The Best Photo

I was labeling photos from Europe this morning and found this one, which may be the best photo I have ever taken. It's from the parking lot at Tintern Abbey. I was so taken with Welsh that I was snapping pictures of the bilingual signs and ended up with this one. That's undoubtedly the Rick Steves Great Britain book cradled in my arm.

Scotland Redux

I visited Scotland twice on my trip. The first time around I met Steve and that is why there was a second visit to Scotland at the end of the trip. I forgot to bring my camera on our adventures almost every single day, so I have, for example, no pictures of the terrible, terrible, narrow bridge we had to cross to visit Steve's ancestral home. And I have no pictures of New Lanark (the first project of Robert Owen, whose second utopian mill society, New Harmony, I visited in Indiana; New Harmony does not include a Disney-esque ride through the utopian mill society experience, narrated by a ghost, though) or the House of Dun or Dunkeld Cathedral or most of the places we went.

I do have

The Den

The Den is an old, pagany site in Dunino. This is a pool and a hollowed out footprint that were likely used for ancient coronation ceremonies or, depending on who you believe, human sacrifices.

And Seaton Cliffs

I took this picture before I realized that we weren't to the really picturesque part yet and then I didn't pull my camera back out when we did reach the prettiest parts--cliffs and caves on the North Sea.

And the Hermitage

Steve at the Hermitage. This area of Scotland looks like Tennessee.

Wales is Pretty, Yes?

These are some of the sites we visited in Wales.

We rode the train up the coast to Harlech Castle, and it rained all over us. Harlech Castle is a fantastic ruin, though.

Kirsten and I peek out from beneath an arch where we were waiting for Stash. After visiting the castle, we asked a local for a treat recommendation and took refuge in an ice cream shop.

This is the beach at Aberystwyth. "Aberystwyth" is fun to say.

Aberystwyth Castle - Please note the beautiful, blue sky. In Wales.

View from Aberystwyth Castle

Dyfi River - close to the resort where we stayed.

Dyfi River on the way into Machyllneth, the town where we caught the train and went to market and which is an impossible name to pronounce.

We found some sort of pagan stone circle on one of our many hikes through the Welsh countryside.

Guernsey

Kirsten and I stayed on Guernsey for two nights. If you haven't read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society yet, you should do that immediately. It's excellent fiction, and it explains the German occupation of Guernsey in WWII.

This is Cornet Castle, an ancient fortress in the harbor. It was used for defensive purposes from the 13th century to 1947.

This is a tower that was built to commemorate a royal visit to the island.

St. Peter Port

The Little Chapel is a miniature replica of Lourdes Basilica, created from broken china and seashells. It's big enough to walk through comfortably (barely), and the detail is amazing.

St. Malo

Kirsten and I spent a day in St. Malo, a French port town where we caught our ferry to Guernsey. It's a beautiful town.


First we took care of some business and found a laundromat. Kirsten did some amazing, in-laundromat, quick changing so she could wash the pants she was wearing. Afterwards we found a hotel that would take our bags and store them for us, even though France has a security policy that prohibits baggage storage. The girl working at the hotel was British. She may not have been familiar with the policy.


St. Malo has a section of town surrounded by the old city walls. We found a bakery and bought baguettes to eat on top of the walls.


From the walls, there are views out to small surrounding islands and fortresses. The little islandy-formation in the background behind Kirsten was closed to the public because a film crew was working there.


This is a fortress off the coast of St. Malo.


We hiked down to the beach and investigated the fortress. This is the view facing away from the fortress.


This is a street sign in St. Malo. I would love to know how it was named. I hope there was really a dancing cat involved.


Oh, and we ate these yummy pastries in St. Malo too.

Mont St. Michel, Part Deux

Legend says that Michael the Archangel instructed St. Aubert to build a church on the island where Mont St. Michel Abbey is now located. Hence the name and hence the statue.

St. Michel

This is a small part of the Grand Hall. At one time it was painted and decorated quite elaborately for guests to the abbey. The fireplaces are huge. They're fun to stand in.

This is a monk wheel, like a gerbil wheel. It's a human-powered way to pull a sledge up and down from the abbey.

This is a view from the monk wheel room out to the flats around the island.

I always love cloisters.

This is the B&B about 20 minutes from Mont St. Michel where Kirsten and I stayed. The owners were British and the community is a little English stronghold. We ate at an English pub the night we stayed there.

The Happiest Place on Earth

Kirsten and I spent two nights in Vernazza and could happily have spent the rest of our lives there. It's one of the Cinque Terre, five towns on Italy's northern riviera that are connected by a hiking trail (a hiking trail that is mostly lovely except for the last bit we did that made me want to cry when I realized how many steps UP it involved).

This is the view of Vernazza from the hiking trail. See the reddish building behind all the umbrellas on the square? That's where we stayed. And see that pretty sea down there? That's where we rewarded ourselves for our hours of hiking (and where I cut up my foot on rocks).

This is the delicious strawberry and chocolate panna cotta we ate at my favorite Italian restaurant, Il Pirata. We ate breakfast there the morning we were planning to leave, but then we postponed our departure to Milan so we could eat lunch there as well.

I need to go back to Vernazza.

Stolen Photos

These are photos from Romania that I stole from other volunteers on my team.

This is the hotel where we lived.

Iunela is very sweet with all the babies. Whether they like it or not. Petre used to get propped up like this when he was being introduced to the concept of tummy time. It always made him look so pathetic.

This is Alina, the tiniest girl in the world. She has fetal alcohol syndrome and weighs a mere 10.5 pounds. Remarkably, she can walk and zips all over the place.

This is Alex. She has brittle bone disease. She's a great fan of magazine reading.

I think Iunela looks hilarious when she wears this little outfit.

Andrei is not a solemn kid, but he always looks solemn in pictures.

If he had his way, Andrei would be snuggled up like this all the time.
I look like a dentist when I wear this particular scrub top.

This is the preschool teacher who comes to the hospital in the afternoons and works with the older kids. She is so fantastic at her job. I learned to count to 4 in Romanian by being on the playground with her. When I told her that (through an interpreter) at our going away party, she told me that next year I can come back and she'll teach me the rest of my numbers.

First Cemetery of Athens

I am a great lover of cemeteries, so AJ and I tracked down (with some difficulty) First Cemetery of Athens.

I thought the carvings of individuals and couples were fantastic, especially the men with their giant mustaches.

This section of the cemetery was reserved for the burial of Catholic bishops.

Check out the knives tucked into this guy's sash.

Two of these angels flank the entrance to the cemetery. They're entirely made from metal, not glass. You can only see that they're angels when you look at the right angle with the light backing them correctly.