As you may have guessed from the title, our most recent trip was to China. It was a truly amazing experience and one that I feel pretty fortunate to have had. To western eyes, China seems quite alien. (And to Chinese eyes, westerners must seem alien too, because you get stared at A LOT when walking the streets there.) The wife and I have been blessed with a sister-in-law, who is from China and was thrilled to give us a fantastic tour of her former home. Outside of an organized commercial tour, it would have been exceptionally challenging to get around and to have seen as much as we did.
The forbidden city as seen from Tiananmen Square.
The White Pagoda.
It’s very hard to adequately describe the Great Wall. We chose the section of the Wall at Mutianyu, which is less touristy. This section runs along a mountain line and is pretty challenging to walk, but the views are incredible!
By the way, almost all of the Wall that you’ve seen has actually been re-furbished. This is what much of the wall looked like before being rebuilt. If you ignore the “Do Not Enter” signs (as we did) you can walk along these unpatched areas of the Wall.
Sorry to keep butting in, but… I typically like to get away from urban centers when traveling. Usually I’ll be up at 5:00 am or so local time to photograph the countryside in the early morning light. (See the Ireland photos below.) Circumstances prevented that in the case of China, so I shifted to street photography to capture a little of the environmental feel of the experience.
If’ you’ve been to Disney World, you’ve seen this at Epcot. It is the Temple of Heaven.
We flew from Beijing about 400 miles west to the city of Xian – home of the Terracotta Warriors.
And now the food. Truly some of the most amazing food on the planet!
Sorry for the brief text today, time is a little short right now. This is the tiny village of Doolin. It is the location of our last B&B. Cute isn’t it?
By the way, this is our B&B, and a few more images from around the town.
The Aran Islands were our first destination of the day. They are just 40 minutes off the coast near Doolin. These are among the little surprises to be found there.
After the Aran Islands we took the ferry to view the unbelievable Cliffs of Moher This tiny image really doesn’t do these massive structures any justice. But here you are.
So today we leave Portmagee. It will be missed. One more early morning walk around the place.
Crab pots – 5:30 AM.
Later in the day it was off to one of my MUST DO sites in Ireland, the Gallarus Oratory. It has stood for over 1000 years, virtually undamaged by time. While no mortar was used in the stones, the fit is so precise that it is actually waterproof. It has never been restored because it simply hasn’t needed it. The Oratory, by the way, was an early Christian church.
The Gallarus Oratory
Not too far from the Oratory stands the ruins of Kilmalkedar Church. Another ancient building that had to be seen. While the main church is younger than the Gallarus Oratory the site has a number of artifacts that are as old. Those include a sundial, and a giant stone cross, each of which predates the church building by a number of centuries.
Today’s Ireland Occasional is a tale of two islands. Skellig Michael and Small Skelig. Skellig is the Irish word for “rock”. If you’re going to be in the far south west of Ireland, and you get lucky, (the number of people allowed to visit the Skeligs, and the time allowed on the island, is very limited in the name of preservation), I can’t recommend this journey enough.
So onward. Your journey to the islands begins in a boat just like the one below. You’ll get no safety talk, or directions on where the life preservers are, nothing. The skipper of the boat will simply undock and off you go.
This is your destination – the Skellig Islands:
Skellig Michael
Small Skelig
While it may appear that Small Skellig shares the white stone appearence of the Cliffs of Dover, that is not the case. The white is entirely due to the copious droppings of the Island’s main inhabitant – the Gannett. In fact, it is the largest Gannet population in all of Europe.
A little closer view:
Just beyond Small Skellig is the larger (and less shit covered) Skellig Michael. About 1400 years ago an intrepid group of monks wanted to build a monestary that would be isolated from the world. They found Skellig Michael which is about 8 miles of the coast of Ireland. When you finally arrive, your journey has just begun. It’s 660 stairs to the monestary site. No guardrails, and at times a sheer drop of hundreds of feet to jagged rocks just a few inches beside you. It was a glorious day!
Oh, by the way, Madison was worried that we wouldn’t get to see any Puffins.. We’ll lay that to rest first, then get on to the monestary.
I thought I’d begin the Ireland Occasional with a lady’s view. In fact, that is what the location is called, “Lady’s View.” Supposedly, it was named thusly because Queen Victoria’s ladies in waiting so loved the view during a visit in 1861. And I’ll go with the ladies on this one.
And while were doing landscapes here’s another from above section of Kenmare Bay.
Our B&B is in the remote fishing village of Portmagee. This is just a brief view of Portmagee at 5:30 am.
More soon.
“In Space, No One Can Hear You Scream.” Now that was a movie tagline. Not only was it true, but it conjured up the image of terror with nothing to help you but the abyss of space.
“Fear What Happens Next” WTF? You call that a tagline? Let me tell you what happens next in Pandorum.
Two guys (Bower – Ben Foster, and Payton – Dennis Quaid) awake from hypersleep and don’t know who they are. They’re trapped in a room, on board a ship and the power is out. Something has gone wrong with their mission. Fortunately, without power, the ship has managed to keep a breathable atmosphere, somehow. But to discover the secrets, they’ve got to get out of the room. So Bower, being the smallest, climbs into the “air ducts” which are all stuffed full of unlabeled, non-specific, disorganized, black, flexible 4” tubing.
After crawling through the random, unlabeled, black tubing, Bower gets out and has an encounter with a woman, Nadia. (Antje Traue. You know her from movies such as “Der Staatsanwalt”, “Die Nacht davor”, and who could forget, “Berlin am Meer”) Bower, quite suavely, receives a very sound beat down from Nadia, who then attempts an armed robbery of Bower by trying to jack his “kicks”. (That means “steal his shoes”, mom.) And yes, amid the powerless corridors, she’s managed to find a HOT, “look at my hooters” leather outfit.
The robbery is interrupted when the new uninvited mutant looking guests aboard the ship suddenly appear.
I could continue with the plot, if you’d call that mish-mash of nonsense a “plot”, but I don’t want to spoil anything for any of you who might be “in” to donating money to theaters to see crap. There were 7, count them, 7 people in our showing. And all 7 of us left the theater shaking our heads, wondering why why why did we trust our hard earned money to Hollywood yet again?
It felt like the writers sat in a room and threw ideas from other movies into a giant pot, stirred, and then poured the resultant goo out on to paper and called it a plot. As if that’s not bad enough, they then went out into the pasture, scooped up a giant pile of manure, sprinkled powdered sugar on top, and said, “There’s your ending. Bon Apetite.’”
Was it scary? If Lucky Charms cereal commercials frighten you, then maybe you’ll jump a couple of times. Mostly you’ll just sit there with a puzzled look on your face looking at Nadia’s hooters.
1 out of 5 stars.
One final picture set from the Alaskan Occasional..
At 4:00 am there is not much activity on board the Island Princess.
At the Margerie Glacier, we saw a number of small chucks fall off. Then while I was scanning the ice this GIANT house sized chunk started its downward slide to the sea beneath. It’s hard to see in this picture but the tiny tiny dots in the distance are gulls – big ones. They give scale to the massive size of this ice block.
Just a fun shot from the road to Denali.
The locals say that less than 30% of visitors actually get to see McKinley. We were evidently quite lucky. No photo can do this mountain any real justice. Standing 60 miles away from it is still awe inspiring.
From the train ride to Anchorage.
Time is short. So here are a few from Juneau and our trek on Mendenhol glacier.
So it’s 6:00 Alaska time. That’s 10:00 am EDT. I’ve been wondering around the decks since 4:00. At that time the decks are entirely vacant save for one or two hardened early morning people and a very devoted smoker. (She’s been in the same spot every morning steadily puffing away.)
I thought I’d take a moment to post a couple of the photos I’ve done. With limited editing capabilities these are sort of rough, but they’ll do for now. As I type this, we are just getting to Juneau. So enough with the nonsense.
This was done in Vancouver after the Skateboard Invasion, the “Bum Fight”, and the Spandy Andy near beat down. It was supposed to symbolize the journey’s beginning.
A photo of you-know-who. I love having beautiful subjects to work with
The place is lousy with beautiful mountain photos to be had. You’ll see a lot of these.
Ketchikan church steeple with its frequent visitor, a bald eagle.
And another church, built in 1901 or 5. (It’s an historic landmark.)
A could from the Flora of Alaska series.
In Ketchikan, not too far from the historic church, is an historic brothel. (The blue building.) It was built on this boardwalk to, uh, service the “needs” of the gold miners.
Don’t know who these people are. Just thought they looked cute.
Like the one above, this was taken at the bottom of “Married Man’s Trail.” It is so named because it connects two areas of Ketchikan without going near the brothels a few photos ago.
This bird was flying in among a large group of bald eagles. It was the only one that flew close enough to get a decent shot. Not exactly a handsome thing is it?
Flying right behind the ugly bird was this bird.
And finally, from the “Who do you think you are, Ansel Adams?” series we have this.
Yeah. She died today. You left her on the side of a lonely country road. After a long drive, you stopped, opened the door and pushed her out. Maybe you didn’t even do that. You probably just tossed her out of the window. I guess you didn’t have the balls to kill her yourself. You took the coward’s way out. Let the elements kill her. Just another “stray.”
When my mother-in-law found her, she was 90% on the way to dead. Most of her hair was gone, teeth were rotted, and she was covered in ant bites. God wasn’t ready for her to die. Not all angels have wings. Some have glasses, permanent bedhead, and a heart big enough to beat for the entire world. God loves people like that. I guess they’re the real angels.
The Doc said that she’d been used as a breeder, most likely in a puppy mill. Probably spent the majority of her life in a cage – just producing puppies for sale. Very little care had been given. I know that, because it took a year of treatments, shots, surgery, and love, to put her back together. She finally started to grow fur.
For the next few years she lived with the mother-in-law. Nice house. Proper food. Vet care. Daily walks. 10 acres of woods to roam. She spent a lot of time here with our dogs. Nice little pack.
In her final year, she lost most of her sight & hearing. Still she was loved and cared for. (Even when she peed on our rugs.. really couldn’t blame her.) We all knew that there just wasn’t a lot of time left.
She died today.
Our vet swore a long time ago not to let another dog live in that kind of pain. It was her time. Her angel made the hard choice. It was merciful and painless. Is there a place in heaven for dogs?
I guess that brings me back to you. On the one hand, your soulless act brought my mother-in-law a lot of love and joy through that dog. On the other, you brought a great deal of suffering to a helpless creature. Who knows how many others. It’s said that the pain you make is equal to the pain you take. I don’t think you’ve had enough yet. You know, not everyone God puts here is an angel. At least, not angels of mercy.
She was an 8 pound Yorkshire Terrier we named “Roadie.” And she died today – but not alone on the dark road where a coward left her.
|
|