Powered By Blogger

Monday, August 31, 2020

Phot-o' the Day: The Sava River, outside of Bled, Slovenia


I have posted many pictures of Lake Bled in Slovenia. I'm not yet willing to say that it's the most beautiful acreage on planet earth that I have seen thus far, but I do know it would be under very serious consideration. And the beauty of the area is not limited to the namesake lake. Case in point: the Sava River just outside of town, just over a mountain ridge from the lake.

This is from my "off road" segway tour of Lake Bled back in September 2014.

Sunday, August 30, 2020

Sunday Church Phot-o' the Day: Outside the Biserica Mănăstirii Stavropoleos; Bucharest, Romania

Back to one of the most beautiful Orthodox churches you will see anywhere, the Biserica Mănăstirii Stavropoleos in Old Town Bucharest, Romania.

A few Sundays ago, I posted a picture of the beautiful, intricately ornate interior. This Sunday, it is the beautiful, intricately ornate exterior, on the pedestrian-friendly side streets of Old Town Bucharest. This is the heart of Tourist Bucharest. But Bucharest is not very touristy. The few tourists who head to Romania immediately head off for the "Dracula" related tourist traps in the woods of Transylvania. Like some vampire focused on a throbbing neck vein. Although, I guess, if I were a vampire, throbbing arteries would be preferred because ... I'm not going there.

Bucharest does have vampire-related kitsch in the souvenir shops, but the tourist neighborhoods have waaaaaaay more Romanian Orthodox churches than vampire castles.

Visited May 2019.

Wednesday, August 26, 2020

Phot-o' the Day: Catching a Tram in Saint-Étienne, France


What's the best way to get to Stade Geoffroy-Guichard in Saint-Étienne, France? Take the northbound tram from downtown.

Visited June 2016.

Tuesday, August 25, 2020

Phot-o' the Day: Nazaré Lighthouse, with Wooden Ducks; Nazaré, Portugal

Nazaré, Portugal, is known for having the largest surf-able waves on Planet Earth. It also has a funicular and one of the absolute best gelato stands anywhere (Gelatomania on the main street along the oceanfront). Either of which alone would be reason enough to visit. Then you consider the fact that Nazaré has both and you would have to be wondering why you are not there on Portugal's Atlantic Coast.

Need another reason? The Farol da Nazaré, the Nazaré Lighthouse. Excellent views of the ocean, including the mega-waves that hit town usually in November. The Farol da Nazaré also had a bunch of wooden ducks placed about the stone walls of the lighthouse/fortress. "Why?," you ask. Some people see wooden ducks on stone walls at a lighthouse and ask why.  I dream of wooden ducks that never were and ask why not. (Actually, I'm more likely to dream of metal animal sculptures that never were and asking why not about those, but wooden ducks will work, too. I'm sure Robert Kennedy wouldn't mind me appropriating his quote.)

Visited September 2017.

Monday, August 24, 2020

Phot-o' the Day: Gelato Stand, Zadar, Croatia

The most ornate gelato display ever?

This is Slad Ice Cream, on Široka Ulica in Old Town Zadar in Croatia.  There are other gelato stands in Old Town Zadar.  There are other gelato stands on Široka Ulica.  The other gelato stands may be close to having as intricate of a display, but none match this one.

Visited September 2014.

Sunday, August 23, 2020

Cool Sunday Church Phot-o' the Day: St. Michael's Orthodox Cathedral, Sitka, Alaska

I don't have any pictures of chapels on top of snowy mountains, so for a "cool" church photo, I looked north.  Alaska!

This is St. Michael's Orthodox Cathedral in Sitka, Alaska.  This was the first Russian Orthodox church built in North America, from back in the time before Seward's Folly that Alaska was a little eastward extension of Russian Siberia that jumped the Bering Strait and took hold on North America.

This is from July 2017.  Alaska in July is still very cool.  Las Vegas is cooling down.  Yesterday, I was driving the Birthday Dog to the park at dusk and the car thermometer said/read 98 degrees, which was the first time in over a week that the temperature had already dropped into the double digits at that hour.  You know you've lived in Las Vegas a long time when the temperature is 98 at dusk and you're reaction is:  "Oh!  It's cooling down nicely!"


Saturday, August 22, 2020

Cool Digitized Analog Phot-o' the Day: Rocky Mountain National Park, West Side

The heat wave here in Las Vegas is dissipating. We may have seen our last day in 2020 when the high temperature hits the one hundred and tens. Highs in the one-oh's for the foreseeable future. The very high one-oh's, but that's still cooler than the hundred-teens.

One cool place for escape is Rocky Mountain National Park, astride the continental divide in Colorado. I was there in late June 2003 and on the main road through the park, in the area around the continental divide (the road peaks at about 12,000 ft above sea level, I believe), not only was the snow still on the ground, the snow on the sides of the road (remnants from the road being plowed through the winter) was well over the height of the car (this was when I had an SUV), probably 10 to 12 feet high. That will cool you down.

This photo is from the descent on the western side of the continental divide, homeward bound. Still cool, however.

Friday, August 21, 2020

Cool Phot-o' the Day: Norm The Dog on His Tenth Birthday

Today is the 10th birthday (according to vet records) of Norm The Dog.

Norm's been slowing down lately, but I'm guessing that is a function of high temperatures in the hundred-teens, morning temps in the 90's, and evening temps in the one-hundred-oh's, rather than being related to the number of times he's circled the sun. Is today really his birthday? Or, when he went to the vet for the first time with his second owners back on August 21, 2011, did the vet say, "He looks about one year old" and that became his "official" vet records birthday? I report. You decide.

I've been posting "cool" pictures the last few days, photos of cool places as we muddle through an extreme heat wave here in Las Vegas. This certainly qualifies as a "cool" photo, albeit a different kind of cool.

Thursday, August 20, 2020

Cool Phot-o' the Day: Gullfoss Waterfall, Iceland

And what better place to go for cool times in cool places than the land of ice and fire: Iceland.

This is Gullfoss, a large waterfall on Iceland's "Golden Circle" of tourist meccas, which, in addition to Gullfoss, includes the geysers of Haukadalur, including the large geyser named Geysir (our word "geyser" is probably the only English language word derived from Icelandic, as we borrowed the Icelandic word and changed one vowel -- prior to the discovery of Yellowstone, the English language really didn't need its own word for "geyser"), Thingvallir (rock formations along the tectonic plates, spelled in Icelandic with that weird letter that looks like a bullet, and one of the major stops on the global "Game of Thrones" tourism tour), and the Bobby Fischer Museum in Selfoss. OK, I added that last one to the "Golden Circle," but it really is part of a circle with the other three and is, in my opinion, well worth a visit if you find yourself in Iceland.

You may recognize Gullfoss as the place where they shot the cover photo for the Echo & The Bunnymen LP "Porcupine." No? Understandable. No one should ever buy an Echo & The Bunnymen album. They have some incredible awesome fantastic singles, such as "Bring On The Dancing Horses," or "The Cutter," or, especially, the amazing "The Killing Moon," but a whole album? No. Stick with one single per LP and you will have all the Echo and all the Bunnymen that one person would ever need.

Getting back to Gullfoss, this is from my visit in June 2016. While the heatwave here will dissipate tomorrow, high temperatures will remain in the upper 100-oh's through all of next week. So more escapist "cool photo" fun is in the future.

Wednesday, August 19, 2020

Cool Phot-o' the Day: Walking Among the Adršpach-Teplice Rocks in 40-Degree Weather

The heat wave is still on. This will be another day with the day-time high well into the hundred and teens (that's 45 degrees for you people in Celsius countries) (which, yes, I know, is everywhere except the United States and Myanmar).

So let's go where it was cooler. One such place was the Adršpach-Teplice Rocks in the northern Czech Republic. I visited in May 2019 and the temperatures were in the 40s (high single digits for those you in Celsius countries) (any friends in Myanmar would have known what I was talking about with the Celsius translation).

The Adršpach-Teplice Rocks are a collection of interesting and tall rock formations. Between the location in northern Europe, and the height of the rock formations preventing much sunlight from reaching the ground, this place is likely cool even in summer heat. And the rock formations are cool in addition to being cool.

Tuesday, August 18, 2020

The Cool Cool of Olympic National Park (2001)

The Hoh Rain Forest on the west side of Olympic National Park

It is going to be a whole week of high temperatures in the 100-and-teens, so time to remember good times in cool places. I had the chance to visit Olympic National Park on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State back in 2001. I attended a convention in Seattle and, afterwards, headed to Vancouver Island and, right before returning to Las Vegas, Olympic National Park.


I am fairly certain that these waterfalls were in the northern part of the park, the part where you enter from the City of Port Angeles.

Going back into the time machine to back in the day when vacation photos were shot on film and  developed days (or weeks!) after the end of the vacation and you could see the few photos you snapped on the trip.


A weird fact about Olympic National Park is that you can't get from one place to another within the park. You have to leave the park to get another section of the park. There are multiple entrances into the park off Highway 101 which encircles the park on the three sides. So, to get from section of the park to another, you have to go back out to the 101.

I do believe, however, that there were big ol' trees in every section of the park.


It was quite green, even in the summertime.


At this point, I'm not sure if I'm in the northern section of the park or the Hoh Rain Forest section of the park. This doesn't look especially "rain forest-y," but the Hoh is not the Amazon basin.


This is definitely the Hoh Rain Forest in this picture, as this definitely looks "rain forest-y" to me.


As does this. Weirdly enough, it was not raining in the rain forest when I was there. It was sunny and only slightly humid. Well, sunny in the parts where the tree canopy lightened up enough to let the sun shine in the sun is shining.


Yet it was raining in Las Vegas when I got home. No rain in the rain forest. Rain in the driest desert in North America.

But I did have a chance to snap a feel pictures (on film!) of the Pacific Ocean.


The Pacific Ocean off the Olympic Peninsula is quite different from the California coast.

It's Washington, so of course there's going to be wood.

Monday, August 17, 2020

Phot-o' the Day: Plaza Argentina; Quito, Ecuador (March 2020)

I spent five days in Quito, Ecuador, right as everything was starting to shutdown for the COVID-19 pandemic panic. That was five months ago and, after all that is happened in the Year of Our COVID 2020, it seems like it was several years ago, not a few months ago.

This is Plaza Argentina on the north side of Quito, just above the Mariscal district where there were a lot of nice hotels and great restaurants aimed at the foreign tourists. Locals call the Mariscal neighborhood "Gringolandia" because this is where you see us Gringos in our natural habitat, spending 24 to 48 hours in the City of Quito before embarking on journeys to the more touristed parts of Ecuador, which almost always included the Galapagos.

I was in Quito, weirdly enough, to see Quito. That's not typical. Typical is using Quito as the transfer point because your international flight landed at Quito's airport in the middle of the night and you have time to kill before you head on to the tourist meccas elsewhere in this beautiful country.

No I do not know what that big wooden sculpture in the plaza is. I asked some locals. They didn't know either. I guess it will forever be one of those mysterious secrets of South America that will not be surrendered.

Sunday, August 16, 2020

Sunday Church Digitized Analog Phot-o' the Day in B&W: Chapel of the Holy Cross; Sedona, Arizona

 

The Chapel of the Holy Cross is a Catholic Church located on the outskirts of Sedona, Arizona. I am using the term "outskirts" generously, as it is not really near much of anything (except acres and acres of red rock). But it is a functioning Catholic Church.

For the longest time, I thought this church building was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. It's not. It's about as Frank Lloyd Wright as the Empire State Building. Or last night's bowl of pasta bolognese, for that matter. The architect was local gal Marguerite Brunswig Staude. She was inspired by ... not by any Frank Lloyd Wright designs ... but by ... wait for it ... the Empire State Building. Personally, I don't see the resemblance, but I'm not an architecture professional. She first tried to build a church of this design in Budapest, Hungary, with the assistance of ... wait for it ... FLW's son Lloyd Wright. Plans were abandoned because of this thing called World War II. You know, the one with Hitler.

That's too tenuous of a connection to Frank Lloyd Wright to have been the basis for my thought that this is a Frank Lloyd Wright work. Why I thought so is just a mystery. One of the joyful mysteries. It's not really one of the sorrowful mysteries.

Saturday, August 15, 2020

Digitized Analog Phot-o' the Day: Monument Valley, Arizona USA (in artsy B&W)

Monument Valley, on Navajo tribal land in the Arizona corner of the Four Corners region, was used as the backdrop for a number of movie and TV westerns. Some of those were in the black & white era. And that means the Phot-o' the Day is Monument Valley in awesome artsy black & white.

Visited April 1998.

Friday, August 14, 2020

Digitized Analog Phot-o' the Day: Monument Valley, Arizona USA

 

Monument Valley, in the Arizona section of the Four Corners region, is one of the iconic sights of the American Southwest. Its name comes from the fact that so many large rock formation jut straight up like a bunch of tombstones.

There are no hiking trails here -- there is no shade, there are no "facilities," there is no water -- so take in the majesty of the park you drive. The roads within the park -- one of the "main" ones is in the foreground -- are not paved, but the land is so dry and the ground is so hard that it really is the same as if you were driving on asphalt, but without the distracting ribbons of black asphalt detracting from the terra cotta red of the rocks.  I guess that's why so many "new model" automobile photo shoots were done here. It definitely would explain why this used to be a filming location for the old Hollywood westerns of the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, and, really, up until the time that the mountains of Italy and western Spain would play the part of the Desert Southwestern USA in those hipster spaghetti and gazpacho westerns of the 1960s.

Visited April 1998.

Thursday, August 13, 2020

Swetsville Zoo: Metal Animals in Fort Collins, Colorado USA (2003)

And the band played on. 

The Swetsville Zoo may be the greatest roadside attraction in all of the United States. Maybe even greater than Carhenge. So what is it? Where is it? Why is it?


Where it is is just outside Fort Collins. What it is is a collection of metal sculptures made mostly from car parts.


Why it is is obvious. Because the world could always use another collection of whimsical metal animal sculptures.


I visited in June 2003. I remember hearing a few years later that it was closing and that the land was going to be used for condominiums or a strip mall or something less whimsical. I assumed it was closed. But it wasn't. In the summer of 2019, the land officially went on the market, so it could be sold to build condominiums or a strip mall or something far less whimsical.

But the Swetsville Zoo apparently still is open and inspiring awe.


For example: wow. That VW Bug has been transformed into a giant bug.


Sea serpent and turtles. Turning old tires into the body of a sea serpent may be obvious once you think about, but who thought of it before Mr. Swets constructed his Zoo.


In a world of digial photographhy, I would have taken about 1 million pictures. But film was expensive to develop and pictures were scarce. Hence that awesome skeletal dinosaur has to be merely background fodder for that awesome giant winged insect scuplture in the foreground. The skeletal dinosaur deserved a photo in its own right.

Snoopy and Woodstock, transformed:


There was a small "indoor" section of the Swetsville Zoo, which is where the really weird stuff was kept.


It gets weirder:


This one has a dinosaur/Star Wars stormtrooper/I've been working on the railroad vibe that somehow works perfectly fine in this environment.

Not all the zoo animals are friendly, of course:


But more are.


This was an absolutely amazing place.


Well worth the time spent. Enjoy it while it is still of this world, even though it may be other-wordly.

Wednesday, August 12, 2020

Digitized Analog Phot-o' the Day; Joshua Tree National Monument, California USA (1994)


It was Joshua Tree National Monument when I took this photo (with real camera film!) in 1994. It's since been upgraded to national park status. But the photo is of Joshua Tree in its national monument days,

Sort of like if you had taken a photograph back in the 1500's of that large city on the Bosporus in Turkey. The photo would be of Constantinople not Istanbul, even though today that city is Istanbul not Constantinople. So this is Joshua Tree National Monument Not Joshua Tree National Park. Why did Joshua Tree National Monument get the works? That's nobody's business but the clerks.

Tuesday, August 11, 2020

Digitized Analog Phot-o' the Day: Old Quebec City; Quebec, Canada

South Park was right. French Canada is the best Canada.

This is a view of historic Old Quebec City, near the Plains of Abraham. You may remember the Plains of Abraham from the French & Indian War as the battlefield upon which the game of Stratego is fought. Yes, those red and blue lieutenants, sergeants, miners, and flags from the Stratego game were here in Quebec City. But not in any of those buildings, including that awesome signature building of downtown Quebec City in the upper left of the photo.

There is a long (and growing) list of places I've been where I've not spent nearly enough time. Quebec City, PQ, is definitely one of those. Historic and beautiful architecture. Great food. And a funicular. The three essential ingredients that make any place worth visiting.

I believe I visited in the Summer of 1995. I could be off by one year in either direction, but it definitely was in the final years of the second millennium.

Monday, August 10, 2020

Digitized Analog Phot-o' the Day: National Pantheon of Heroes; Asunción, Paraguay

El Panteón Nacional de los Héroes, the National Pantheon of Heroes, in Asunción, Paraguay. Many Paraguayan national heroes are honored and interred inside.

I visited Asunción in late 1997, just when Paraguay was emerging from the isolation and military dictatorships that had been its station since independence in the early 19th Century. Things might have changed over the last two decades, but the only person in all of Asunción I encountered who spoke English was the day shift front desk clerk at my hotel. But it was OK. I went to Paraguay specifically because I wanted to go somewhere no one else I knew went to. Twenty-three years later, I still think I'm the only one I know (in the sense of whether any of us truly knows one's self) who has been to Paraguay.

And I loved it.

Sunday, August 9, 2020

Digitized Analog Sunday Church Phot-o' the Day: Igreja e Convento de São Francisco; Salvador, Brazil

This is the facade and main entrance of Igreja e Convento de São Francisco, the Church and Monastery of St. Francis of Assisi, in the Pelourinho neighborhood of Salvador, Brazil. The church is just as amazingly beautiful inside as it is outside.

Salvador is a wonderful city. It is the center of Afro-Brazilian culture. (It is probably the best place in the western hemisphere to experience African culture, period.) It has the best music and the best food in Brazil. Basically, it is a Portuguese-speaking version of New Orleans, only with miles and miles of the beautiful beaches.

Visited December 1997. For years, I had wanted to spend Christmas on a beach in Brazil. In 1997, I did. In Salvador.

Saturday, August 8, 2020

Pilgrimage to Carhenge (June 2003)

Somewhere in a field, not far from the town of Alliance in the high plains of Western Nebraska, is one of the most amazing, awe-inspiring, roadside attractions in all of the Americas: Carhenge.

Three and a half miles north of Alliance, Carhenge may be found. And what exactly is Carhenge? And what makes it so awesome?
Carhenge is a replica of the more famous Stonehenge. Unlike Stonehenge, however, which is made of stone, Carhenge is made of cars.
Hence the name.
These are all American automobiles from the 1960s and 1970s, repainted a flat monotone stoney gray. Each car in the "henge" was precisely placed in exact alignment with the stones of the English henge of stone.
Where the stones on the Plains of Salisbury have fallen, the Dodge or Chevy or AMC Gremlin (yes, there is a Gremlin, see it right there on the left, atop two cars) is placed at an angle that mimics what can be found at the original.
But where the stones are still standing where originally placed, the cars are standing tall, like soldiers. Well, soldiers with a car placed at a right angle on top of them and the next soldier in alignment.

It is a spiritual, mystical and, yes, whimsical, experience.
Those cars were adjacent to Carhenge, but they were not part of the "henge." They're the wrong color, for one thing. And none of the stones of the Stonehenge were placed directly above like the two yellow cars above.

And the Carhenge site attracted other whimsical art, such as ...
"Spawning salmon." I can see it. Abstract expressionism is dead in the fields of Western Nebraska. Whimsical realism reigns.

And finally, in the greater Carhenge art installation site, there was this ....


Just a metal dinosaur? Or a foreshadow of the next destination on the travel through multiple magical destinations in the summer of 2003?