paris part i : tourist shots

by the time i post paris part ii, i would have been here +/- 3 weeks with occasional day and weekend trips out of the city. try to contain your excitement, but those trips will be part of another blog entry. c'est bonne! for now, here's my generic version of paris tourist shots:

view of front façade from the seine

late afternoon lounging. best view of notre dame is from behind if you ask me

bridge of locks

façade detail of holy dudes

stained glass interior shot

typical seine scene: tourist boat, bridges and the notre dame

token eiffel tower shot

token bridge lamp post shot with eiffel tower in background

token arc d'triomphe shot

place de la bastille

skip the louvre, and spend the day in musee d'orsay

jardin du luxembourg

musee rodin

rodin's the thinker

my favorite precious church, sacre coeur in montmartre

with lots of tourists enjoying the view

week in london

not sure if anyone reads this blog anymore.  and why should you since no one ever posts here.  but just in case someone checks in, here's photos from my week in london in no particular order or logic.  enjoy!

flying into london

rainy st. paul's from tate modern

these two last seen at tate britain

these "t's" seen at tate modern

hello ben

tower bridge

one of the guards at buckingham palace actually fell when making a turn.  here he is just getting up and rubbing his bum

dinosaur

multiple dinosaurs

one of london's many parks

i like you too 'friend'

01 10 13 thoughts

dear world.
i don't know anything that is worth doing unless i'm going all out.
the problem is that i'm confused and i don't know what i should be going for full force.  i think you can sympathize with me in that this creates a problem.  in so forth that i'm going balls out with everything but not really sure what i'm focusing towards.  so in essence, everything i'm doing right now, 'm putting my head straight down and putting the pedal to the metal full force.  from an outsiders perspective, this is obviously not the best way to go about things relative to its shorts sightedness.  but then again, anytime that i've thought about something, or hesitated, or let stupid fucking reason come into play, is precisely when i've fallen flat on my face.  ... i don't know what this all means or whether this explains my accomplishments and shortcomings all at the same time, but regardless of looking back at accolades or injured scars, either way, i think i perform the best when i just go and don't think. 
thinking hurts. 
thinking hurts before you even get going. 
going is exhilarating.  going only hurts at the point when you crash into that brick wall from going too fast because of shortsightedness.  but at least its just that instantaneous moment, and its not happening at the point when you psyche yourself out. and you don't have that stupid fucking thing of regret gnawing at you day in and day out for not trying.  when i die, i just hope my epitaph doesn't say something boring or disappointing like 'he could have been so much more'.  sometimes i wonder if this attitude has actually prevented me from greatness.  but why should that bother me when in the end we're all worm food, and it's up to someone else when we're dead to decide whether we're special or not.  at that stage, who gives a fuck?  i'm not writing my epitaph.
so in this age of digital instantaneous social media twitter creepbook g-whatever and i-need-to-make-myself-look-better-than-i-actually -am type-cyberworld, does anyone actually read or care about this beyond a thumbs up facebook 'like' symbol, or a video youtube thingy gone viral?  or do things happen so fast that it's a here today, gone today type society that in reality it doesn't matter since our appetite for something new to prop up is satiated just as quickly by the mass conglomeration of shooting it down just as instantaneously.  basically in the end it doesn't matter since today's news in our instantenous multi-task, inability to focus type society is just a mere blip.  today's news by the time you finish this sentence is already old.
i guess what i'm getting at is, does anyone out there really understand what i'm saying?
and if so, can you help me?

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www.renology.com
www.russojones.com
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finally left the place that no one seems to leave

you know those beach towns where backpackers and hippies seem to straggle into and never leave. zipolite happens to be one of those places. the routine seems to be is to struggle awake at noon, down breakfast, lay on the beach, follow that with the first sundowners at sunset, walk the beach or the one street in town to find out where the gran fiesta for the night will be, and then party till the wee hours. this cycle happens over and over again, similar to bill murray in groundhog day only with sun instead of snow.
the routine is 2 sundown beers to end the day or start the night depending on how you look at it
we quickly became locals the first day, knew half of the waitstaff or bartenders in town, and frightfully became one of them, stuck in time. we repeatedly heard from several people living there i've gotta get out of this place. luckily, having spent five days there, we snuck out just in time before becoming one of the permanent zombies. most people have been stuck there for anywhere from 2 to 4 months. one hostel manager visited 2 years ago and still hasn't left. he is now permanently leather skinned.
a restaurant in zipolite called the terrible...not the smartest name for a restaurant
we have now escaped to san cristobal de las casas in chiapas, mexico's southernmost state. it's the origin of the zapatista rebels, a hotbed for leftist revolutionaries, and home to some really good bars and cafe's. it's mexico's coffee region. the people here are more indigenous than other regions in mexico, and still speak tzotzil, a language rooting back to mayan civilization. it has a lot of 'shhh' sounds to it, but could be russian for all i know.
the catedral in the zócalo in san cristobal de las casas. if you ever want to call attention to yourself, then sketch in a public place. the shoeshine boys in the plaza like this young lad here, flocked around me to watch, and then proceeded to hit and kick each other, and then stopped for awhile to watch me sketch some more, and then returned to hitting, scratching, and kicking each other some more, and then watch me sketch again while climbing on top of my stuff and asking questions, and then after that breaking into a free for all no holds barred violence bonanza. the funny thing is they'll keep going to no end until they see someone with dirty shoes and then they'll harass them for 5 pesos to shine them.

vivé méxico!

i haven't posted here in awhile, which makes sense for a travel blog if you're not travelling. but i´m glad to see that now that i'm on the road in mexico, that i haven't forgotten how to write meaningful bits of cultural observance. also, i still have a traveller rock star belly that up to this point has been immune to montezuma's revenge. speaking of which, food has been one of the highlights of this trip. i have this theory that the warmer and more colorful the country, the spicier and better the food. mexico hasn't dissapointed and is ranked somewhere in the top five after india and thailand and a couple others.
how about deep fried chile grasshoppers for a snack
a funeral procession of chickens
in mexico city, there´s one street stall that i would go to for a folded tortilla filled with refried beans, onions, nopales, and spicy salsa. the street stall lady cooked it with just the right amount of her dirty fingers squashing the frijoles, that one couldn't help but fall in love.
food stalls in oaxaca
one of the more interesting things about mexico city is how much it is sinking. you can see it in all the buildings of the historic center including the cathedral. the cathedral in mexico city
when cortés and the spanish destroyed the aztec capital of tenochtitlán, they filled the lake it was sitting on and built the entire city on this crappy soil without compacting it. henceforth, sloppy soil in earthquake zone equals sinking city. the ruins of the original azteca city of teotihuacán with the catedral in the background
i'm not sure what's stranger, an ice rink and snow park set in the middle of the zócalo in mexico city, or...
the creepy charmin bear mascot who hangs out at the porto-potties in the same plaza
a pretty little church in coyoacán mexico city
but enough about the wonderful merits of imposing colonization on indigenous people. highlights for me of mexico city was getting to see the house frida kahlo grew up, and also the house that frida and diego rivera lived in.
the lovely garden where frida kahlo grew up
dia de los muertos doll of frida at her casa azul
i could explain their tumultous relationship, or just watch the salma hayek movie frida to get a good background on her. she´s one of my favorite artists because of the amount of pain and suffering of her soul and body that is poured onto the canvas.
the house that frida kahlo and diego rivera lived in consisting of separate houses for each connected by a bridge. they lived here until frida caught diego sleeping with her sister cristina
diego's studio
diego's studio
have also been a tourist and visited some archaeological world heritage ruins. teotihuacán, the third tallest pyramid behind those in egypt.
pyramide de la luna in teotihuacán
pyramide del sol in teotihuacán
pyramide del sol in teotihuacán
also visited monté albán just outside oaxaca which is perched high up on a mountain plateau.
zapoteca ruins in monté albán
zapoteca ruins in monté albán
zapoteca ruins in monté albán
even though the touts selling their wares aren´t as aggressive as i´ve seen in other countries, my technique of randomly hugging them still steers them away from making a sale, and more towards sharing love and kindness amongst grown men.
normally i'm used to hugging sweaty smelly guys selling crap i don't need. this time i was caught on camera hugging a mezcal mujer telling her after seeing you 3 days in a row, i'm still not buying mezcal from you but i'll give you a hug instead
in oaxaca right now. been here for about 4 days now. it's a great colorful colonial city (that wonderful word again)filled with artists, galleries, brass marching bands, libraries and tourists. the plaza here is wonderful in the evening with street players, touts selling chicklets, for people watching and general wasting of time.
chiesa santo domingo in the background of a oaxaca street
dancers in the oaxaca zócalo
lots of oaxacan dummies everywhere
we're here for the noche de los rabanos (the night of the radishes). it doesn't take much to describe what this festival is all about
a radish church
they also had tamale wrap figurines and diaoramas set up. neat
the one high or lowlight here depending on how you look at it is the mezcal. it's native to the area formulated from the agave plant. every bar or restaurant has it's own house version, not the kitschy worm in the bottle stuff you get in the states. the stuff is a slow, trippy burn type of a buzz. we became friends with a couple of bartenders at a local watering hole in town. in exchange for our undying friendship, they kept pouring us free shot after shot after shot of mezcal. i don't really need to explain further what happens next.
the source
the villian. homemade artesenal mezcal
tomorrow, we leave oaxaca for the sleepy beach town of zipolite for your typical wintry, white sand christmas in the warm mexican playa sun. felíz navidad
payaso, deja en paz