Downtown in Las Vegas (NM).

About 70 years before Las Vegas, Nevada was founded, there was Las Vegas, NM. If you didn't previously know that there is a Las Vegas in New Mexico, you can be excused-- there are a few good reasons. 1) There's not really a whole lot going on there- and -2) The town is a little creepy. On our visit there seemed to be a lot of mentally unstable people lurking around downtown (we almost thought we were going to get knifed at one point). But it is still a rather beautiful town. So if you decide to stop in, be sure to visit the old town plaza, which is surrounded by some incredibly well preserved historic buildings-- like the above-right Plaza Hotel, established 1881. The square offers a near perfect picture of a frontier American town in the late 1800s. Just watch your back.

Beautiful city.

While Cape Town doesn't have everything I'd like in a city, it is unquestionably the city whose aesthetic style I most appreciate. It's not only the absurd landscape sculpted by Table Mountain, Lion's Head, and Table Bay, and the mingling of temperate and tropical vegetation that I love-- it's also in the offbeat combination of such diverse architectural styles that make up the city.

Just within a short walk around the neighbourhood of Oranjezicht I spotted Victorian town-houses with intricate lace-like fences, the sleek curves of '60s modernism, baroque adaptations of Cape Dutch, and the masculinely handsome details of art-deco. It might seem like these styles might not work, but somehow, they work beautifully. It may take a little getting used to, but the combination is fantastically Cape Town, as distinctive and intriguing as seeing the local bird of paradise blooming just below an imported acorn tree.

Unfortunately, this doesn't include most of the city's architecture post 1965... don't even mention those new hotels being plonked down for the World Cup to me...

Ugly/Beautiful.

Would you consider these Cape Town buildings, known as Disa Park, to be ugly or beautiful? Around here they're generally regarded as one of the city's ugliest architectural blights-- though I have to say I rather like them. I do understand the point that they sort of hamper the view of Table Mountain (blocked out in this photo by heavy cloud-cover), but I find something about them elegant. I don't know, maybe it's some strange connection I've carried from childhood that round high rises equal glamorous living. What are your thoughts?

Bangkok Snapshot: Condo high-rise on Thong Lo.

Does anyone else ever get excited by the anonymous face of bland architecture?

The Wepener.

Writing about the color pink in a recent entry, I thought back to this pink gem of a hotel that Bordeaux and I encountered in South Africa's Free State. It looked as though at had been quite stylish back in the '70s, but I loved it in its current state of disrepair.

Return to Bangkok.

The photograph above (not my own) is of Bangkok's new Suvarnabhumi airport. Arriving in the sexy glass and steel airport, walking among fellow travelers while being guarded by brightly colored garuda statues; it reminded me of all the things I love about Bangkok. How it's both exotic and modern, cosmopolitan and yet distinctly Thai. The experience of arriving in the airport alone assured me that we had made the right decision by coming back.