Travels in the 2nd half

On our cruise up the Pacific Coast of South and Central America we visited several cities in six countries. One of places that The Amazing Ms D. and I liked best was the city of Antigua, Guatemala. We both really appreciate places that have a history, and in Antigua, you really can feel the history in the walled homes, in the cobble stones, in the bronzed faces of the Mayan women in the streets. During colonial times, Guatemala was the capital of Spain’s holdings Central America. So the area from what is today Colombia, north to the Mexican state of Chiapas was governed by the colonial offices in Guatemala. Dating back to 1543, Antigua was actually the third capital of Guatemala. The first, Ciudad de Santiago de los Caballeros de Goathemalan (City of Saint James of the Knights of Guatemala), founded in 1524 suffered several to rebellions by the Kakchikel-Mayan people. The second, Ciudad Vieja , was destroyed when an earthquake caused the water in the lake of the nearb...

One of the things that I love about living in New York City is wide variety of museums in the city. There is something for just about everyone, from history (NY Historical Society) to film (Museum of the Moving Picture) to mass transit (NYC Transit Museum) to art (way too many to mention). The grandfather of them all, the elephant in the room, is The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Met was incorporated in 1870 "for the purpose of establishing and maintaining in said City a Museum and Library of Art, of encouraging and developing the Study of the Fine Arts, and the application of Art to manufacture and natural life, of advancing the general knowledge of kindred subjects, and to that end of furnishing popular instruction and recreations" ( Disturnell, John New York As It Was and As It Is ).   Over the past 146 years the Met has developed one of the best collections of art in the world, a collection that brings together examples of the best fine and decorative art...