A renaissance man for the twenty-first century!
I don’t know when it started.
I don’t know how it started.
But I do know that today London is covered with pubs that have very fancy exteriors.
I took this snap on my second visit to London:
But then I quickly realized that just about every pub had a pretty exterior, such as this one:
And this one:
At this point I stopped taking snaps of pubs. If they are all like this, I am sure there are coffee table books that can do a better job at capturing them than me!
During the late summer, particularly after a bout of thunderstorms as shown here, the Rheinfall is an incredible sight to behold. It lacks the steep drop of Niagara Falls, of course:
But it more than compensates for this by giving visitors the chance to walk down just mere feet from the thundering, pounding wall of water:
Of course, the locals here don’t speak German but rather a more evolved form of the language, known as Allemanic. So located here in the heart of Allemanic speaking Switzerland, the locals usually call it Rhyfall or even Rhyfau (tending toward the Bernese version of Allemanic).
The great thing about having a photo blog is that you get the chance to learn little interesting facts. While driving around Southern California I took this snap overlooking the city of Long Beach:
And I couldn’t resist driving up and seeing one of these oil pumps up close:
But naturally I got curious about why there are so many oil pumps in this area, so a quick check on Wikipedia pulled up this article about the Long Beach Oil Field, at one time a hugely important natural resource for the U.S.
Capable of carrying over 800 passengers, the Airbus A380 is currently the world’s largest passenger aircraft. And the amazing perk about my job is that I get to get up-close-and-personal with these jumbo jets.
Here’s a snap from driving on the tarmac in Los Angeles International Airport (LAX):
At the Tom Bradley International Gates (also known to us in the trade as TIBITS, Terminal 5), the A380’s are all parked side-by-side. And here’s a snap of us driving in an automobile underneath the wing:
Looking out their window the flying public sees the busy crew on the “ramp” but has little idea of the overwhelming logistical complexity and challenges that a company like Swissport has to overcome to deliver a top service.
I know its a touristy thing to do, but I’ve always wanted to see the sidewalks of Hollywood Boulevard, which I recently got the chance to do.
On both sides of the street, extending for quite some length, are the famous “stars” – 2600 of them, to be precise:
They are arranged in repeating patterns of two: two stars facing left, then two stars facing right. I’m not sure how they decide to mix up the celebrities, but movie stars, musicians, movie directors, and other famous people are honored here. In the snap above you can see some empty stars; the names are added after the celebrities are selected, but the stars are already built into the ground.
One one side of Hollywood Boulevard is Graumann’s Chinese Theatre,
And in the very tiny area in front, you can see the hand and footprints of the mega-stars:
I have quite a few blog entries about the wonderful historic buildings in Metz, France, which are in spectacular condition despite a number of world wars.
This building didn’t fare as well as the others:
This is the Temple du Garnison (or Garrison Temple, in English) – and apparently the main part of this church collapsed due to a fire in 1946. All that remains is this steeple.
I have no idea what kind of tree this is, but I thought the root structure made an interesting snap. I parked next to this tree while visiting Beverly Hills:
Well, I don’t know if he did or he didn’t.
But this is a scene from the film Beverly Hills Cop, that shows him cruising down the expensive and glamorous Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, California:
And this is a snap I took of the real Rodeo Drive today, risking life and limb by standing in the middle of the street to get the perfect shot:
OK, it wasn’t all that dangerous. It was a Sunday morning, and all the stores were closed, and there was no traffic at all.
The first time something happens, you don’t even think about it.
The second time something happens, you call it deja vu.
But the third time something happens, and when it is religious in nature, it isn’t just scary – it’s terrifying!
The first time it happened I had a rental car in the San Francisco Bay Area, and I got lost. So I pulled over to the nearest parking lot to check the navigation system, and this happened to be a famous Mormon temple. I never gave it a second thought.
The second time it happened I had a rental car in the Chevy Chase neighborhood near Washington DC area, and I got lost. So I pulled over to the nearest parking lot to check the navigation system, and this happened to be a famous Mormon temple. I immediately thought, deja vu!
The third time it happened I had a rental car in the Burbank area of Southern California, and I got lost. So I pulled over to the nearest parking lot to check the navigation sysstem, and this happened to be a famous Mormon temple. I immediately thought: this isn’t just scary, this is now terrifying!
Now, I am not Mormon. But is something trying to tell me, I should become one?
I used to live on Lake Thun, and this was the view from my apartment:
Shortly after I moved here I read a book that referred to the “seven gates of Jerusalem,” which were apparently seven majestic castles that were found around Lake Thun.
Here is one of the castles, in the town of Oberhofen am Thunersee:
However, I’ve never been able to find the original reference in the book I read – or any other reference to this term.
To make matters worse, as far as I can tell there are only five castles, not seven: Hünegg, Spiez, Thun, Oberhofen, and Schadau.
But the mystery is still an interesting one: who coined the connection between these medieval castles around a lake and a holy city in a desert thousands of kilometers away?
I don’t know when it first started to happen.
I don’t know how it started to happen.
But I do know if you visit Manhattan today, the original ethnic Jewish and Italian seem to be slowly obscured – if not downright pushed out – by Chinese, Korean, and Sushi restaurants, as this snap (one of my favorites) shows:
If you spend enough time walking around medieval German and Swiss villages, you’ll eventually notice that most of the houses are so-called half-timbered houses (with planks of wood separating the stuccoed exterior) but that a number of houses are painted in a very ornate and detailed style.
Here is one such house that I discovered in Olten, which shows both styles: the half-timbering at the top, and a large painted area below:
What I don’t know is the history of these houses. Were they always like that right from the beginning? Were perhaps ALL the houses like this, right from the beginning, and was it only recently that some of the houses stopped receiving this painted attention? One of the many, many mysteries if you live in Europe!
In a recent post I showed a tram in Strasbourg stopped at the Place de l’homme du fer – which you can roughly translate as Iron Man Square. If you are curious about how it got its name, just have a short look around and you’ll quickly see this man in armor hanging on the wall:
And he looks even more impressive close up:
This used to be the location of an armory, and the original coat of arms was hung up in the year 1740. What you see here, however, is just a replica – fortunately, the original has been moved to a museum to be preserved.
One of my favorite snaps, taken in the early spring, showing the sunlight breaking through the clouds onto the wintered sailboats on Lake Thun:
Olten, situated along the river Aare, is very picturesque:
What’s very interesting is how the occasional floods have left their mark on the buildings, as this snap shows:
On the day I visited it seems I was not alone to stop and enjoy the view. A lone wasp took a short break from his busy day to relax, eat a savory spider he just caught, and admire the view of the river:
One of my favorite snaps of the UNESCO city of Bern, but you have to expand it to really appreciate it:
I wonder if you can call a Chinese millipede a Chinapede? At any rate, sometime after I took this snap of a millipede in Hainan, China, I realized that without some reference it’s hard to anyone to appreciate just how large this fellow was:
The problem with the Disneyland-like look of so many buildings in Las Vegas it that it obscures that there are some true architectural gems, as this snap (one of my favorites) of the Wynn Las Vegas shows:
About the only way you can take decent photographs of the massive European cathedrals is from a distance, as this snap overlooking the Rhein River near the German city of Köln shows:
Continuing the series, this is what you’ll see if you visit the Briner company, at least if you don’t fall asleep first, because in this industrial part of the Swiss city of Winterthur each building tries to outdo its neighbors in achieving the greatest architectural boredom:
But, if you don’t mind a bit of adventure you can walk around to the back of the building, where the building sits next to a railroad spur, and your eyeballs will explode when you see the amazing graffiti:
I didn’t want to photograph each artwork in detail, but I did want to provide at least one snap so you can see the amazing quality:
I’ve written about garbage in Texas and garbage in Switzerland. I’ve also written about garbage in Germany.
So as long I was in a garbage state of mine, I wanted to finish by showing a very common sight in the Swiss canton of Zurich: a long row of very nice looking, very pretty smelling chutes:
They make it just about as easy and convenient as possible for residents to drive here and empty their recyclables into the appropriate chute. From time to time, a truck will arrive, and a single driver / operator is all that is needed to operate a boom/crane to unload the cistern.
It’s also just as much fun to see the long list of items that are prohibited:
The Order of Saint Bruno, also known as the Carthusian Order, is the strictest order of Catholic monasticism – you can think of them as the Navy SEALs of monks.
I did some work in Grenoble, France, and this gave me the chance to drive by the most famous Carthusian monastery, in Chartreuse.
There is an erstwhile Carthusian monastery not too far from where I live,
and they still grow hops used for a local beer that they brew
Continuing the series, there is an unused building not too far from where I live, and the rock garden in front has been taken over by wild weeds.
The most amazing part is the diversity of the weeds (I stopped counting after spotting around 30 different plants) and how they seem to optimally fill their environment.
Probably almost everyone who drives by this place never stops to look – or if they do, only sees a lot full of weeds. It is truly amazing what wonderful things you can find if you just stop and look.
This is something you don’t see everyday. High on a hill overlooking the Swiss countryside is a little pool of water, surrounded by cattails:
You can’t see it very well, but if you look in the middle and far down the hill you’ll see the Thur River.
In fact, and although I don’t show it, just behind me is a substantially higher set of hills. So as the groundwater slowly heads towards the Thur it takes a little break in this natural pond.
Everyone will instantly recognize this snap of the Empire State Building in Manhattan:
But if you’ve got sharp eyes, you could in theory notice something else – but it seems nobody ever does. If you look closely, you’ll see that every building has a little tiny box on its roof.
There is a law in Manhattan that every building must contain a cistern of water on the roof that can be released and gravity fed in case of a building fire.
The truly amazing part is that nobody ever notices these little boxes until they’re told about them – but as soon as you know they’re there, you can’t help but see them!