I’m in Venice his week. This afternoon I spent a bit of time watching the activity on the Grand Canal from a little wooden dock. On the way to Venice I saw a lot of photos where the tied up gondolas were blurred with the movement of the water. I decided to give this effect a try.
You can see a loaded ferry seemingly on a collision course with the rocks in this photo of Manarola’s harbor. What’s actually happening is people are boarding as the ferry is nosed up to the “ferry dock”. I put the ferry dock in quotes because it’s less a dock than a rocky coastline with a couple of cleats on it. The ferry noses up to it, and the crew roll out a gang plank for people to climb aboard as the boat pitches and rolls with the waves.
The focal point of the citadel in Sisteron is the chapel sat just below the upper ramparts. Unfortunately, it was bombed in the second World War and has had to be completely restored.
To the left of the chapel you can see a tower which is actually built on the top of the bridge. On the front you can see a very small window. This marks the room Prince Jean Casimir Vasa, future king of Poland, was held captive for a whole year. The winter spent up there must have been brutal.
When I took this photo in Phong Na, Vietnam, I was precariously balanced on a rickety bamboo bridge. A little farther on we were stood on one, when it suddenly dropped about a half foot, nearly dumping us overboard.
I hope you’re not getting tired of views from this hillside in the Swiss Alps, cause I took a lot of photos up there!
I figured that after yesterday’s photo of Moorish architecture in Spain it made sense to followup with ornate architecture from Morocco. This is a facade of one of the interior courtyards of the Ben Youssef Madrasa which is in an old Islamic school located in the Medina.
The Moorish influence on the architecture of Seville is incredible. Even the giant Gothic Cathedral relies heavily on the original mosque on the site for one of its wings. When I go to post photos from this city, I often have to pause and figure out whether they were taken in Spain or Morocco.
When we arrived in the Mekong Delta it was late evening. There was an old lady sat in our lobby who offered to arrange a guide for us in the morning. I was a little suspicious of this seemingly too convenient option, particularly as a guy who had been on our bus repeatedly tried to direct us to the wrong hotel just before our arrival.
But, it was late and we knew we needed an early start to get to the markets so we decided to go for it. She didn’t let us down as she escorted us to meet our guide who would take us out for the day. She picked up a load of reeds on the way and spent most of the day making little handicrafts for us as she meandered through the markets and streams that make up the Mekong.
On my third day in the Cinque Terre, I decided to walk from Manarola to Corniglia. I knew that there would be some walking up involved as Corniglia is on top of the cliffs. I asked at my hotel where the path started and they pointed towards a steep flight of stairs heading up the hill. I asked if that was the extent of the walking up involved and he told me it flattened out at the top of the hill. What I didn’t realise is that you couldn’t really see the extent of the hill until you were at the top of that first set of stairs. It was far higher than I realised!
Still, the uphill walking resulted in a lot of photos as I needed an excuse to catch my breath.
