King Arthur's Castle?

A few views of the rock and ruins that are Tintagel Castle in Cornwall. The "birthplace" of King Arthur. The coast here was black and slate, vice the white chalk cliffs in Dorset that I walked a couple days earlier.

The Ruins of Tintagel Castle

The Ruins of Tintagel Castle

The Ruins of Tintagel Castle

Edinburgh Castle in Red

Here are a few photos from our visit to Edinburgh over Christmas. Aside from the Christmas market, it isn't really the best time to visit Edinburgh because the days are so short. The sun is barely up at 9 am (well, I can understand the sleeping in;) and is already down before 4 pm. So we saw a lot of the Edinburgh Castle bathed in red light.

The Castle - Edinburgh, Scotland

The Castle Approach - Edinburgh, Scotland

Stone Guard - Edinburgh Castle, Scotland

Tantallon Castle

Yesterday for some odd reason, I realized that I never got around to posting the photos of Tantallon Castle. We drove by the castle on our way back from Edinburgh. It was closed for visitors walking around etc, either due to being Boxing Day or winter...whatever the case that didn't stop me from taking a few photos from a distance.

Tantallon Castle - East Lothian, Scotland

Tantallon Castle - East Lothian, Scotland

A Nice Spring Day

...a week early. A drive through the Cotswolds with at stop at Broadway Tower.

Broadway Tower - Worcestershire, England

Gargoyle - Broadway Tower, Worcestershire, England

Looking Over the Cotswolds from Broadway Tower

The Wall

I believe this is post #300. In any case, this is a photo of a rock wall I ran across today during my effort to repopulate AdobeBridge (after reviving my computer last week) with the keywords I've applied to all my photos the past 3 years or so, It is about here, March of 2008 that Bridge keeps choking on loading/saving the keyword lists and I keep banging my head against a wall.

Wall - Zámek Žleby, Czech Republic

Lake Bled, Slovenia

Just spent a beautiful weekend at Bled, Slovenia. The weather was near perfect, the fall colors were gorgeous...and the company was fine too! So putting politics and banking aside, back to photographs.

Bled Island, Pilgrimage Church of the Assumption of Mary, with Bled Castle in the background



Blejski Otok, Cerkev Marijinega Vnebovzetja, Blejski Grad

And then we got to Prague

...which is my favorite city in the whole world...

Like hundreds of other people, I took a few photos from the far end of the Charles Bridge (Karlův Most). But unlike about 90% of them, I didn't use a pop-up flash :)

Prague Castle District at Dusk - Czech Republic

Zámek Žleby

The next day on our drive to Prague, we detoured off a couple miles to a little village with a big castle. According to the short wikipedia entry, the village population is about 1200. The weather was a little foreboding and chilly with the sun peeking out a bit every once and a while.

Zámek Žleby - Žleby, Czech Republic



Like many other things, the interior of the castle was closed until sometime in April. The entrance was guarded by a fierce looking (anatomically correct it appears:) bull.

Guarding the Entrance - Žleby, Czech Republic



And the Sun Came Out - Žleby, Czech Republic

Litomyšl

One morning we drove over to Litomyšl. The castle complex there is on the UNESCO World Heritage list. Most places in the Czech Republic outside of Prague, such as as castles, churches etc aren't open to tourists and tours until April. This was no exception, but we still walked around and had a look at the outside and the grounds of the complex. Then we spent a little time in the town square area. The drawings on the side of the building are pretty cool (you can see the details a bit if you click on my photo below)

I couldn't resist the juxtaposition of the little pink soviet era car parked by all by itself in the courtyard of this famous castle. I have messed with a bunch of different crops of the photo, but for now, this is the one you get to see :)

Pink "Cadillac" & Castle - Litomyšl, Czech Republic



Litomyšl is the birth place of composer Bedřich Smetana. To be quite honest, as far as composers go, I don't go much beyond Bach, Beethoven and the Beetles. So I don't really recall ever having heard of this guy. But he must be famous, his statue was in the town square :)

Bedřich Smetana - Town Square, Litomyšl, Czech Republic

Road Trip!

We took a quick "road trip" up to Munich on Friday and we were back in time to see the Super Bowl (about 12 midnight our time) on Sunday. The weather was great, the German food was great, the air was clean...in short we remembered why we liked living there so much. So I now have another 200+ photos to go through.

Saturday we went to Königsplatz where we went through the Glyptothek and the Classical Art Museum across the way which was running a feature on the myths of Troy. We stayed right at Karlsplatz, the walking area, and walked the couple blocks to Marienplatz and then on to Hofbräuhaus for dinner on Saturday night. Sunday we went through Nymphenburg Palace before making the 11 hour or so drive back home.

At some point, you'll get to see a selection of photos from the Munich portion of the trip, but in the meantime. here is a photo I took on the drive home Sunday. It's a castle, Burg Hohenwerfen, that grabs your attention as you drive the A10 autobahn between Salzburg and Villach.

Burg Hohenwerfen with the Austrian Alps

Počitelj - UNESCO World Heritage Site?

This will get long so you can skip ahead to the photo if you must :)

Unlike high schoolers in the USA, out here in the rest of the world, one sometimes has to travel to a different city or even country to take the SAT test for college. The nearest test for this cycle was in Mostar. So instead of making a 2-3 hour drive first thing this morning and then actually finding the test site before 8 am, we opted to drive to Mostar on Friday evening and spent the night. This ends up making it rather expensive for just a test, so while Shelby and a friend of Carl and hers took the test, Carl, Elesa and I took the opportunity and a little time to check out the surrounding areas and enjoy the sunshine and fresh air (neither of which is available on any regular basis in Sarajevo this time of year). At this point, we've seen Mostar enough and we will end up back at some point anyway.

First we drove about 30 minutes or so to Hutovo blato, a bird sanctuary. We were pretty disappointed...in our minds we were comparing it to Australia's Kakadu Yellow Water and Guatemala's Monterrico Biotopo. No such luck...3 domestic looking goose things and a glimpse of some type of raptor, maybe a Short-toed eagle???

Then we went to spend some time walking around Počitelj. Along the way, we came across an interesting old bridge similar in design to the very famous bridge in Mostar, and I stopped to take a couple photos. I'm sure one of which will someday make it here (especially once I remember the name and some of the details:)

Počitelj is an interesting looking old town built into the side of a hill. The first thing you notice is the castle/fort that sits up high on the edge of a cliff. It also has a neat bell/clock tower (minus the clock and bell). The town was heavily damaged during war and it is still undergoing a lot of reconstruction (although, according to the plaque, the bell and clock were long gone years before). There were men repairing a stone roof today. According to our Bradt guide book and a lot of web sites, including some decent Bosnia-Herzegovina ones such as this, Počitelj is on the UNESCO World Heritage List. However, when I go to the list itself, I can find no such reference. So I'm left wondering...are all those other sources wrong? is the UNESCO World Heritage site wrong or not up to date? Was it taken off the list? Has it applied to the be on the list and not been officially added yet? I mean what is the deal?

Here is a typical postcard shot that I took. The clock tower is in the foreground on the left and the fort (Sahat-kula), dominates the background up on the cliff. Also making a small appearance, the minaret of Hadzi-Alija Mosque on the right and a dome of the Sisman-Ibrahimpasina medresa in the lower left corner.

Počitelj - UNESCO World Heritage Site?



Oh, and Shelby reports that she thinks she did especially well on the math portion of the test...

Looking the Other Way

Exactly a year ago today there was an awesome sunset that Ryan and I watched from the balcony. This evening we had another neat sunset (unfortunately Ryan is not visiting this time) and I looked to the east and took this shot of the "castle" as I call it.

Sarajevo Sunset - 20 January 2008

Memories...

Sometimes you can't remember where you took a picture. In this case, I know it was somewhere between Split and Dubrovnik...closer to Split. And if I read a guide book, I could probably figure it out. The Croatian coast has walls and castles in almost every city, town and village. If you have been there, the reason is obvious....they had to do something with all that rock.

Castle and Walls - Dalmatian Coast of Croatia