By Corey Sandler

We have arrived at the final month of this awful year.

Here’s an indisputable, nonpartisan hope for 2021: health and safety, serenity and comity, science above silliness…and at some point a return to travel.

In my still-abundant spare time, I have been harvesting skies from the many thousands of photos I have taken around the world in the past few decades. And I’ve been adding new ones from here in New England; socially distanced through the lenses of my camera.

When it comes to photography, I am at heart a traditionalist. I search for great scenes, incorporate a strong composition, and always hunt for dramatic lighting.

But these days, my travels are essentially confined to early morning expeditions into the near-deserted city or observations of the harbor and the ocean from our aerie high above Boston’s Seaport.

And so I have taken to creating images that are a composite: a scene from one place with a sky from another. Here are some of the fantastical results: travel to two places at once without leaving my home.

All photos copyright 2020 by Corey Sandler, all rights reserved. Contact me to obtain rights to use any image.

By Corey Sandler

I am on dry land, but feeling so very much out to sea.

We are now—all of us—strangers in a strange land. An invisible enemy has invaded our world and changed just about everything.

Some among us have been truly heroic, including most medical and health professionals and the essential workers who supply us with food and shelter.

For the past 12 years or so, my wife and I have spent about six months of the year traveling aboard luxurious cruise ships in nearly every part of the world.

We have been to iconic and well-visited places like London and Athens and Barcelona and Lisbon and St. Peterburg and Stockholm and Rio de Janeiro and Valparaiso and Montreal and New York and everywhere in between.

And we have come to port in less-visited but always fascinating places like Reykjavik, Narsarsuak, Les Îles-de-la-Madeleine, Les Îles des Saintes, Devil’s Island, the Falkland Islands, Dakar, Tunis, Bejaia, Monemvasia, and so many more.

There’s an expression that exists in many countries, many languages, and many cultures. One version: “Man Plans and God Laughs.”

It’s not a funny matter, but here we are with lots of plans—most of them canceled and others wobbly at best.

We were supposed to be in South America in February and March, and beginning to pack soon for an extended cruise from Iceland to the United Kingdom and on to the Baltic. Oh, and Greece and Israel and Italy in the fall. And next year’s schedule was equally exciting.

But, as I said, here we are on dry land. I can see the Atlantic Ocean from my office window. There are no cruise ships in sight and the skies above are eerily devoid of almost all jet contrails.

Someday we shall resume our explorations. The new normal will be, I am certain, quite different from what we have all become used to.

In the meantime, take care of each other and hold the politicians and the profiteers and dishonest conspiratorialists accountable for the damage they have wrought.

This shall, we hope, someday pass. We look forward to better times.

FROM THE ARCHIVES

In my unexpectedly expansive free time, I have been revisiting my files of hundreds of thousands of photos. Here are some newly rediscovered delights.

All photos Copyright 2020 by Corey Sandler, All Rights Reserved. Contact me if you would like to purchase an image for personal or commercial use.

By Corey Sandler

So a travel writer and speaker goes on vacation…

It sounds like the setup for a joke, but no, it was time for a vacation and we chose to spend a full month à la Montréalaise. Montréal, Quebec. In the dead of winter. On purpose.

We are both of the sort who do not really mind cold weather when we are properly equipped. And we enjoy a good snowfall, especially when we do not have to drive or shovel. And so here we are in a lovely condo in Ville Marie, in the heart of the city.

So, about the snow. It was snowing when we arrived in mid-January and then after a brief surcease we had a two-day storm that dropped about half a meter or 20 inches of fluffy powder. Then an overnight half-foot that caught the weather forecasters and the city planners by surprise. Oh, and a few lesser storms not worth considering–or clearing from streets and sidewalks.

Not that it seems to matter all that much to the locals. Clearing roads and sidewalks is apparently not a very high priority around here. You just put on your boots and zip up your parka and get on with life.

It took more than a week before the residential street in front of our apartment was finally cleared. It was an impressive sight, though: road graders and fleets of trucks hauling away les neiges.

Temperatures have been mostly in the teens for those who count in Fahrenheit, or about -9 Celsius. The cold medal arrived a few days ago when morning arrived at -7 Fahrenheit, or -22 Celsius. Bonne journee, have a good day, we told each other as we pressed on to hot lunch.

Les Habs, the Montréal Canadiens, are not having the best of seasons–actually they’re in a multi-year drought–but their arena fills for nearly every game. We snagged tickets and enjoyed a raucous few hours, and a win.

In my lectures about Montréal, I have talked about eating your way up The Main, the nickname for Blvd St-Laurent which more-or-less divides the city into west (mostly Anglophone) and east (mostly Francophone) sections. We put that to the test, going out every day–snow or not–to try many of the city’s wonderful international offerings.

You can’t–or at least you shouldn’t–visit Montréal and not dine on smoked meat and a dill pickle at Chez Schwartz, Schwartz’s Deli n the former Jewish area. Across the street from the famous deli is a museum dedicated to the local culture, and there they offer a gefilte fish club sandwich. And, of course, Montréal’s bagels: honey sweet and worth the trip.

In and around Chinatown are restaurants that provide glimpses into some of the lesser-known regions of China. Put aside Cantonese and Szechuan fare: we fell in love with Nouilles de Lan Zhou, noodles from Lan Zhou in Gansu Province in northwest China.

But let us not forget fresh dumplings from Harbin or Dalian at Qing Hua. There is an art to eating them that involves lifting them from the dish with chopsticks, biting into them, and then sucking out the soup and filling within.

As it happened, we were here for Chinese New Year, and watched some of the celebrations that spread through the district.

But wait, Chinatown could more accurately be called Little Asia. We also dined on Japanese shabu-shabu at Kagayaki, cooking our own fresh vegetables and meat in a boiling pot at our table. We dined several times at two wonderful Vietnamese restaurants for hot Pho, which goes well with cold snow.

Oh, and some wonderful North Indian fare including tandoori chicken and fresh naan bread at the very unprepossessing but fine Thali.

We enjoyed fresh arepas, stuffed grilled or fried cornmeal sandwiches at Bocadillo, a Venezuelan restaurant.

We visited a lovely Polish cafe called Stash near the St. Lawrence, a few blocks up from where cruise ships usually dock in the summer; my wife celebrated with pierogies and galumpkis.

Down by the river, ice has filled most of the piers and shorelines. Shipping–aided by ice breakers–still continues for much of the winter. And in late January, the frigid waterfront was home to a two-week-long heavy metal concert series that quite rightly billed itself as the coldest rock festival in the world.

We enjoyed the theatre scene in Montreal as well. At the National Monument we saw a student production of “Street Scenes”, an operetta by Kurt Weill with lyrics by Langston Hughes.

And then on a crisp Saturday afternoon we walked up to McGill University to enjoy a spirited production of “The Gondoliers”, a worthy Gilbert and Sullivan chestnut.

One day we walked far up to the plateau on The Main to Pucapuca, a dark and somewhat scary storefront offering Peruvian fare. A one-man operation, the chef seated you, presented you with the day’s offering (no menu–just what he felt like cooking that day) and since we were still there a bit late and we somehow seemed of interest, the chef sat down with us at the table to discuss food, culture, history, and politics in a melange of English, Spanish, and French. This is why we travel.

All content and photos copyright 2020 by Corey Sandler, all rights reserved.