Liz and Josh Ferber presented slides and talked about Australia and New Zealand.
June 5th: Amy Gissen – still to be decided – but will probably be talking about Cambodia and Thailand.
$10.00 for non-members, $8.00 for members.
For details of forthcoming meetings email newyork@globetrotters.co.uk or register for email updates, click here at our website.
New York meetings are held at The Wings Theatre, 154 Christopher Street (btw Greenwich St and Washington St ), to the right of Crunch Fitness, in the Archive on the first Saturday of each month at 4 pm .
Friday – the shopping trip
to Mtwara took 5 hours whilst Esther searched all over town for
enough chickens to feed this crowd whilst the goat in question was
tethered outside the Boma bleating for a few hours. Saturday –
kitchen a hive of activity chopping, cutting, marinating and
counting bottles of water, soft drinks, plates, glasses, knives,
forks etc. Last minute panic appeared non-existent – my own
memories of the night before a major event of this importance were
very different!
The official party arrived in a flurry of dust as about 40 cars
swept into the school ground. In the background was the celebratory
sound of drums and chanting, and there were dancers that we could
hear but not see from our corner of the school ground. Because they
were so late we abandoned all attempts at ‘silver service’ and put
a couple of desks in the centre of the room as a buffet and allowed
them to help themselves. We were advised to do this so that we
could not be held responsible for delaying them and influencing how
long they took to eat!
After they had eaten the
District Commissioner invited the whole Boma team into the room,
introduced us and gave a short speech of thanks for providing such
a wonderful lunch. He acknowledged that the Boma is run by Trade
Aid and proceeded to thank Trade Aid for providing this opportunity
for employment and the development of tourism in the Mtwara Region.
The Prime Minister's photographer recorded the event and held a
photo shoot taking a number of pictures on the Trade Aid digital
camera.
After picking up
our rental car at the airport and after some looking on the map we
found Surahammar Manor. A fantastic place in the Mälar Valley with
romantic surroundings! And such a family atmosphere! The owners
themselves welcomed us and we got a high standard room facing the
parkland. All rooms are individually decorated with elegant
antique furniture. And we really enjoyed the welcome dinner with
Swedish schnapps. In the evening we went early to bed, talked about
our wedding and revelled in that pleasant tired feeling in your
body and serenity in your heart that only a great day can
bring!
but not. We
were fishing from the Manor’s park! After some hours we had got
four salmon trout and thought it was enough. In the evening we
prepared them together with the cook. Never has a dinner
tasted so good!
Sciacca is not really on the tourist trail
although it is extremely pleasant and some of the upper town is
really picturesque. There is no really cheap place to stay, though
the Paloma Bianca in Via Figuli was not really dear. The main
appeal of Sciacca for me is the fact that it is an ideal place for
an excellent bus trip to the hill village of Caltabellotta. Sicily
has so much to see [I missed the lovely west coast and most of the
interior, including a terrific Roman villa] that I suspect a lot of
people never make it to any of the smaller towns. Even though I
obviously saw them at the cost of some better known larger places,
Erice in particular, I feel that it is a pity not to sample some
and this is a beaut. From my knowledge of Sicilian hill villages I
would say that somehow they are less picturesque from a distance
but quite as good when inside them as those of the mainland. On the
ride to Caltabellotta it is going up high, rather than heading for
the village, which gives the pleasure and you need to be well up in
the village to see it at its best.
This was only my fifth night out of eleven but already lack of time
was forcing me to adjust my plans. I had meant to go right around
the island anti-clockwise and hopefully to do a trip into the Villa
Imperiale inland. I now realised this was far too much to take on
and I abandoned any notion of reaching the west coast or Segesta, a
spectacular site to the west of the island’s capital, Palermo. This
meant cutting from the south coast to the north at Palermo itself.
I decided on one further southern escapade first – a trip to the
ancient Greek settlement of Selinunte It was necessary to change at
Castelvetrano from the bus bound for Trápani to the local minibus
to Selinunte and the modern village of Marinellla which is little
more than the accommodation for those going to see Selinunte. It
turned out that the wait in this rather ordinary place
[Castelvetrano] was going to be over an hour and a half, and then
when the bus was quarter of an hour late.
The eastern temples were mainly erected in the sixth century BC and
one of them, Temple E as it rather prosaically named, was
reconstructed in the 1950s. Apparently this was and is
controversial but I feel no qualms about it as long as some are
left as they are found. Whatever, it is a magnificent building and
I am sure a full size re-construction must be the best way of
illustrating to children what these temples were like. The
Acropolis area contains another five temples and most of the
ancient living area as well as the remains of the great walls.
These walls, however, are older than the rest of the remains,
having been built after the city had been destroyed once by
Carthage in order to defend the high ground from further
destructions.
