Photo of the Week--10/31/11

Annnnd next in my series of photos of things being framed by other things.... I love going sightseeing in great cities, but they can be very frustrating when you want to get a photo of a beautiful building, and you can't get an angle anywhere that let's you get the whole building—at least not unless you have a helicopter or can otherwise get onto a high floor in a neighboring building. So here I present Trinity Church on Wall Street, framed by buildings on Wall Street. It's a beautiful little building among all the giant skyscrapers in Manhattan, with a lovely little garden. I may get a chance to visit again this fall when I head to New York, who knows?

Photo of the Week--10/3/11

I love visiting archaelogical sites, especially areas where a whole community of buildings have survived, making it easier to imagine what life might have been like when the city was occupied. This is one of the many buildings that survive from the Mayan city of Tulum, on the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico. It's a newer city, at its height between the 13th and 15th centuries. Tulum briefly survived Spanish occupation; it was likely abandoned after diseases brought by the Spanish decimated the population.

It's a beautiful site, with temples and a pyramid along with many other buildings, some situated right on the rocky coast of the Caribbean. I liked this photo because of the relatively few tourists in the picture (Tulum is a very popular attraction) and the look of the columns that remain while the ceiling is open to the sky.

Photo of the Week--3/21/11

This is one of my favorite photos from our European travels. It was taken at Ephesus in Turkey, and shows part of the Library of Celsus, a magnificent two-story building (or what remains of it) that was completed in 135AD by a Roman consul of Greek origin. Of course, in my photo you can't see the two stories, but there's something about the play of light and shadow and the angle that really gives an idea of the building's sheer, grand height. At the time this was built, Ephesus was the second-largest city in the world (behind Rome), and this was a really impressive collection of ancient buildings.

Photo of the Week--1/3/11

We found this interesting site on a weekend excursion to Jersey, in the Channel Islands. La Hougue Bie has cool buildings from different eras in one place. Atop the "hougue" (mound, in Norman) is a medieval chapel. At the bottom of the picture, where Boy is standing, we have a Neolithic ritual site that is about 5500 years old. Although this type of site is called a "passage grave," its primary function was ceremonial, not for burials. When they excavated and restored the entrance to this site, they discovered that on the equinox, the sun's rays would shine all the way into the back of the chamber at sunrise. Proving once again that an interest in astronomy isn't geeky, it's historical.

Photo of the Week--11/15/10

One of the things I loved about visiting Malta was the variety of buildings and sites on this Mediterranean island. This is the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Mnajdra, a megalithic temple complex that dates to sometime around 3500 BC. We weren't there for an equinox to witness the sun lighting up one specific doorway, or for a solstice, when the sun lights up flanking megaliths, but we could climb around the complex, see the limestone megaliths and benches, and otherwise envision the place in its original setting. You can see there isn't any visitor center, or guard rails, or anything else to get in the way of the imagination—at least, there wasn't in 1999, when we visited. Now, I believe there is a tent to prevent further erosion, and guard ropes to direct tourist traffic. But when we visited we were the only ones there, and it was easy to imagine yourself in the middle of an ancient culture.

Photo of the Week--3/15/10

I'll bet you never knew that archaeology was so entertaining to a six year old, did you? Well, when you visit Ephesus, Turkey, and see these ancient ruins, you'll also find this twelve-seater toilet. That's right, there was a special "throneroom" where a dozen men could "rule" at the same time, and Boy thought that was hysterical. When he wanted to sit on the throne, our Turkish tour guide (we thought of him as the Steve Irwin of tour guides, that's how enthusiastic he was about showing us his country) took a seat next to him so we could get an idea of how the room worked. And yes, there are holes beneath both these guys although you can't see them.

Photo of the Week--5/25/09

In 2004 we took a trip to the Riviera Maya in Mexico with the whole family: my parents, TSU's mom, my grandmother. We sat around in the sun a bit, did some snorkeling, and visited a couple of really interesting archaeological sites. This one, the Nohoch Mul pyramid in Coba, doesn't look so steep and intimidating from this angle. We did climb it, though, and as you can probably guess if you look at the scale of the people on the pyramid, it was a very different view from the top. It was easy to scramble up; harder to carefully pick our way down.

Photo of the Week--11/10/08

There were all sorts of perks about living in London, but one was that Boy's school had a full week's vacation in late October. (Iin part to make up for no Thanksgiving, but also to correspond with British school schedules.) Anyway, in the fall of 2000 we decided to take a cruise that visited various Greek islands, plus Ephesus, Turkey; we spent a couple of days in Athens before sailing. As you can see, there are many hills in Athens and we climbed quite a few. This one gives a good view of the Acropolis in the background, and Boy and I felt like King and Queen of the Hill.

Photo of the Week--7/7/08

We had a very busy year of travel in 1999. Although we took the extended family to Italy in January, at the end of February we were ready to leave again. London is further north than Michigan, despite its temperate climate, and we were desperate for some sunshine. David had a school break and Malta was the perfect place to spend a week. Our travel agent thought we were out of our minds, as most Brits go there for the beaches and average temps in February are in the 60s, but we found so much more there. Beautiful Mediterranean seas (Malta is just south of Sicily) and landscapes; incredible architecture from the Middle Ages; and prehistoric buildings like this one, the Temples of Mnajdra. The site dates to around 3700 BC, almost six thousand years old, and has chambers with various astronomical purposes. I liked this photo because it summarized much of what we loved about this trip: beautiful weather, the sea, and intriguing sites that aren't overrun by tourists. It's definitely a place I'd love to revisit.