Photo of the Week--8/9/10

Yes, occasionally I relent and give over the camera to someone else. And this isn't a half-bad picture of me, standing in front of some of the beautiful architecture you can find in Quebec City. We went to Quebec in the summer of 2003 to visit some Canadian friends we made in England, and had a lovely week in Quebec City, Montreal, and the surrounding countryside. We went white-water rafting for the first time, and enjoyed the Old-World style of these New-World cities. Unfortunately Boy had not yet started studying French, but we did our best not to butcher the French names.

Photo of the Week--7/19/10

Now this is the way to go after pigeons! Well, if there actually were any pigeons in Iceland, I'm sure you could get a good chasing going atop a pony. Although Boy was skeptical at first, he was soon riding like a pro—not that is was very hard, these animals knew exactly where they were going, so the only thing you really needed to do was hang on and keep your pony from stopping to eat the grass along the side of the path. Which, of course, turned out to be an impossible task for me, much to Boy's amusement.

Photo of the Week--6/21/10

In March 2002 we drove out to Wales, which has some very lovely scenery and very interesting historical sights. There aren't many pigeons, however, so we had to make do with some canaries* during a trip to Rhondda Heritage Park near Trehafod, Wales. They have a tour you can take to experience what daily life would have been like in the coal mines, where men worked all day to gather the "black gold" that heated homes and powered lights. We got our own very stylish safety helmets, rode down the mine shaft in a cage to the pit, and toured the place. It was kind of fun, although there were no pigeons to chase.

*I can't remember, and can't tell from this picture, whether these are real live canaries in the cage (my scrapbook caption says "real") or fakes for the purpose of setting.

Photo of the Week--6/7/10

Not many pigeons in Gibraltar in January, but there were plenty of the famous and misnamed Barbary Apes, which are actually monkeys, specifically macaques. As you can see, they are not afraid of humans at all, so we got quite a few shots up close—but not too close, for safety's sake. We didn't try chasing them, since that's not the safest thing to do and besides, they were more liable to chase you. I wish I could have gotten a shot as we were walking from the top of the rock, where several of the monkeys were riding atop a van ... maybe they thought we were the vermin who needed to be chased out of the picture!

Photo of the Week--2/8/10

You see why I rarely relinquish the camera when we go on vacation, as traveling with my fashionable butt-pack and the lack of proper hair care make for unflattering photos. But this trip to Venice in the fall of 2000 was particularly enjoyable, as we got to leave Boy behind with his grandma and enjoy grownup things like gondola rides, Vivaldi concerts in period dress, and a day at the glass museum. (Okay, that last one was for me only, but TSU had to attend a seminar for work so I didn't have to inflict my love of bright shiny pretties on him.) This photo was taken from the Piazza San Marco, looking out across the Adriatic toward one of the many plague churches (built in fulfillment of promises of surviving the Black Death) in the area. Sure, it was a bit cloudy, but who can resist smiling when visiting Venice, even with messy hair?

Photo of the Week--1/25/10

No pigeons in this picture, but I had to post it as an example of how you never know what a kid will latch onto when you travel. Boy was six during this trip to Germany, and he was fascinated by these little canals that threaded their way through the city of Freiburg. We visited in June, and in October he was still talking nonstop about how he was planning his own system of canals to cross our backyard, the neighborhood, the school.... I'm not sure what their purpose was supposed to be, I guess it was enough for them to look cool.

Photo of the Week--1/18/10

Did the pigeons notice it when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989? After all, many city pigeons are too fat and lazy to fly, unless you chase them. Were there East Berlin pigeons dying to come over to the West, but were afraid of being used as target practice by the Wall guards? When we visited Berlin, in 2000, it was still a novelty for us adults, who grew up with a divided Germany. Boy, of course, didn't find a visit to Berlin unusual at all: the pigeons are still fat, they're still lazy, and they still need to be chased, even across long plazas like this one.

Photo of the Week--1/4/10

Boy would likely kill me if he knew I posted this picture, but since he doesn't read my blog, I guess he can't complain, can he? This is one of those funny things you find when you travel around to different countries. In Prague we encountered dog bombs wherever we walked because they hadn't discovered pooper scooper laws, and here in Bruges (Belgium) we found this artificial "tree" just for dogs to use. The cartoon sign is hysterical (evidently it's a girl dog doing her thing), and it didn't take much to get Boy to agree to this pose. When you're six years old, anything having to do with pee is automatically funny.

Photo of the Week--12/14/09

You can't see the pigeons here on the Charles Bridge in Prague, but believe me, they were there, even on a cold day in January. This was one of those last-minute trips; Boy had a long weekend off from school, so we looked for some place with a lot of indoor attractions that would suit a brief trip. Prague fit the bill, and we had a wonderful visit. Because we were there in low season, the tourist sites were uncrowded, and we were astonished how far the city had become a tourist haven in just over a decade since the Velvet Revolution overthrew Communist rule. (It seemed like every third building was now a money exchange or tourist shop.) Of course, the city's attractions were fascinating, and when we spotted some pigeons on this very famous bridge, Boy took off in pursuit, gargoyles and bystanders notwithstanding.

Photo of the Week--11/30/09

... aaaand the latest in our series, "Boy chases the pigeons of Europe," features a really BIG pigeon. Actually, it's a chicken. We took a short weekend trip (made shorter by the cancellation of our flight on Friday night, making the prop-plane flight the next morning a little nerve-inducing) to Jersey, one of the Channel Islands between England and France. It's a very interesting place, as it has a lot of French influences (it's closer physically to the mainland) but a very British culture and history. It was actually occupied by the Germans during WWII, and it was interesting to see the traces left by that part of history.

Jersey is a pretty small island, though, so we had plenty of time to explore more pastoral places. This working farm attraction had plenty to observe in the fall harvest season (including a really big horse-drawn cider press), and Boy was fascinated with the chickens. Because they were big enough to fight back, we didn't let him chase them, so we had a peaceful scene to photograph this time.

Photo of the Week--9/21/09

Here we have the first in our ongoing series, "Boy Terrorizes the Pigeons of Europe." This was our first major trip, a week in Italy with my parents and my paternal grandmother. (Her first trip to Europe, taken at age 79!) The six of us flew into Florence, where this photo was taken, and then after a few days took the train to Rome. Boy was pretty portable then; we could get a couple of quiet hours in a museum by promising a trip to the gelateria (ice cream store) afterwards, and by pointing out all the naked people in the pictures. When you're almost five years old, that's a sure giggle. And this photo, taken in front of Florence's Palazzo Vecchio, includes a copy of Michaelangelo's "Naked David," as we liked to refer to it. Bonus! So Boy was in a pretty good mood and cooperated for this shot, where he's giving those fat pigeons some exercise.

Photo of the Week--9/14/09

I'm on my second cycle of vacation photos, this time featuring people; this one was taken 11 years ago, on a trip to Amsterdam. I didn't take many pictures on this trip (this was pre-digital photo era), mostly because we didn't see many "sights" but just walked around the city, taking in the canals and the gabled houses. It was fun seeing all the different ways people used the canals (for transportation, or even for homes), and you can tell Boy was fascinated. On that trip we traveled by bus, ferryboat, train, and yes, via canalboat. I love the photo because you can see Boy's stubborn double cowlick, which refuses to be tamed unless his hair is cut short.

Photo of the Week--8/10/09

I could have kicked myself: I forgot my real camera on our trip up to the UP last week. So I only managed to snap a few shots with my cell phone; some of them didn't save properly, and others didn't have very good lighting. But it's hard to miss with this shot: Chapel Rock, on the coast of Lake Superior's Picture Rocks National Lakeshore. It's very cool from the beach as well, but I like this photo with the lake in the background. We couldn't have had a better day for the 3-mile hike to the shore, so I wouldn't mind going back for a better picture some time.

Photo of the Week--7/27/09

We had a full day to spend exploring the area around Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world, before leaving on our cruise to Antarctica. We took a taxi to a ski lift which took us up to the Martial Glacier. Being early summer, there was still quite a bit of snow on the glacier, although there was enough meltwater to create lovely streams running down the mountainside. Quite a nice way to get acclimated to the southern season, I think.

Photo of the Week--7/20/09

Before we headed down to the southernmost point of Argentina on our way to Antarctica, we had a couple of days to walk around Buenos Aires. We took in a tango, had wonderful steak, and visited this lovely cemetery, La Recoleta. All the mausoleums are laid out like their own little city; some are very well tended, while others are a bit neglected and overgrown, like the one behind me. (Please ignore my stylish outfit; we had to pack more than two weeks of clothes, good for hot and cold climates, in under 35 pounds. I'm almost as proud of making the trip with only one pair of shoes as I am of surviving the crossing to Antarctica.)

Photo of the Week--7/13/09

We visited New York in the summer of 2006, to catch a show ("Spamalot") and do a little sightseeing. Of course, we made a trip over to the World Trade Center to visit the Ground Zero site and pay our respects. I remember thinking back then that despite all the construction equipment we saw, it sure was taking them a long time to rebuild on the site; even now, there are still delays in erecting new buildings. However, this one, at 7 World Trade Center, had just been finished in 2006. (The original had been damaged by debris from the WTC bombings; fire further weakened the building and it collapsed in the late afternoon of 9/11.)

I love the look of this new building. They used an ultra-clear, highly reflective glass, backed by stainless steel to reflect sunlight. I don't know if it's the color or reflectivity that makes the upper reaches so close in color to the sky that they seem to disappear into the heavens, but I thought it made a very striking photograph.

Photo of the Week--6/15/09

It may be torture on your bottom, but you can't beat seeing the Grand Canyon by mule-back. From this angle, you may think the path looks way too small for a mule (which is taller than you'd think) to traverse. It wasn't, but it sure felt that way during the switchbacks. I just had to trust him to find his way; in the end, the view was worth the acrophobia and the chafing!

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--5/18/09

Leave it to me to go to New York and find the spot with the most water and trees together. I've said before that fall is my favorite season, and this glorious day did nothing to change my mind. World-class museums, fantastic live entertainment, and 843 beautiful acres of parkland in the middle? No wonder people ♥ New York!

Photo of the Week--5/11/09

In the summer of 2003 we still had the travel bug and had a standing invitation to visit our dear Canadian friends from London (it sounds more confusing than it is) who have a summer home in Quebec. We decided to make a long trip out of it and check out both Montreal and Quebec City along the way. This is the Basilique Notre Dame, located in the historic district of Montreal. While it looks like a plain grey, boxy cathedral on the outside, I was stunned by the colors on the inside and had to share this photo of the main altar.