Author Archives: pfrese

We visited many museums while in London and one of the most impressive was the Natural History Museum.  The original building was completed and opened to the public in 1881. The Darwin Centre in particular holds millions of preserved specimens, … Continue reading →
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Our trip down the back alleys of White Chapel in London’s East end following the trails of the gruesome murders by Jack the Ripper and our sojourn to the Roman baths in Bath provided intriguing views into the past thanks … Continue reading →
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Our adventures in other times and spaces: Our exciting trip to London and the surrounding area stems from our year long participation in a reading group sponsored by the Hales Fund established in honor of Stan Hales when he retired … Continue reading →
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“Tourism is often distorted and skewed in favour of the (relative) rich and powerful, whose interests control the destiny of many local communities as well as exerting a pervasive symbolic influence over toured cultures and ways of life” (S… Continue reading →

We had an amazing trip through a variety of wetland habitats and ancient Maya ruins in the biosphere of Sian Ka’an. It was expensive and hard to get to, but well worth the trip in so many ways. Our tour … Continue reading → Continue reading →

In our reading of Wearing, Stevenson and Young’s chapter “Encountering the Other”  from Tourist Cultures:  Identity, Place and the Traveller (Sage, 2010), the authors remind us that “in developing nations the indigenous inhabi… Continue reading →

Leaving Uxmal we discovered a restaurant that surely relied upon the tour buses that visit Uxmal. In fact, two pulled in after (thank goodness!) we had already ordered. Most of the [other] tourists were Russian.  The bus driver (fluent in … Cont… Continue reading →

As we ventured into the “Nature Reserve” on the Hacienda’s grounds we crossed an old road leading to a small hill on top of which perched the Hacienda’s ancient 16th century Catholic chapel. Obviously there had been a fiesta rec… Continue reading →

One of the first things all students of anthropology learn is that the personal characteristics of a person doing ethnography will necessarily bias and distort the information gleaned from informants. It’s a kind of cultural Heisenberg principle … Continue reading →

“They had the same superstitious feelings as the Indians of Uxmal; they believed that the ancient buildings were haunted (p. 14). . . .in regard to this building [the Eglesia (sic) at Chichén Itzá] that on Good Friday of every … Continue … Continue reading →