Looking Up then Looking Down

“Look up to the sky. You’ll never find rainbows if you’re looking down.” – Charlie Chaplin For this week, the topic for Sofia’s Challenge is Looking Up/Looking Down. I experimented on the slider using it from top to bottom. This is the St Stephen’s Cathedral and is a landmark of Vienna. It is the most…

Walking Up Petrin Hill

“The best view comes after the hardest climb.” – unknown This was in November of 2018. I read that Petrin Hill is a must see and it is very easy to reach it by getting on a funicular. So on one of our “not too hectic” days in Prague, we decided to go. But when…

Gates

“I believe the future is only the past again, entered through another gate.” – Arthur Wing Pinero Here are some gates for Cee’s Black and White Challenge – CBWC and for Dan’s Thursday Doors Challenge Tis is the entrance gate of the British Library in London. The gates to the library grounds were designed by…

Barcelona’s Public Art

“Barcelona is Gaudí’s” –Kamand Kojouri Our second day in Barcelona started with a city tour. The local tour guide took us to the different iconic architecture which were mostly the Catalan Gothic style and the Modernisme. This second one was a cultural movement at the end of the 19th century protagonized by Antoni Gaudi. One…

Windows in Montserrat

“Your desire to be near to window is your desire to be close to life!” ― Mehmet Murat ildan Montserrat is a day trip that we took from Barcelona. Here are some awesome windows that can be found there. Montserrat is a multi-peaked mountain range near Barcelona, in Catalonia, Spain. It is known for the…

Montserrat

“The mountains are calling , and I must go.” – John Muir Montserrat is a mountain range in Catalonia, Spain and it is just a day trip away from the more energetic and vibrant nearby metropolis of Barcelona. This is the La Sardana Monument in Barcelona where our tour group met up and is a…

Shoes on the Danube Bank

“For the dead and the living, we must bear witness.” – Elie Wiesel On the banks of the river Danube, just in front of the Hungarian Parliament Building are 60 pairs of iron shoes. The “Shoes on the Danube” is a moving holocaust memorial, which honors Hungarian Jews who were murdered in 1944-1945. It is…

Art in Barcelona

We crossed spacious streets, with building resembling palaces, in La Rambla promenade ; the shops were well illuminated and there was movement and life… I did not decide to go to sleep, even though I wished to, so I could rise early and contemplate, in daylight, this city, unknown to me: Barcelona, capital of Catalonia….

Wheels

“Life is like a wheel. Sooner or later, it always comes around to where it started again.” – Stephen King Now only did I realise, while searching on my archives, that I love WHEELS. I love taking photos of it … just because. So here are some of them for Cee’s CBWC

Red on Wheels

“You’ve got to take life and ride it till the wheels fall off.” – Brad Simms Bikes for advertisement, for transport or for rent. Here are some of them for Jude’s Life in Colour – Red Transport

Partly closed Shutters

Like a window had been thrown open inside my head and my heart, where there had been closed shutters before. — Malorie Blackman This is the fourth and last of my series about Carcassonne. This is also for Ludwig’s Monday Windows Challenge. Here we saw quite a number of old houses…some with widely opened windows and…

Main Boulevard – Public Art in Carcassonne

On the La Bastide Saint-Louis or the lower town of Carcassonne, we immediately noticed some artistic treasures. Here are some sculptures scattered around the main boulevard, a testament of modern influence to the city. This Square is known as the Place Gambetta. For Photographing Public Art Challenge Sculpture Saturday and 6WS The Place Gambetta is…

Doors & Seats in the Old Town

“If you like the fairy tales, visit the old towns.” – Mehmet Murat ildan Outside the ancient walled city of Carcassonne, France, hubby and I were surprised at how many beautiful doors we saw in just the main strip of the old town of Carcassonne. For Dan’s Thursday Doors Challenge In some hidden corners that…

Into the field I go…

“And into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul.” – John Muir A few months ago, before the Delta virus invaded Melbourne, I was lucky enough to stay in a working farm in Castlemaine in country Victoria. It gave me a time to find peace and quiet and a time…

La Cite de Carcassonne

La Cité in Carcassonne, located in southern France, is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the whole country. Millions of visitors come every year to this huge fortified city on a hilltop. From afar, this medieval fort looks like something out of a children’s story book. This castle was decided to be preserved…

Postcards

“The postcard is sacred to me. It makes me sad that no one sends them very much anymore because of email and texting. I still like to buy them, but they’ve lost their original function and now just seem like reminders or mementos of what they used to be.” – Elaine Equi I don’t receive…

Trams

“A tram cannot discover every road! To discover every road, one must leave the predetermined roads!” -Mehmet Murat Ildan I am going on a different direction for this post and I am featuring some murals or designs on the walls of doors and windows of a tram. For Sami’s Monday Murals and for Ludwig’s Monday…

Through Tim’s Lens

“Sometimes you just got to find an old dirt road and go where it takes you.” – unknown London has now reopened post pandemic (jealous!) Tim and Leigh (my son and daughter in law) decided to go for a few days away to the country roads of Dungeness. These photos are from Tim’s lens and…

Random Blue Houses, Windows and Trees

“If you want the people to understand you, invite them to your life and let them see the world from your window!” – Mehmet Murat ildan London may look gloomy most of the time but seeing these houses made my day bright and cheerful. I love these blue houses in Notting Hill with different shapes…

Through the Doors of Avignon!

“He who is outside his door has the hardest part of his journey behind him.” – Dutch proverb ____________________ I am sharing this as part of Dan’s Thursday Doors Challenge ____________________ The Palais des Papes or the Palace of the Popes is the most important building built during the Gothic period. I am featuring the…

Getting Away!

“You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You’re on your own. And you know what you know. And you are the one who’ll decide where to go.” -Dr. Seuss Ah “Getting away” – What a beautiful thought, especially now that lockdown is…

The Streets and Windows of Avignon

“Still round the corner, there may wait, a new road or a secret gate.” – J.R.R. Tolkien ____________________ I am sharing this as part of Ludwig’s Monday Windows Challenge ____________________ Avignon in France makes a wonderful day trip destination, which really is a combination of the young urban vibe and medieval, old town settings. Today,…

Avignon Windows

“Keep creating new windows from which to look at your world.” – Don Shapiro This is in connection to my travel post Boomer Travel. This is for Ludwig’s Monday Windows Challenge and for Sami’s Monday Murals Some random mural windows of a building in Avignon, France.

Sunset and the London Eye

“Trees are poems the earth writes upon the sky.” – Kahlil Gibran November 2018. What a way to say goodbye to London…. Sunset, a silhouette of a tree and the London Eye. For BeckyB’s #TreeSquare

The Palace of the Popes

 “It doesn’t matter where you are. You are nowhere compared to where you can go.” – Bob Proctor On our way to Avignon… The walls of Avignon are a series of defensive stone walls that surround the city in the south of France. They were originally built in the 14th century during the Avignon papacy and have been continually rebuilt and repaired throughout their…

Black & White

“What the human eye sees is an illusion of what is real. The black and white image transforms illusions into another reality.” – Ruth Bernhard I am not a master of black and white photography so my take on this topic is something that I experience and not from a technical point of view. I…

The Splendour of Monaco

“I avoid looking back. I prefer good memories to regrets.” – Grace Kelly Monaco is one of the world’s smallest country (second only to the Vatican). And so as not to be confused, Monaco is very small but essentially has everything that is expected of a regular country and Monte Carlo is a neighborhood inside…

On the Waters of Faraway Lands …

“Travel opens your heart, broadens your mind and fills your life with stories to tell.” – Paula Bendfeldt Missing travelling? 2 years and 8 months, that has been the amount of time that I had not done something that I so love. Especially now that borders have been opening up in other countries, I am…

French Riviera

“Meet me where the sky touches the sea.” – unknown You can call it the South of france… or The French Riviera… or the Cote d’Azur but one thing is for sure, this region of France is amazingly beautiful. Nice is the capital of the French Riviera and the city is called Nice la Belle…

Payong

“Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass… it’s about learning to dance in the rain.” – unknown “Payong” is a Tagalog (language in the Philippines) word meaning umbrella. It was an essential thing in my bag as I was growing up. Unlike here in Australia, where people just happily walk without it when…