France

Continuing the series, here is a stunning, artistic snap of what has to number among the world’s most futuristic cities:

 

A few years ago I stumbled quite accidentally across the medieval walled city of Aigues-Mortes, located in the Camargue region of southern France.  I posted a few snaps of what it looks like inside the walls.

I recently returned, and now I’d like to share a few snaps of what it looks like outside of the walls.

One of the most impressive things about the city is that it is located directly on canals that lead to the Mediterranean Sea, and in fact some of these canals divert the water into moats, as this snap shows:

Will the amazing wonders of Camargue, France, never cease?!

This is an artists view of an ancient Mesopotamian Ziggurat in ancient Bablyon:

And, viewed at a distance, this is the very futuristic city of La Grand-Motte located in the Camargue of France:

First introduced to La Grand-Motte by the architect Jean Balladur, and as I will show in other snaps, there is a city ordinance that all buildings be Ziggurat in shape, which gives rise to the very futuristic look.

Oh, the wonders of the Camargue that I have shown you!  The amazing Flamingos of the Camargue! The amazing salt of the Camargue! And the amazing horses of the Camargue!

And today, the tradition continues, because here is a wonderful snap of the commercial fishing boats of the Camargue, highlighted in a stunning white thanks to the intense clear air and bright sun of the winter in south France:

If you’ve got great peepers you’ll see a tiny Lidl supermarket in the center of the snap. It was filled with Camargue fisherman.

In addition to being famous for flamingos and salt, the Camargue is also something of the “Texas of France,” populated by ranchers that wear unique hats and who raise and ride a special breed of white horse that is indigenous to this area,

Interestingly and as discussed in the link above, many people consider Camargue horses to be one of the oldest breeds of horses in the world!

I’ve shown you Amazing Flamingos in the Camargue.

And I’ve shown you Amazing Salt in the Camargue.

Now, at the very real risk of blowing your mind and causing your eyeballs to explode, here is an amazing, amazing shot of flamingos and salt in the Camargue:

The Camargue delta in the south of France is particularly famous for its salt which, just like the pink flamingos, can also have a pink color:

The Rhone River that runs into the Mediterranean Sea forms a delta called the Camargue. In Winter it is filled with stunning pink flamingos:

Interestingly, pink flamingos are not really pink because of genetic reasons but rather because of diet: they eat shrimp and algae that turns them pink!

Continuing the series, I took this snap at a construction site in the southern French town of Antibes:

You’ve got to hand it to the French – they are an amazing, amazing people who firmly believe a Zombie revolution is unstoppable. So they are taking incredible measures to limit contact between humans, which both lowers the risk of vulnerability to a possible attack as well as lowers the risk of exposure to any Zombie-causing pathogens.

I’ve written about the  French Robo-Hotels, where you can pay via a kiosk, check yourself in, and avoid all contact with humans.

And I’ve written about the French Robo-Stores, where you can select your merchandise online, travel to a pick-up center, and have it loaded directly into your vehicle, and avoid all contact with humans.

And now . . . just when I though I had seen it all . . . French Robo-Food!  It’s a kiosk that displays menus from local restaurants. You can order your food, pay for it, then have it delivered to your doorstep, and avoid all contact with humans.

This is the world famous Gare de Lyon – but it is not located in the French city of Lyon, but rather Paris:

With around 90 Mio PAX per year, it’s the third busiest railway station in France!

Update on 17. October 2019: Interestingly, I just learned that the city of Lyon itself is the third largest city in France. This is quite some coincidence: the namesake of the third largest railway station in France is the third largest city in France!  How cool is that?!

Considering it was built by the Romans in the year 2 AD, this building in the southern France city of Nimes is in surprisingly good shape:

This is a magnificent summertime snap of the famous Château du Haut-Kœnigsbourg castle high above the Alsacian village of Kintzheim:

It’s not just in the Amazon! What looks to be coming from a farm in Alsace, the anvil shape of the smoke is a good allegory for how the smoke is violently hammering the climate:

Continuing the series, this is Marvin the Martian:

Children today might not recognize him as easily as I do, having grown up watching Looney-Tunes cartoons on television. He dates back to 1948.

And Marvin-the-Martian is what I always think about when I see these garbage receptacles at the rest areas of the autoroutes in France:

I captured this breathtaking snap of wind turbines nestled deep within the Bourgogne countryside of France. It is a bit misleading, because when you get up close you realize how truly large and monstrous these wind turbines are:

If you’ve been to France, then you know how it is. There are literally thousands of wind turbines all over the country.  I could not find the data for 2019, but in 2015 France had a total of 5’956 turbines.

Continuing the series, here are more flowers I spotted while walking around the medieval village of Châteauneuf-en-Auxois deep within in the Burgundy country of France.

When I see a sight like this – something very pretty adorning what was once a military fortification, it always drives me crazy! I incessantly wonder when and how something militaristic was transformed into something nice, and whether the transformation came suddenly or rather just little by little. A good example is my blog post entitled From war to peace.

There’s a very famous French saying, and in fact it is so famous the the young French schoolchildren memorize this from a very early age: Vous ne pouvez pas prendre une mauvaise photo d’une bonne vache.

I caught made this snap while driving deep, deep within the Doubs countryside of France:

Continuing the series, here are more flowers I spotted while walking around the medieval village of Châteauneuf-en-Auxois deep within in the Burgundy country of France.

I took this snap early in the morning, literally laying on my stomach on the ground. I probably would not have tried that later in the day with more people around, or they might mistake me for a real photographer!

The Burgundy countryside of Bourgogne in France is an incredible, is an amazing, incredible place. You’ll find many dozens of kilometers of walls of stone, like this one:

Since there isn’t a lot of square stones laying around on the ground, it really begs the question of the absolutely tremendous effort it took to quarry the stone and transport it to create the walls.

Well, I don’t know how incredible they really are.

But I do know it drives me absolutely nuts to see an almost identical set of towers all over the French countryside, and yet not know where to get the details. Are they for radio – or television – or both? Why are there three platforms?  Why is the central pillar so large?

The tiny village of Charbonnières-les-Sapins is nestled so deep within the Doubs department of the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region of France that it is likely no tourists have ever been here – or ever will.

But if you do make it here, which itself would be an amazing feat, you still have a long, long way to go. For deep, deep within the forests adjacent to Charbonnières-les-Sapins lies a truly incredible park, La Parc Prehistorique, filled with dinosaurs!

But let’s please get one thing straight: these are not real dinosaurs!  The real dinosaurs died out a long, long time ago. These are just models of dinosaurs.

OK, now that you know these are not real dinosaurs, you can really enjoy the park, because they’ve gone to incredible lengths to show what it would be like if there really were real dinosaurs in the forest.

Some of the models are quite good, such as this one:

Most of the models really make dinosaurs seem real, by portraying them as they might have been in life – this enormous giant below is scratching his back:

But some of them are a bit more cheesy:

There may be a big question that pops into your mind: why a dinosaur park here? As I’ve highlighted several times in my blog, the mountains of this region are the Jura mountains, the namesake of the Jurassic period. Even today there are zillions of fossils just laying around and waiting to be discovered by paleontologists brave enough to venture this deeply into France.

Continuing the series, here are more flowers I spotted while walking around the medieval village of Châteauneuf-en-Auxois deep within in the Burgundy country of France. These flowers were high in the village overlooking the Bourgogne countryside.

For me it is a deeply emotional scene, with the flower on the right looking longingly at the French countryside, somehow wishing it could go down there but not being able to.

I’m actually not a very big fan of flowers per se – but I am trying to understand the in’s and out’s of the aperture setting on my little point-and-shoot camera, which makes the foreground image very sharp, but the background very blurry. I’ve had the camera for around two years now, and it was always on my to-do list to figure it out!