My dear friend took me to see the sunset and it did not disappoint. Here you can see the sun and moon trading places — sunset at Newport Beach and the full moon over the Laguna Hills.
I climbed to the top of the cathedral tower in Utrecht. And near the base, this member of a catering team was busy at work preparing appetizers for a party that evening. If I ever have an occasion to host a party in the Netherlands, it’ll be at the Dom Cathedral! The party space was one floor up with a 50 ft high ceiling, with stainglass windows on all sides. The acoustics have to be terrible in there but it looked… grand.
Miffy is upset that Labubus have become so popular.
In Utrecht, they’ve built these little ramps to save cats from drowning. Wut!?
I do a lot of coffee tourism when I travel— I visit great coffee shops and roasters. This was Black Gold, not too far from the Amsterdam Central Train Station. Great coffee and vinyl shop. The owner, Siebrand, was the nicest guy.
On to India: Most of my trip was in Delhi, but I spent one night in Mumbai visiting family. As we were headed to a Kevin Hart comedy show (wut!?), it was obvious that Durga puja season was in full swing. We passed a bunch of trucks carrying Mother Durga statues and devotees celebrating in the streets. The devotee I took a photograph of seemed to be in a trance. I was searching for a phrase or word to describe the look people have when they appear to be somewhere else in time-space and a friend suggested, “a thousand yard stare”— about right!
Side note, it was surreal to attend a Kevin Hart comedy show in Mumbai. He appeared to fill up NSCI which has a capacity of 8,000. From Coldplay to Ed Sheeran to Lolapalooza, western performance artists have discovered they can sell their wares in India!
One afternoon in Delhi, I met my cousins who are in the sari and lehenga business — the Indian bridal wear business — at their office/warehouse in Delhi’s old market of Chandni Chowk. Chandni Chowk is your paradigmatic old world market with narrow alleys, no cars, and packed streets with every square inch devoted to selling something and everything. When I was there it was especially packed because Navratri season had just begun. Witness the supersized auto rickshaw with the roof and interior full of this family’s shopping loot. They were probably on a family shopping spree for a wedding. This was on Naee Sadak (“new street”) where I’ve been a bunch of times. There’s a section of Naee Sadak where they sell textbooks and you can get the Indian edition of US college textbooks for 1/10th the price.
And we walked from my cousins shop to eat at one of my favorite sweet shops, Delhi’s famous Daribe wale gully jalebi shop. They’re famous for their thick jalebis — they’re so good. Especially when you’re eating them fresh from the ghee fryer. Mmmmm.