PETER HOEG SAID;
TRAVELING TENDS TO MAGNIFY ALL HUMAN EMOTIONS
They were holding up cameras to the sky.
As the sky was rained;
Rain; falling down.
We saw the quick, short lightening flash
As the rain fell;
So did light, bright light
Flashing down.
That light aimed straight to the radio
As it struck at the feet of men;
There was a great hole
Deeply dug.
What was hidden before was revealed
As it was discovered; removed;
The hidden word
now recovered,
The hidden light now
Recaught.
This photo was taken in Malmö castle. One of the wings is dedicated to contemporary art (or a floor of a wing) and this room was completely dark except for about 15 chandeliers like this one but all of them had different design styles. I should have taken a video of all of them. 😏
Anaïs Nin said:
"We travel, some of us forever, to seek other places, other lives, other souls."
USA EXCURSIONS
I was born in Colorado Springs, COLORADO but moved to Santa Fe NEW MEXICO for a couple of years and then to Brinkly ARKANSAS for one year and then to Albuquerque NM. In Albuquerque I found some nice weather with only a small amount of snow. So this is where I stayed and brought my family to when I was able to bring them to USA from Indonesia.
If you want to read the story of how I ended up in Brinkley Arkansas for one year, you can read it on my Poetry Page.
On the south side of Acacia Park in Colorado Springs CO. This is in the downtown area of my home town
And New Mexico; Photo taken just south of Old Town Plaza Santa Fe NM. Between here and Old Town Plaza is a Haagen Das ice cream shop 😀 This sculpture is called Flowers For Flora and I think it is a pun on words because "Flora" means" Flower" in Spanish. 😀😀 Flowers For Flora stands at Burro Alley and San Francisco Street.
New Mexico
One of my top 5 favorite birds, Geococcyx Californianus. This bird, also known as the "Roadrunner ",is native to southwest USA and northern Mexico. They can be seen running around through out Albuquerque. Geococcyx Californianus is in the Cuckoo family called Cuculidae. This is called the Greater Roadrunner and there is a Lesser Roadrunner in the Geococcyx genus. Nick names are Snake Killer, Ground Cuckoo, and Chaparral Cock. They walk as they hunt and then run down the prey. They do not fly far but they do tend to fly up into tree branches when they want to get away from something or someone. They eat insects, lizards, and small snakes like baby rattlesnakes. The Roadrunners grab them with their beaks and slam them on the ground until the prey is dead. Roadrunners are monogamous.
Walking around Santa Fe Old Town Plaza, we discovered the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum. Georgia O'Keeffe was an American Painter known as the Mother of American Modernism. She lived from 15 November 1887 until 6 March 1986. She died here in Santa Fe. The address is 217 Johnson Street. I would think that they could have named the street after Georgia O'Keeffe since one of her paintings sold for a record breaking $44.4 million..😃.
The entrance to the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum. Her painting called "Jimson Weed/White Flower sold for an amazing $44.4 million. This is the record price paid for a painting by a female artist. The flower with it's green leaves surrounding it take up most of the canvas. Look it up online and decide for yourself if it is worth $44.4 million. It IS strikingly beautiful.
I photographed about ten paintings by Georgia O'keefe but I could not photograph one of my favorite white flower paintings by her because it had a crossed out camera icon next to it. We can take photos of most paintings in the now open Georgia O'keefe museum but there are a few paintings with that icon next to them. Do not photograph those paintings.
EXCURSIONS IN EUROPE
Paris France.
These photos are mostly the result of my morning photo walks and a few were taken at the more touristy places that my family likes to visit. I seek the places that have historically significant interest for the culture of a place and my family seeks out the places that are best known on Instagram. 😄 Of course, those places are also cultural and significant so I am happy to visit those popular places too.
The type of photos I normally take on my photo walks, quite leisurely experienced with no security checks or hour long queues. 👏👏👏 This was taken on the wooden pedestrian bridge, pont de arts, that spans the Seine River from south side of the Louvre museum to the north side of Saint-Germain de Prés neighborhood where the Paris Institute is located. .
And this is the kind of photo that my family likes to take. We are in front of the Opera Garnier just before a guided tour of its interior. Farida said that this was her favorite place in Paris. We were lucky enough to be here when they had a display of original works by Pablo Picasso that he did for some kind of fair Parade.
Farida is standing in front of the entrance of 58 Tour Eiffel which is the restaurant on the first level of the Eiffel Tower. This is the entrance that one enters to arrive at the hostess desk which is just inside the door. Show them your reservation and get seated fairly quickly. The food is good. Service was very professional and efficient for us. They have fixed menus with 4 choices of entrés so we ordered each entré. They have 3 choices of main courses so we chose each main with 2 of the duck meals. They have about 5 or 6 dessert options so we chose 4 of them.
If you want to take a tour of the Seine River, you will have several tours to choose from. There are normal one hour tours like the one we chose, there are dinner cruises, there are lunch cruises, you can tour in daylight, or at night. You can book through their website which is www.bateauxparisiens.com or you can purchase tickets through several travel sites like TripAdviser or, as I did, you can get a free tour with the Paris Ad'Lib pass package. Dinner cruises will cost about $75 and the meals are prepared on board the boat (no they are not packaged dinners like the ones you get on an airplane). If you choose this cruise, you will depart from the pier at 1815 or at 2030, your choice. The lunch cruise is around $65 and the meals are also prepared on the boat. This cruise departs at 1245. There are also Valentines Day cruises and New Years Eve cruises. I think they both cost about $75 and the boats have glass windows all around them. The boat we were on had no windows so it was open to the elements but we were not on a tour with any meal.
We are on the Bateaux Parisien one hour Tour up and down the Seine River from the Eiffel Tower to just past the Île Saint-Louis and then back down to the Eiffel Tower area.
Nike was the goddess of Victory. This is in the Louvre museum. It was found on the Greek island of Samothrace. This is a very rare and special statue because it is a Greek original rather than a Roman copy. Nike Victory of Samothrace was sculpted by Pythokritos around 200 BCE.
This sculpture was discovered in 1512. It was originally displayed in the temple of Isis and Sarapis. Mythology that depicts the origins of Rome is also depicted in this sculpture because Romulus and Remus are here too. They are those 2 children next to the female wolf that is suckling them. They are the mythological founders of Rome. Tiber River is leaning next to a cornucopia horn which represents the riches that the river provided to Rome. Nature was often impersonated in human form and here is an example of that. Also found in the Louvre, the Tiber River is impersonated quite eloquently.
This is Islamic tile art which is part of the collection in the Islamic and pre-Islamic room in the Louvre museum.
A large amount of what is displayed in the Near Eastern Antiquities Collection in the Louvre Museum comes from Susa near the western border of Iran.
Susa was one of the oldest cities in the world and Darius the Great built his Palace there. The palace was huge as it encompassed something like 250 acres and it rivaled Persepolis in splender. Darius the Great also had Persepolis built. The next photo shows a limestone column from this Palace. 36 such columns supported the roof of the palace. Susa was mentioned in the Hebrew Scriptures in the story of Esther which indicates how ancient this town was.
THERE WERE 36 OF THESE COLUMNS SUPPORTING THE PALACE OF DARIUS THE GREAT IN SUSA.
This is one very large church. It is the 2nd largest church in Paris. It was the first church we saw and took a photo of in Paris, 2018. We took the metro from the airport to Les Halles metro station because I had to go to the tourist and convention office to pick up our Paris Lib' pass packages. After leaving the Les Halles shopping center, we climbed the steps and arrived here. Èglise Saint Eustace is in the 2nd arrondissement.
The Domaine National du Palais-Royal in Paris. This building was created as commissioned by Cardinal Richelieu in 1633. This is where the royal families lived until the Versailles Palace was completed. The famous stripe columns and a lovely park are located in the courtyard area.
In the courtyard of the Royal Palace. The artist Daniel Buren created the 260 black and white striped columns here.There is free access for the public but a guided tour of the palace is quite expensive. I think it is about $125.
The mussels and the escargot.
The cheese charcuterie and the pasta dish.
Rayhend and Reno before we gave our order to the waiter. We had great food and service at Le Chat Noir. It was around midnight by the time we arrived here after a long day exploring the Louvre museum and the Montmartre neighborhood. There is a lot of history here , just down the street from The Moulin Rouge.
I decided to take a photo of the tall building although it was being restored because Marcel Aymé lived there for a while. He was the author of the short story called The Man Who Walks Through Walls. It is about an office worker who discovered that he had the power to walk through walls. First he used his power to get revenge on his mean boss. Then he used the power to get rich by doing burglary jobs. Then he used the power to visit his girlfriend and eluding her husband. Then he lost his power while he was passing through a wall and he got stuck in the wall. He can still be found in the wall at the small, cute Place Marcel Aymé which is here on the right of this building behind the trees.
And here is the Man Passing through the Wall sculpture.
On tourist friendly Rue Daguerre one can easily get trapped by the wonderful display at Boulangerie Dossement. After we left the Paris catacombs we were walking on Rue Daguerre to buy a bottle of vin rouge at Cave Peret and then to Montparnasse cemetery to take a photo of Baudaliers' gravesite. We came across Boulangerie Dossement and had to buy a few desserts.
Copenhagen Dänmark.
It is very easy to find the right metro stations to get off at in order to reach specific sites. Walking distance from each metro station to pertinent sites are always very easy to manage.
Lost; 😏 too bad the café was not open because I took the train instead of the metro subway so I brought my family to the wrong area of town. We had to call my wifes' sisters' husband to pick us up from this place and bring us to our hotel.😖. He had to drive from Roskilde to pick us up and that is a 45 minute drive. We were supposed to have him meet us at the airport but I did not want him to drive all the way out there. I thought I would get us to the hotel myself but I made the mistake of following the airport signs leading to the train because those were the first signs I saw. But it was the subway, metro signs that i should have looked for. 🙄 After he picked us up, we drive down this road for a short distance and reached a very popular beach. If I had known we were so close to that beach we could have waited for him there. 🙆
Farida can be seen here in a colorful dress on the grounds of the very colorful Rosenborg Castle which is in central Copenhagen. The correct metro station to get off at is Nørreport. Then take a short walk past the botanical gardens to reach Rosenborg castle. The walk is only about 10 minutes and the neighborhood is lovely.
The moat that still partially surrounds Rosenborg castle has ducks.😏 The queens' rose garden is towards the right of this place.
This is the first photo I took of Rosenborg Castle before I brought my family here.
The queens' rose garden.
We are on the grounds of the expansive Amalienborg Palace. The correct Metro Station to get off at is Kongers Nytorv.
Across the street from the Magazine de Nord on Kongens Nytorv Square, is this building which is the Det Kongelige Theater. Kongens Nytorv Square is the largest square in Copenhagen. King Christian V is depicted on an equestrian statue in the middle of the square. King Christian V was the king who commissioned the creation of Kongens Nytorv Square in 1670. This theater building has the words, "Den Danske Skueplads" on the facade. That means"The Danish Scene" or "The Danish Stage". Cafe B is also located here.
Brønnum is a cocktail bar located at August Bournonvilles Passage #1 just a little bit off of Kongens Nytorv Square. It is behind the Royal Theater which is different from Det Kongelige Theater. The two theaters are on opposite sides of Passage #1 from each other.
Other places in Dänmark.
First one walks over the bridge that spans a moat and then one enters this gate to enter the courtyard of Kronborg castle.
I do not show up in photos often because I do not like to make selfies but here is one rare instance of my self making a selfie. We are in Kronborg Castle which is the location of a few scenes in William Shakespeare's play "HAMLET ". Kronborg Castle is in Helsingør, Denmark on the northeast coast of Zealand island ( which is the island that Copenhagen is on). From this castle, one can look on over the Øresund strait and see Sweden. Oh, Shakespeare's Hamlet has Elsinore as the name of the castle.
The little mermaid is a symbol of Copenhagen. She is a character from a Hans Christian Anderson novel. He was from Copenhagen. The statue draws crowds of many kinds. When we arrived here, we discovered a crowd standing around a mariachi band. It was almost as if we had brought New Mexico with us 😄
Rosgilde fjord. Beautiful place for a picnic in the evening, waiting for sunset.
Sunset is lovely here There are no mountains around Roskilde fjord so the sunset is spread across the whole of the horizon.
Malmö, Sweden.
We spent one day in Malmö, Sweden because there is a terrific castle to visit there. Malmö is the 3rd largest city of Sweden. There are about 350,000 people living here. It is a University town with a lot of history. St. Peter's Church is the oldest building in Malmö (around 1310). The Tunnein building is also from around 1310. We spent about 2 hours in the castle and about 3 hours at the Stortorget pedestrian mall. The tallest building in Scandinavia is here and it is called the twisting tower.
Here is a photo of me taking a photo of myself while standing in a mirrored staircase in Malmö Castle.