Still going through the photo collections, so here’s some video for now:
June, 2009
-
St. Peter’s Square & Basilica (video)
June 24, 2009 by Gail
Posted in Europe, Videoclips | No Comments
-
Home From Rome
June 23, 2009 by Gail
My friend scored this heavy-duty pasta maker at a flea market on Sunday, which is doubly brilliant because we couldn’t find a similar model new anywhere in Rome. This thing weighs a tonne! My bag was less than 10kgs when I flew to Vienna, and it weighed in at more than 15kgs from Rome. The only other stuff I bought was lightweight, so the pasta maker must weigh around 5kgs!
My flight from Rome was due to arrive at 10:15pm Monday night but touched down about half an hour earlier, time savings that was gobbled up by a long wait at the carousel for my one bag, and the misfortune of shedding ONE too many keys off my keychain when I left for Europe, which meant that I got in my front door but locked myself out of my apartment with cats wailing on the other side!
A couple of hours later I finally crossed the threshold of my doorway and was greeted by the furry gatekeepers.
Backing up photos now and then some sleep before work.
Posted in House of Fielding, Travel, Xena & Beano | 4 Comments
-
When In Rome
June 21, 2009 by Gail
… pray for (unlocked) wifi. I just lost a post! Time to give up and go to The Vatican again before I lose another one. I think The Holinesses are telling me to get off the iPod Touch because it’s Sunday. Ciao for now!
Posted in Mobile Blogging | No Comments
-
Day 3 – Bratislava Birthday
June 17, 2009 by Gail
Another photo-less post, I’m afraid, no way to download my Bratislava photos. I’m typing this out on the iPod Touch so will likely be a shortish placeholder and the rest filled in later.
Vienna-Bratislava was by high-speed catamaran and more reasonably-priced than it sounds (28 euros, weekday pricing, 30 euros on weekends). Would definitely do that again, as the opportunity to travel this way between capital cities is rare. It was announced as a 75-minute journey, but point-to-point turned out to take only an hour.
Bratislava’s historic quarter is charming and worth more than the 10 minutes Radovan claimed it would take to walk through it (hyperbole aside). He recommended checking out the UFO-like restaurant gracing the one end of a bridge, and I have a zillion photos of it.
“You can’t miss it,” he said, which is absolutely right unless you never look up.
I left my bag at the bus station all afternoon until around 8 o’clock when the left luggage attendant knocked off for the day and my host Matej got home. In that time I walked to the Old Town and around Hrad Castle, which is sheathed in construction material. Fantastic views of the city from up there and the parliament building, though, so it’s still worth the uphill trek (’cause castles are always situated above the city).
When I arrived at Matej’s place a little after 8pm (once I learned the hard way to use the farebox/automat and not try shoving a coin into the ticket validater), he greeted me with a birthday cake that he baked himself! I shot a little video of Matej playing a tiny instrument called something like a “juice flute” in English, which I’ll post after I get home. It was HIS birthday on Tuesday, so it was a joint birthday cake, actually. It went down nicely with the Niagara icewine I brought with me.
After a late dinner we had the choice of going to a local pub (local pubs are always a form of entertainment — or, should I say the patrons are) or check out a panoramic view of the city night lights at a semi-secret spot high up in the wooded peaks between people’s homes. We chose the latter.
Matej only discovered this place very recently, himself, and he’s a local. There’s no way any tourists like Nell or I would find it, since there are no signposts and at times it felt like we were trespassing people’s driveways when dogs would start barking. My powerful LED flashlight came in very handy, since parts of the unofficial trail were unlit.
[insert longish-exposure night shot here]
We came down off the peak so late it would’ve meant waiting an hour for another bus, so we took a taxi home and I tried to shoot a video of crossing the new bridge with the “space ship” on the south end, but I don’t think it came out well, we’ll see.
And now it’s crash-time, and the official start of my birthday! Thanks for all the birthday well-wishes!
Next stop: ROME
–in the afternoon, which means I have a bit more time to check out Bratislava before my Air Berlin flight from Vienna Airport.
Posted in Europe | 5 Comments
-
Day 2 – Vienna
June 16, 2009 by Gail
Thanks to Radovan, I have photos to show this time! But now it’s far too late to write anything, so I’ll just post a few of my favourites from today and point you to the Vienna set, which includes photos from yesterday.
There are some great nightshots from Monday as well, but I’d better get to sleep! The set for Vienna thus far is here. I’m on a MacBook Pro at the moment and everything looks lighter in Firefox here than it does in Adobe Lightroom. I don’t know what it looks like at your end, but hopefully it’s closer to what it’s supposed to look like than it does to me right now…
Next stop: Bratislava by catamaran along the Danube!
Posted in Europe | 2 Comments
-
Travel Day + Day 1 – Vienna
June 15, 2009 by Gail
Aw, my photos are trapped in my camera because I didn’t bring a card reader or a USB cable* — I didn’t think I was going to download any of them until I got home. I might be able to get a cable or card reader tomorrow (er, later this morning, it’s after 2am currently), so for now just some bullet points:
- I left my house for the airport at 6pm on Sunday. My scheduled departure was 7:15. The check-in counter closes one hour before departure. I am SOOOOO LUCKY… but you know what? I even had time to pick up something at duty-free for my hosts! Talk about hurry-up-and-wait.
- *Did I mention I’m travelling light? This might be one of my lightest overseas trips ever: my checked bag was less than 10kgs! You know what that means? I’m bringing stuff back, because even though I had a 23kg limit on the way here, I have a 30kg limit for the return trip! Woo! 20 kilos of chocolate! (I kid. Maybe 15.)
- I’m staying in Vienna’s city centre, so everything is easy walking distance. And man, did I walk! Got back at midnight.
- The architecture in Vienna is very grand — it seems all the squares feature the most decadent building of the century decorated in the most opulence money can buy.
- Much of the city centre is under renovation, including one of the most prominent buildings, St. Stephen’s cathedral, which I visited in the evening.
- Night shots take me FOREVER: I shoot completely manually, tweak white balance manually, wait for cars and bikes to whiz by for motion blur, and this is the major reason why I shoot alone. It would drive the average person crazy to wait for me. Daytime shots are so much simpler.
- I ate a bratwurst dick today, which for you non-perverts is a variety of hot dog. But when it was handed to me, I nearly burst out laughing at how much it LOOKED like a semi-erect penis slathered with mustard that I was too embarrassed to take a photo. It was literally a hot dog bun with a hole in one end, the bratwurst shoved in with mustard and a couple of inches of it poking out of the hole — skyward and perky — with a flourish of mustard for presentation. If the hot dog vendor wasn’t so serious I would’ve thought he’d done it on purpose.
I rely on the photos to tell some of the story, so I’m feeling a bit lost without the accompanying pictures! I’ll see if I can remedy this later today.
Posted in Europe | 2 Comments
-
At Large In Europe
June 14, 2009 by Gail
It’s that time of year again! Yep, it’s my birthday week which means I’m getting on a plane to embark on adventures abroad. I won’t be taking my computer with me this time, which means the blogging will be sporadic and brief and subbed by Twitter microblogging from my iPod Touch (the latest five tweets are fed into the sidebar). I’ll have some access to somebody else’s computer for the first half of the trip, but not the second half. If you need to reach me or I disappear completely into thin air for a prolonged period of time (I’ll be in cities, so it should be easy to find available wi-fi), my whereabouts and contact details for the trip can be found in the ‘Where’ section, for those of you with the PWP-3 password.
I left Kermit with the Ms in Vancouver in March, so unfortunately he misses out on this trip…
Posted in Travel | 3 Comments
-
Relay For Life Preview
June 14, 2009 by Gail
A few preview photos as I run around to prepare to fly in about 12 hours…
It was announced on Saturday morning at the closing ceremonies that more than $200,000 was raised, and according to the event homepage this doubles the Relay 2009 campaign goal of $100,000! Thank you everyone who sponsored!
The set thus far is here, more photos will be added later.
Posted in Volunteering/Charity | No Comments
-
The Brides’ Project @ Relay For Life
June 12, 2009 by Gail
Posted in Mobile Blogging | 1 Comment
-
The Carillon Tour Preview
June 12, 2009 by Gail
I’m posting this on the run, so the full photo album will be added later.
Last night I was lucky enough to tour the Metropolitan United Church’s carillon, courtesy of their carillonneur, Gerald Martindale.
www.metunited.org/node/14
www.metunited.org/node/468The staircase is NOT for claustrophobics!
The Metropolitan United Church of Toronto has the largest pipe organ in Canada:
More photos tomorrow, after I recover from Relay For Life!
Posted in Music, Out + About, Videoclips | No Comments
