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