Odd One Out – Reflections

It was Venice for all the reasons you came up with.  Well done everyone.  Too easy by far, I am working on something more challenging for next time.

I thought that the cruise ship might have confused some of you…

People Pictures – Street Beggars

When it comes to taking pictures I like doors, statues, balconies and washing lines, Kim on the other hand likes people pictures so I thought I might share a few of them with you.

This one was taken whilst on a gondola ride through the back canals of Venice…

Begging is quite normal in Europe, I don’t quite know where I stand on it, I am certain some of it is based on genuine hardship and some is based on a scam.  I quite often hand over some loose change just to massage my conscience.

We had spent 100 euro on a gondola ride and she was asking for just a few cents.

I sensed this woman was genuine, she has the look of being genuine and I would have gladly tipped some coins into her collection cup but we were in the middle of a canal  and how was I to get it to her.  I felt guilty about that.

Some people however I would never give money to, like this pair of scammers in Oviedo in Northern Spain…

 

Monday Washing Lines – Burano, Venice

 

Welcome to my new Project – Washing Lines

 

It is a Challenge, feel free to join in…

Monday Washing Lines – Venice Canal

 

Welcome to my new Project – Washing Lines

“The Venetian gondola is as free and graceful, in its gliding movement, as a serpent. It is twenty or thirty feet long and is narrow and deep like a canoe; its sharp bow and stern sweep upward from the water like the horns of a crescent…. The bow is ornamented with a battle axe attachment that threatens to cut passing boats in two.” – Mark Twain – The Innocents Abroad

Our friendly gondolier took us first through some narrow back canals heading for the Grand Canal that without pavements or people were curiously quiet as we passed by the back doors and water garages of mansions, shops and restaurants but the main canals were busier, lined with cafés and restaurants and with crowds of people crossing the narrow bridges every few metres or so.

I preferred the quieter back canals where it was possible to get a real taste of Venice. The Venice where people live. At water level there was a completely different perspective to the buildings and down here we could see the exposed brickwork and the crumbling pastel coloured stucco giving in to the constant assault of the waters of the lagoon as it gnaws and gouges its relentless way into the fabric of the buildings.

 

It is a challenge, feel free to join in.

Monday Washing Lines – Burano in Venice

Welcome to my New Project – Washing Lines

Thank you all for joining in, there have been a number of featured washing lines from Burano in the Venetian lagoon so here is mine, something that I knocked up from collected driftwood on my travels…

It is a Challenge, feel free to join in.

Monday Washing Lines – Villajoyosa in Spain

 

Welcome to my latest theme. Monday Washing Lines.

I liked this one for the way the colour of the washing compliments the shades of the building.

Villajoyosa is a wonderful place, an ex-fishing town, now a Spanish holiday resort of coloured houses with twisted rusting balconies with rattan blinds decorated with overloaded washing lines and pot plants gasping for water, all looking longingly out to sea. It reminded me of Burano in Venice, Cinque Terre on the Italian Riviera and of Milos in the Greek Islands.

It is a Challenge. Do feel free to join in…

Venice – Four Visits, Three Hotels

“To build a city where it is impossible to build a city is madness in itself, but to build there one of the most elegant and grandest of cities is the madness of genius.” – Alexander Herzen

Read The Full Story Here…

On This Day – Vaporetto Ride to Burano

“The vaporetto on the Grand Canal beats too, softly as a human pulse, faltering and renewing itself after every hesitation which marks a landing stage.”  –  Lawrence Durrell, ‘Bitter Lemons of Cyprus’.

Along with Riga in Latvia I have visited the Italian city of Venice more than any other. On 5th April 2005 I took a water taxi ride on the Venetian Lagoon from Venice to Burano…

Burano is situated seven kilometers from Venice, a short forty minute trip by Venetian public transport motorboats called Vaporetto. We waited at a stop on the Grand Canal and when one arrived waited for the boatman to secure it and then invite us to go on board and climbed to the upper deck where there was a good view of the city and the other islands.

Read The Full Story Here…

Monday Washing Lines – Venice

 

Welcome to my latest theme. Monday Washing Lines.

This was spotted on a Gondola ride on the canals of Venice…

Good pegging out, all one colour which saves worrying about matching pegs to washing. Being slightly critical, I wouldn’t hang stripes next to spots and I would have hung the spotted pillow case next to the matching sheet, but that’s just me.

At water level there was a completely different perspective to the buildings and  here we could see the exposed brickwork and the crumbling pastel coloured stucco, sun blistered and frost picked and giving in to the constant assault of the waters of the lagoon as it gnaws and gouges its relentless way into the fabric of the buildings.

It is a challenge, do feel free to join in…

On This Day – Paris Of The East

On February 16th 2015 I was on the final day of a short break to Warsaw in Poland…

I woke early the next morning so made good use of the time before breakfast by reading the complimentary guide books supplied by the Tourist Information Office.

I shouldn’t really have been surprised by this because I have seen it so many times but there on the first page of the ‘Warsaw Top Ten’ guide was the description, Warsaw – Paris of the East.

After Venice it seems that it is the city that more than most other cities want to associate themselves. I have yet to come across a New York of the East, a Moscow of the West or a Melbourne of the North but, when it comes to Paris, even without leaving Europe we have:

Baku, Azerbaijan; Bucharest, Romania; Budapest, Hungary; Leipzig, Germany; Prague, Czech Republic; Riga, Latvia; Saint Petersburg, Russia.  As if to make doubly sure, in a belt and braces sort of way, Saint Petersburg doubles up in this respect by also calling itself the ‘Venice of the North’ even though it has competition for this particular title from Amsterdam, Bruges, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Hamburg, Manchester, Edinburgh (which good measure also calls itself the Athens of the North) and even Birmingham amongst others.

I am unable to find anywhere that calls itself the London of the East, or North, South or West for that matter but by way of compensation there are twenty-eight villages in England called Little London including one only two miles or so from where I live which is a hamlet with just a handful of farm cottages, a pub, a railway crossing, a caravan site and a farm shop but no Little London road sign.

Exciting isn’t it?  It suddenly reminded me of the small village of Twenty in South Lincolnshire.  Twenty has a road sign to identify it and a local wag had added the tag line “Twenty – Twinned with the Moon – No Atmosphere”.

By coincidence Twenty is just about five miles from the town of Spalding where I used to work and an area of the town called … wait for it… Little London.

Including Warsaw I have had the good fortune to visit five of these alternative Paris cities, Budapest, Saint Petersburg, Riga and Prague and I have to say that I can find very little similarity in any of these places with the real thing. Prague would have to come closest I would have to say but only on the basis that they have a sort of Eiffel Tower.

Beyond Europe there are a few more but the most bizarre of all surely has to be Beirut!  Paris itself if often called the City of Lovers or the City of Light but I have never heard of it calling itself the Beirut of the West and I am fairly certain that it is most unlikely ever to do so.

In addition to the French capital there are of course a number of places that are officially called Paris including nine in the United States – in Arkansas, Idaho, Maine, Kentucky, New York, Missouri, Tennessee, Virginia and one that was even the title of a film – Paris, Texas. There is one missing from this list however and the one that is most Paris like of all, the one at EPCOT World Showcase in Disney World Florida.  Three other U.S. cities have at some time been called the Paris of the West – Denver, Detroit and San Francisco but these all seem just as unlikely to me as Shanghai in China!

There is also a Paris in Ontario in Canada and the city of Montreal in French speaking Québec has unsurprisingly also been dubbed the Paris of the West.

Paris at Disneyworld in Florida…