There Are Stones At Avebury!

Huh. Fancy that!

Yesterday . . . or the day before- it all runs together, doesn't it?- I posted a picture of some sheep at Avebury, the site of the largest stone circle in Europe. I mentioned Stonehenge and the stones of Avebury, but didn't show any stones. Just sheep.

Here are some of the stones of Avebury. Sheep, too. As with most of my early 2000s photos, this was a JPEG from a really awful camera. But, hey. It is what it is. And that's the village back there behind the stones.

#Travel #England #Stonehenge #Avebury #StoneCircle

 

Mona Lisa And Friends

May 2004

Mona Lisa had only recently been returned to her place in Le Louvre Museum after a season of restoration. She was back, and everyone wanted to meet the famous lady, now ensconced behind UV protective glass to keep her from getting sunburned- or at least from the effects of flash photography.

It was so difficult to get up close an personal with the painting without getting up close and personal with the horde or tourists, all trying to get their own pictures of the famous smile. I opted to stand back and show the bigger scene instead. There are plenty of better pictures of Mona Lisa around than anything I could capture.

As fate smiled slightly upon me, just as I clicked my shutter someone up close fired their flash and illuminated the framed lady. At that same moment a pretty girl posed for her father to take a snapshot of their own visit.

Niow that is what a museum visit is all about!

This is for the #joinindaily theme curated by +Johnny Wills and open to anyone who wants to post ONE photo for any of the daily themes as posted by Johnny. Today's theme is "Photographers."

#Travel #Paris #museum #MonaLisa

 

There Are Sheep At Avebury

They graze among the standing stones.

Stonehenge is known for its amazingly huge standing stones that were brought, so say the archaeologists, all the way from the coast, or even from Wales. The site must've been magnificent to behold in ancient times, but if all you've ever seen is photos, it can be slightly underwhelming to visit. It's not that big in the grand scheme of things.

Avebury, on the other hand, is a whole village that sits near the center of a very large stone circle- a couple of concentric circles, in fact. The stones are not as geometrically worked as at Stonehenge, but the deal is, you can actually walk up and touch them! Plus, it's fun to play with the supposed magnetic anomalies that exist around/among the stones.

The field that tourists get to enter is also occupied by sheep. so, just in case you were wondering, the stones are to the left or the right of the objects in the photo. What you see here are sheep. Not ancient stones.

The village is rather small. There is a pub. There is a church (open to visit). I don't remember much else. It would, were it not for the tourist industry, be what might be called a "sleepy little village."

This photo was a JPEG from a crummy little camera. Lots of flaws, a lack of real detail, etc. But here are some of the sheep of Avebury.

#Travel #England #Avebury #Sheep

 

The Lonely Skier

How much fun is that?

In February 2008 I spent a week in the Austrian ski town of St. Anton. I'm not a skier at all. I've spent maybe two days on skis, and those were of the cross country type. I've never gone down a downhill ski slope in my life.

I have friends, though, who are pretty avid skiers. Not fanatics- anymore, you might say of some of them- but they like a good slide down the hill. The reason for this visit was that one of my friends had non-refundable reservations for some of his employees, none of whom could go. They used to go. but one after the other got married, had kids, and etc. Fun over. So I got invited for a pre-paid week in St. Anton during the height of ski season. Nice!

On this day our little group of four had taken the tram halfway up Valluga to have lunch in a restaurant, then we took what I called the "telephone box on a string" up to the peak where there is a vista looking over the Alps into Germany. One has to say, "Spectacular!"

Of course, I would take the tram back down while my friends skied. No problem. It was a fantastic opportunity to get some photos, and there were a couple of scenes that really stood out for me. This is one of them: a solitary skier making their way across a slope already covered with the tracks of the morning skiers- in the mid-day sun. I can't imagine that ski conditions were very good that time of day. Even from where I was standing it looked very icy and crunchy- not much fun to slip-slide over. But there they were.

#Travel #Austria #StAnton #skiing #snow

 

County Hall & London Eye

I kind of wish one of those flags had been a Union Jack

Nostalgia can be either sentimentally pleasant or the source of a kind of pain. I don't mean the pain bad memories, but a longing that cannot be fulfilled. It's been almost ten years since I took this picture during my last visit to London. And it kind of hurts when I think about that. I really love London.

This week's events brought home a lot of feelings as images flooded the internet and streamed across my computer screen as I watched +BBC News live coverage in the aftermath of a senseless attack on innocent people. I have walked there. Right. There. I long to walk there again, and if I have that opportunity, I will stop for a moment to remember those whose lives were cut short by a madman.

These three frames were all taken around the same time on 5 May 2007. One is already in my Trips To England 2004-2007 collection. https://goo.gl/JDKrW7 but anything worth posting is worth posting twice, no?

#Travel #England #London #LondonEye #CountyHall

  

In Album 3/25/17

The River Avon

Yes. that Avon.

This was shot through a rather dirty window in Warwick Castle. It is really just a fifth or so of the original frame, and what I should have shot in the whole frame if I'd been paying attention. (Do you notice a theme to my posts?)

The original was a JPEG because I didn't understand the value or raw files at the time. Shortly after this trip (April 2006), when trying to edit/post-produce my photos, it all became clear. D'Oh!

This is for the #joinindaily theme curated by +Johnny Wills and open to anyone who wants to post ONE photo for any of the daily themes as posted by Johnny. Today's theme is "Rivers Or Streams"

#Travel #England #Warwick #WarwickCastle #Avon #River #Stream #Ruins

 

Trams Waiting

Prague's rail system.

This photo is also in my Prague – February 2008 collection: https://goo.gl/d1j4Sw

My friends and I had just made our way down from the Prague Castle and St. Vitus Cathedral area, and we were very hungry. But there was this scene that needed capturing. They kept moving, but I stopped for a couple of minutes to get a shot.

When you're strictly a tourist and part of a group, you have to keep up with them. You don't always have the choice of hanging out and waiting for your shot to appear. So I lifted my camera to my eye and framed a shot, not paying proper attention. If I'd waited just two beats, the two women might have been at the rule of thirds, perhaps, or hitting a golden sprial nexus, or . . . or . . . but I was in a hurry, so, "Snap!*

This is for the #joinindaily theme, curated by +Johnny Wills. Today's theme is "More Than One Train/Tram."

#Travel #Czechia #CzechRepublic #Prague #Transportation #Street

 

🎵 Country Roads, Take Me Home . . . 🎵

Or to Wadhurst.

From the bus window as we waited to leave the Wadhurst rail station, the greens and whites and browns across the road called to me and said, "Take our picture!" So I did.

We were on a bus because there were weekend rail works happening on the way to Battle, the site of the Battle of Hastings in 1066. It turned out to be an interesting ride– about 50 miles an hour on a narrow road, on the "wrong" side of the road (I'm American, you see). And of course we had opted to sit on the upper level of a double-decker, branches sweeping the windows as we raced by.

We did get views of some of the towns along the way that we might have missed on the train. For example, we crossed an intersection in Robertsbridge with the naughty sounding name of Poppinghole Lane. Later, I discovered that Paul McCartney actually wrote a ditty about that street.

Anyway, this is for the #joinindaily theme, which today is "The Beautiful Countryside." +Johnny Wills is the theme curator.

#Travel #England #BattleUK #BattleOfHastings #Wadhurst #Countryside

 

What The Founding Fathers Said

Words meant to protect all of us.

"If men are to be precluded from offering their sentiments … the freedom of speech may be taken away, and dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter."
George Washington, first US president

Postings from Google+ and a few other things.