Welcome to Faraway Friday! I, for one, am craving something different from Africa in our daily photo posts. Each Friday will now feature a shot and a little anecdote from somewhere outside the great kingdom of Senegal. Got images and stories you want to share? Well, you’re in luck, because we want you to share them, too. Send ‘em over!
To kick off this fun new feature, I thought I’d share a “faraway” shot of my own. In April 2010, we took our honeymoon to Rome and Florence. I know many Americans have a Diane Lane-fueled obsession with Italy, and we thought Florence was lovely, but Rome didn’t turn out to be my favorite destination. We were surrounded by so many English speakers that we might as well have been in a crumbling version of America, and we made a poor hotel choice by staying too far north of town. There was one bus (the dreaded #52 – I remember it well) that would take us to central Rome, and it came approximately once every six days or whenever the constellation Orion passed over the quarter-moon, whichever came first. Bus maps in Rome were nonexistent, it seemed.
That’s not to say, though, that there weren’t parts of Rome we enjoyed. (And I’m thankful we have the means to swing trips to Italy and got to experience it. Evil buses or no, we did have quite a bit of fun.) This shot is from one of my favorite nights there. We found a little square – the name of which escapes me, though it probably had “piazza” in the title, ho, ho – that made for great people-watching. We grabbed drinks al fresco and watched magicians and dog-walkers and listened to street music. It was great.
Rachael Cullins is a twentysomething American girl living in Dakar, Senegal, with her husband and two dogs. She blogs about her adventures in Senegal and travels elsewhere in West Africa. She will reside in Dakar until summer 2013, when she and her family will move to another foreign post as part of her husband’s career with the U.S. government. In addition to West Africa, she has traveled to France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Italy and Costa Rica and plans to continually add to that list.
