The Blork Blog

Deetjen’s Big Sur Inn is one of the beautiful properties under threat from the wildfires raging along the central California coast. According to this article, the inn was evacuated on Sunday, and the fire was so close that a burning log rolled into one of the rustic cabins, although it was quickly extinguished by fire […]

Via Giulia, one of my favorite streets in Rome, turns 500 this year.

According to this New York Times article, via Giulia is named after Pope Julius II, who commissioned the street as part of a plan to square off the streets around the Vatican. That’s fairly odd, as it’s not all that close to Chez […]

My current digital camera lacks the “panorama assist” feature that I enjoyed so much with my previous one. The feature helps you line up successive shots so it is easier for panorama stitching software to get good results without awkward overlaps or misaligned edges. It’s not strictly necessary to have the assist feature, but it […]

Hey, you know this “fly to Paris for a week on a moment’s notice” thing? I highly recommend it.

The New York Times has a nice article about Rome at night in yesterday’s Travel section. The Web version includes a slide show and a multimedia walking guide.
It brings me back. Rome is one of my three favorite cities in the world (I haven’t yet decided what the other two are), and as the article […]

Everybody’s talking about the Airbus A380 that landed at Montreal’s Pierre Elliot Trudeau airport yesterday. I’m a big fan of airplanes and flying, so I wish I could have been there to witness it. I’m an uneasy fan, however, as I realize that air travel is one of the biggest contributors to pollution, oil consumption, […]

A few weeks ago I wrote about my recent pizza experiences in San Francisco. In particular, there was my revelation about Pizzeria Delfina on 18th Street, which makes a pretty good approximation of a Neapolitan-style pie.
We ate another San Francisco pizza about a week later. It was our last night in the city before coming […]