Its sheer physical anonymity -- easily mistaken for an actual paper notebook when you have it in a protective cover -- makes it a much smarter travel accessory than flashier and more famous devices like an iPad. In Vietnam, the only country we visited that wasn't among Amazon's 100 with wireless service, an employee at a Hoi An tailor shop asked about my Kindle but quickly lost interest when she realized it wasn't from Apple but some unknown "Amazon." Capitalist brand obsession takes another victim. Speaking of which, you can also get the Kindle 3G $50 cheaper, at $139, if you don't mind having advertising running on it.

And So It Ends (Luxor, Egypt, July 17, 2011)

2011-07-18T00:17:00Z

Today is the last 'official' day of our trip. We're flying to India to visit family, but that isn't really part of the "round the world" excursion. Pallavi heads out at insane o'clock early tomorrow morning, and my flight is the next day. A few days later we'll be back in Texas, ready to get on with the rest of our lives.

The blog, of course, will keep going for a while. We haven't told a lot of stories yet: how Tony bloodied his feet walking up to the temples at Tirupati and almost got run over by a big monkey, or Pallavi's guide to all the best Mexican restaurants in southeast Asia, or why you should never take a reed hat under a waterfall....

Ronald waves at the Luxor Temple and mosque

Scary hotel towel animals (Edfu, Egypt, July 14, 2011)

2011-07-16T17:07:07Z

Pallavi decided to sleep in upon our return from an early-morning trip to Kom Ombo temple, leading to a certain amount of consternation from the cleaning staff, who wanted to come in and fix the place up. We came back to the room after lunch to find this little fellow hanging in the entryway.

I'll admit to the possibility that this was meant to be a jovial and welcoming figure, but with its vaguely threatening aspect it felt more like the janitorial equivalent of a horse's head left in the bed. We resolved to be up and out of their way the next morning, and sure enough, waiting for us was a much more cheering towel swan.

The ups and downs of post-revolution, low season Egyptian tourism (July 13, 2011)

2011-07-15T22:04:00Z

"Let me show you around, friend." The desperately cheerful Luxor shop owner is the fourth in as many minutes to insist that he holds only my best interests at heart, and that he has absolutely no intention of taking me to his shop. Both of us understand, take as read, the insincerity of these promises.

I would never have thought to see touts with more hustle than in the maze-like medinas of Marrakech and Fez, but the Egyptians take second place to no one in the "separate tourists from their liquid assets" category of the capitalist Olympics. Even among Egyptians, Luxor merchants are considered particularly aggressive. Or, to spin it more kindly: Luxor may be the easiest place in the world to find a new "friend."

The land of the Nile lies quiet these days. Whatever the democratic vices or virtues of the Arab Spring, the January 25 uprising has driven a stake through the heart of the tourist industry. Archaeological sites accustomed to thousands of daily visitors now host a handful. Hotels are almost empty: during a dinner cruise of the Nile in Cairo, I was amazed by how few rooms were lit up in the grand downtown hotels. The Four Seasons, the Sofitel, or the Sheraton now seem similar to the quiet, eternal sentinels of Abu Simbel, darkly guarding a river that does not really need them anymore.

To a tourist, the signs of the limited violence that followed the revolution are few, if significant. Sadly, one of the most obvious is the National Democratic Party building, put to the torch by protestors during the demonstrations. The political implications of this act of patriotic arson are obvious, but economically unfortunate: the burnt-out hulk overshadows the Egyptian Museum, reminding Cairo visitors of present dangers.

It feels like the nation is holding its breath until the September elections, hopeful that they will bring a renewed sense of normalcy, and fearful that they will not. Our guides have ranged in fervency from slightly to fanatically anti-Mubarak, but most have also expressed a wish for the protests to die down. They know how demonstrations are covered internationally. One Friday, while we were diving in Sharm el Sheikh, our divemaster took every spare above-water moment to check Facebook on his Blackberry, hoping that he'd see no traces of violence from the protests at Tahrir Square.

On a purely mercenary basis, I understand why some Egyptians wish that Mubarak had simply left the country, despite the fact that he would have walked off with quite a few assets. Instead, he's holed up in a hospital in Sharm el Sheikh due to "poor health." Sharm, perhaps more than any other area of Egypt, relies upon divers, beach lovers and other devotees of the Red Sea for tourism income. Mubarak's presence there has scared off much of the tourist dollar, on the not-entirely-ludicrous theory that someone attacking Mubarak might not be too concerned about collateral damage. Be that as it may, while we were there disruption was limited to two protests: a demonstration outside the hospital much-covered by local and international news, and a smaller demonstration of laid-off workers outside the Marriott, seeking government assistance with the rent. We dubbed this The Rent is Too Damn High protest.

The hot summer is always slow, but this very low season makes it an interesting time to be a tourist. With business down, hotels and tour operators are willing to cut some pretty fantastic deals, with four and five star hotels suddenly springing within range of the budget traveler. Some chains are offering free room upgrades, others complimentary breakfast. While government-run tourist sites have not come down in price, tours guides and restaurants will readily negotiate. Given that we saw more violence in Morocco than we've encountered thus far in Egypt, there's a lot to recommend the Nile to a cost-conscious traveler right now.

That said, it's not all wine and roses, although most of the negative aspects of Egyptian tourism are vastly outweighed by the positives. Hotels operating with skeleton crews may not charge first-class prices, but they also can't offer first-class service. (That said, they offer hot water and working plumbing, which immediately sets them apart from some of our budget hostels.) We had our first theft from a hotel room at the Sheraton Dreamland in Cairo. A year without incident in our accommodations had left us complacent, so we didn't use the hotel safe for everything. That this was unwise is a blinding flash of the obvious.

Our taxi driver from Luxor to Aswan implied that the revolution has left certain areas with a great deal of autonomous power. This came up in the context of speed bumps, which have proliferated on the Luxor-Aswan highway as locals used them as a substitute for absent policemen. The driver blamed these for the increase in travel time from two and a half to over three hours. Frankly, given the insane disregard for life and limb shown by Cairo drivers, I was actually happy for the hinderance.

But while the revolution has engendered a certain degree of disorganization, the chaos often has happy endings. We had hired our driver because we had to make our Luxor-Aswan trip at the last minute. We'd initially booked a Nile cruise upriver, with Travco, only to have them send us an email at 4:57 pm the day before we were to travel to Aswan, telling us that the Jaz Jubilee had been cancelled. There followed an anxious day of phone calls and emails, in which it was unclear whether we'd go Luxor-Aswan, Aswan-Luxor, or simply not take a cruise at all.

It turns out that most of the Nile fleet is not operating due to the lack of tourists. But in the end we were transferred to the M/S Princess Sarah , an even nicer boat with an excellent staff and better facilities. Thus, I write this from a wood-panelled bar, floating off the bank of the Nile in Aswan, surrounded by a handful of German and Russian families making the trip with us.

Sunset from the sundeck of the M/S Princess Sarah

So while there's a bit of sharp practice from touts, and you need to be careful with your wallet, there's much to recommend traveling to Egypt this year. Keep a bit of a thick skin: every person that you're likely to encounter will be both happy to have a job, but obviously hurting from a downturn in business. That being said, this may be the best time in living memory to have an Egyptian holiday.

Fashionable? (Kom Ombo, Egypt, July 14, 2001)

2011-07-14T22:03:00Z

Abercrombie & Kent, the Nile Cruise Boat

Tony the Barbarian (Marrakech, Morocco, April 14, 2011)

2011-07-12T18:58:00Z

We found this in a hardware store in Marrakech while we were looking for a juicer. I don't know what you would cleave with this thing. It was all one piece of metal, and looked more like something out of a low-budget Tolkein ripoff than a kitchen implement.

UPDATE [July 15]: According to one of my friends on Facebook, this implement is used to cleave meat with bones. Given the weight, I can see that.

Policing the Pyramids (Cairo, Egypt, July 1, 2011)

2011-07-11T00:05:00Z

A camel-mounted policeman outside the Red Pyramid

Greetings from Sharm!

2011-07-06T16:35:00Z

A long overdue update: after looking over all of our options, we decided to make our way through Egypt. The State Department has downgraded its warnings , and there are some real advantages to coming here when the tourist trade is low. For instance, I had fifteen minutes of utterly solitary contemplation inside the Great Pyramid, as Pallavi decided to stay outside and no other tourist ventured in until I was on my way down the dark staircase leading out from the tomb.

Outside the Great Pyramid

After a week in Cairo, we are spending five nights in Sharm el Sheikh before we head on to Luxor. We found a great deal on a Sheraton resort, but internet access here is extortionately expensive. [1] (We're here to dive the waters, not surf the web.) We can occasionally check email for free (thanks to the international 3G access on Pallavi's Kindle ) through a slow and intermittent connection. If you want to get in touch with us, email is probably the best way to do so, though we may not be able to reply very quickly.

[1] Seriously: $25/day. That's a little less than half the daily room rate. I get the business logic on this. First, people here are only likely to get internet when they really need it, at which point they'll suck it up and pay the cost. Second, resorts work on a "keep them here" model, and anything that allows comparison shopping with the walled garden down the road is anathema. But while I understand the principles at work here, it puts a foul taste in the mouth.

On the other hand, I can't complain too much...

The view from our balcony

Protester outside the Indian Embassy in Madrid (June 27, 2011)

2011-07-06T14:26:00Z

I have no idea what he was protesting about, but he was very happy when someone decided to take a picture of him.

Revenge for the Chevy Nova (Malaga, Spain, June 25, 2011)

2011-07-05T23:18:00Z

It seems logical. El Corte Ingles needs to name its own-brand patio furniture range. It goes outdoors. Outside the house. Nonetheless...

Insert crude joke about thrones here.

...maybe you should check your branding with a native speaker.

(Urban legend background behind the title for this post here.)

What I Sort of Planned (Malaga, June 21, 2011)

2011-06-22T04:28:12Z

She looked at us all radiantly. "Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it."
"We ought to plan something," yawned Miss Baker, sitting down at the table as if she were getting into bed.
"All right," said Daisy. "What'll we plan?" She turned to me helplessly: "What do people plan?"
-- The Great Gatsby

With only a few days left in Malaga, we're getting into checklist mode, although this last week is especially stretched because I'm cramming two weeks' worth of Spanish lessons into one. Nonetheless, today was a good day for checking items off the list: visiting the Museo Picasso~Malaga; hanging out at the beach; trying some recommended paella.

Even with the checklist as reassuring organizational tool, however, I forgot two important things:

(1) The Museo Picasso may be one of the least-known Picasso-related sites in Malaga, at least among locals, because the building has no relationship to the artist. It's a lovely 16th century palace with marble columns and railings, built over some interesting archaeological ruins from both the Roman and Islamic eras, but its only connection to Picasso is that the museum opened there in 2003.

View of the second floor of the Buenavista Palace, which houses the Museo Picasso.

In contrast, the rest of the city center is dotted with plaques proclaiming that here is where Picasso's father was born, there where Picasso was baptized, over thataway where Picasso pere did some artwork of his own... I specifically asked my taxi driver to take me to the Museo Picasso on Calle San Agustin, to which he agreed and then tried to drop me at the house where Picasso was born, on an entirely different street. After repeatedly insisting that this was the Musee Picasso, he finally condescended to type "Musee Picasso" into his GPS, and discovered that my destination really was not Casa Natal.

(2) Malaga's city center is one of the best places I've found on this trip for strolling around on a sunny afternoon. Unfortunately, part of what makes it so nice for pedestrians is that cars aren't permitted in large sections of the area, and the taxi driver declared that the Museo Picasso was in one such area and that he couldn't get any closer. This was technically untrue, as there were roads closer to the museum. But since I lucked out finding the most direct walking route from where he dropped me, it almost certainly would have taken longer to coax him to take me to a nearer drop-off than it took to hurry to the museum by foot.

Sol y sombra in the Buenavista Palace's courtyard.

]]> Over the last decade, I've been to the Musee Picasso in Paris and to the Museo Picasso in Barcelona.[1] I like the Paris museum more because it's human-scale, in the kind of house where regular people might live, and all kept very simple as a background to the art, though the sculptures outside have to compete with a pretty garden. The core of the collection supposedly comes from Picasso's estate paying taxes to the French government in the form of his art. It's also cleverly curated; since it can't compete with the Guggenheim types for the most famous paintings, the Musee Picasso instead tends to highlight influences that can be seen even in lesser works. I still remember the exhibit I saw in 2001, which showed how African masks and statuary shaped Picasso's view of faces and bodies. The Barcelona museum was almost oppressively grand and despite having seen it more recently, on a rainy day in 2004, I don't remember it well.

The Museo Picasso in Malaga hits a halfway point between Paris and Barcelona. It's in a building large enough to afford high-ceilinged, spacious galleries, but of only two stories along with a basement that displays some of the columns and amphorae excavated when the Palace was renovated as a museum.

And there are interesting views from the roof.

The permanent exhibit holds mostly early and late works -- i.e. the mid-1920s through the 1940s are not much in evidence -- but seems to have a greater concentration of familial representations than in other collections. In particular, there are more paintings of Picasso's first son Paulo than I remember seeing anywhere else. I didn't detect any obvious theme to how the permanent collection is displayed; they're mixed chronologically and in subject matter and style.

The temporary exhibitions that had opened just the day before were worth the extra couple of euros for admission to them. One was of photographs taken by an American photojournalist who befriended Picasso after the Korean War, when Picasso was living in the south of France with his young children Claude and Paloma and his second wife Jacqueline. The other was really interesting in a political rather than personal way, being a presentation on cartoons drawn as propaganda during the Spanish Civil War. While Picasso's Guernica is his most famous work from that period, he also created a limited edition set of cartoon-style drawings that were sold to raise money for the Republican (aka Communist) cause and its sympathizers.

After resting at home from the heat for an hour, I joined Tony again down at the beach. The apartment we're renting is not far from the beach, and my classroom at the language school even has an ocean view, but I still wanted to get a little more time by the seaside.

View while sipping drinks and working on our projects.

The last checkmark of the day went to getting decent paella at a place recommended by a local after I was seriously disappointed by a tourist-oriented joint in the town center. I'll review both restaurants in a separate post, and note here only that the good one is typical of the beach restaurants in focusing on local seafood freshly grilled.

Boat grill at a different boardwalk restaurant.

It gave us a nice perch from which to watch dogs play and the sun go down on the longest day of the year.

[1] I've never been to Berlin and would like to go sometime, but I don't know if I'd quite like to visit the Picasso museum there. It seems an odd site for such a museum, as Picasso had little connection to Germany, and indeed would have felt some reason for resentment toward the country, as it was the origin of the warplanes that devastated Guernica.

Tequila-Flavored Heineken: Has Anyone Tried This?

2011-06-18T03:54:00Z

Pallavi brought this to my attention while we were in the grocery store today, with the comment, "This looks like a very bad idea." So long as it's a choice between risking this and my new favorite, Alhambra 1925, I'm going to take the latter. Does anyone know if this is available outside of Spain, and if so, is it as horrible as it sounds?