Tag: history

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in portugal

walking on history, XVIII: more roman roads

not the first roman road we visit, but this one is much closer to home, in nearby são brás de alportel. the town lays in the crossroads of two historical paths: the road that connected faro to the north of portugal, and perpendicular to it, the road that linked tavira and loulé.

you have to walk a bit down a dirt road to find it, among fields of olive and carob trees, and we were almost turning around when i glimpsed a few arranged stones in the distance. and suddenly there it was! the road is different here, the stones smaller and arranged in patterns, but i found it no less interesting.

another small bit of an amazing engineering project!

Categories
in spain traveling

walking on history XVI: expo 92

same, same… but different.

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in the netherlands

below the canal

long story short: to build a new metro line in amsterdam, a tunnel was dug in the city center through a riverbed of clay and sand. over millennia, the river amstel had been accumulating all sorts of things dropped or thrown in its bed. some things are recognizable to us now, but the deeper you go, the more intriguing it gets.

it’s astonishing the amount of bank cards, phones, keys, coins and buttons, guns and ammunition, skulls and bones, so many spoons and knifes… but also cannon balls, vases and they sieved through tons of stuff, scanned every last bit of broken porcelain and put everything on a website where you can see and search. when i searched for “film”, a few results popped up, plus a few cameras:


i find the whole thing fascinating: from the engineering feat of this metro line to the contemporary archeology done in its wake. so many layers of history, hiding just underneath the surface!

Categories
just life

walking on history, XIV: expo 98

has it really been 20 years? :|

i was a wide-eyed 16 year old, in awe of all the cool things happening around me, just then realizing how much there was to see and discover in the world. good times.

Categories
in spain

walking on history, X: operation mincemeat

on a quaint cemetery in the outskirts of huelva, there’s a perfectly normal stone grave, with an interesting story hidden behind. we did a pit stop there on our way back from córdoba to learn about major william martin…

… a man who actually did not “exist”, and yet changed the course of the second world war. tom does a better job at explaining the story than i ever could:

sometimes, history happens in unexpected places.


more from this series.