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| With Zaki at the Palace of the Legion of Honor Museum in San Francisco, May 2011 |
In a previous post entitled, "It's all About the People you Meet", I mentioned that in a moment of serendipity in Jordan, we were lucky enough to run into a wonderful chap called Zaki, who showed us all around his town. Zaki emigrated to San Francisco decades ago, but still spends time with his extended family in Madaba where we met him. There's a wonderful charm to traveling, where you are completely open to the people you meet and anything could happen. We met Zaki, we spent the day together and we let the experience it take us along for the ride. I think Sofia Coppola's film "Lost in Translation" best captures the sense of simpatico, dislocation and connection we're all open to when we're away from home.
However, it's rare to bring the feeling back home with you, but we had a wonderful experience of this recently when we met up with Zaki here in San Francisco. Having seen the wonderful mosaics that Madaba is famous for, we thought it would be fun to go to the Palace of the Legion of Honor Museum in San Francisco which was hosting a magnificent Roman mosaic from Lod, Israel.
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| Detail of the Lod mosaic |
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| Detail of the Lod mosaic |
The Lod mosaic was spectacular, and though secular in its subject matter, was of a similar period and style to the early Christian mosaics we had seen on our trip. The following pictures give you an idea of some of the mosaics we saw, including the famous Madaba mosaic map.
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| There are a large number of mosaic sites in Madaba |
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| Jerusalem on the Madaba mosaic map |
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| The Madaba mosaic map is located on the floor of an early Byzantine church. |
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| Mosaic cat in Madaba |
So often when we travel we meet people we like, and although we hope to stay in touch, or to meet up another time, somehow daily life takes over when we return home. What made meeting up with Zaki so much fun, wasn't that we saw a similar mosaic, it was the fact that once again we found ourselves in unfamiliar and uncertain circumstances and we went along with the situations we found. We thought we were going to the museum, which we did do. But first we had to visit his son's Middle Eastern grocery store, where Zaki loaded us down with goodies. Then it turned out to be Zaki's birthday. So, we ended up driving with him to South San Francisco for a birthday party, where we met his large, extended Jordanian family. It wasn't our normal Sunday, but it brought the serendipity and delight of travel into our life at home, fabulous!
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| I love how the camel is not constrained by the medallion, Petra |
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