Just to let you know that we do still visit the US once in a while, here are some photos from our recent stop at home. We visited the Chihuly glass museum again at the Seattle Center to see what was going on. Some things were the same and some were different. You can see our previous visit back in 2019 here.
The curious thing about this opera house it that it has a narrowly defined repertoire of operas from a certain period (very roughly before 1900...ie. during the Austrian Empire) all written by composers who were from or spent a lot of time in Vienna. It also only considers compositions of a serious nature except for one...Der Fledermaus by Strauss is the only operetta.
Lots of gold and red decorate this hallway. The splashes of azure in the inset paintings really adds a sparkle to the scene.
Since we are in VIenna out of season, the only way to see the Vienna Opera House is on a tour. Probably cheaper anyway. As you might expect, it is a fancy place with lots of gold brightening the walls.
As is the case in many place in Europe, Vienna is a city of many curious juxtapositions. In this square, we find McDonald's located in a building of great beauty... not your neighborhood modern, boring, glass and concrete structure.
Our last visit to a church in Vienna is a special one. St. Michael's is another baroque masterpiece. While not as over-the-top ornate as the Jesuit church you've already seen, it does contain many amazing sights. And, as you will discover, sounds.
The image above shows the main altar. From Wikipedia we learn that,
The high altar was designed in 1782 by Jean-Baptiste d’Avrange. It is decorated with the monumental stucco alabaster Rococo sculpture Fall of the Angels (1782) by sculptor Karl Georg Merville. It represents a cloudburst of angels and cherubs, falling from the ceiling towards the ground. It was the last major Baroque work completed in Vienna. The centerpiece of the high altar is Maria Candia, a Byzantine icon of the Virgin Mary, belonging to the Cretan School of hagiography and named after the former capital (now Heraklion), displayed as being carried by two archangels.[2][3]
There are plenty of beautiful paintings and statues here. When surrounded by finely crafted arts, it is easy to imagine someone feeling the presence of the "holy spirit" as they sat and meditated.
Now that you've seen the Jesuit church, here's the Dominican church. Clearly, the various flavors of catholicism all came to the source, the emperor, to find money. and it certainly looks like they all succeeded.
There is occasionally, a bit of cheekiness in the way the UK tries to control vehicle speeds in these small villages. When you enter the village from the south, you first come to a speed limit sign as expected.
After leaving Dunbar, Scotland, we headed south. After spending a few days in the Lake Country - more on this part of our trip at a later date - we drove farther south to our next house sit in Stratford-upon-Avon. Here are some photos from a few of my morning runs. There are advantages to being out at sunrise.
As you can see, we are sheep country. Stratford is on the northern edge of the Cotswolds, a place brimming with sheep. You also see more details about villages in the Cotswolds later also.
The extravagance of this baroque styled church is endless and wall-to-wall. Everywhere you look is something more amazing that the last place.
The Jesuits are well-known to be pretty flush with money and from the looks of this church, I'd say they had plenty of money to have built a place this opulent.
In the Roman statue section, there is this room filled with stone heads on posts. In the dimly lit room, this was kinda creepy.
Years ago, on our first visit to Vienna, we missed all sort of things because it was Christmas and things were closed. We wanted to make up for some of this and this summer we stopped my the art history museum.
One of the fun things in most any country in Europe is that no major museum goes undecorated with a very patriotic statue out front. This one was no exception.
Even photographers reach a point where they can no longer sit and take photos of the same bird again and again.
This pose puts me in the mind of Napoleon with one foot raised and hands hidden in the coat.
Perhaps you are not as enamoured of this unassuming little bird as I am, but stay with me. He does some nice posing.
This is the sort of bird that, if you saw it in your backyard you'd be underwhelmed. But here, sitting on this rock so close to us, he is quite impressive.
On the windy, treeless plains and hillsides surrounding Nome we find lots of life. Not just the birds and mammals I've photographed, but also the summer explosion of flowers.
I thought you'd like to see a few scenes along Council Road, just outside Nome. Nome sits on the coast of Alaska that faces south west. The road to the village of Council runs along the coast for a while headed south east. Along this coastal section, there are lots of small cabins that seem to be built to house folks for fishing.
Another commonly found bird on this trip is the red necked phalarope. these are neat and prim little birds that can be found in bodies of water of most any size from the large roadside puddle on up.
In the river next to the sandpiper we saw in the posts yesterday, we found a couple red breasted mergansers. They make a handsome pair.
We soon discovered why the sandpiper was figgety: she had a nest in the stones beside the road and was quite anxious about our presence. However, she eventually gave up on trying to lead us away and went back to her nest.
I thought I'd bring you some more birds from my Nome trip. With all the travel this year I have plenty of variety to bring to the blog. Since travel down times leads to lots of repetitive sorts of photos of flowers and such. Enjoy the senseless switching from place to place while you can.
Above is another image of a willow ptarmigan. These birds like to perch on clumps of willow not far from the road, so it was fairly easy see them.
It is a huge place. On this day, I was nearly alone here. You can almost imagine how, at night, without the light filling all the windows, this can seem a much cosier place.
There was an assassination attempt on Emperor Franz Joseph in 1853. To thank God for his survival, his brother, Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian (who became the emperor of Mexico about a decade later) initiated a campaign to raise money to build a church. The church was dedicated in 1879 on the anniversary of Emperor Joseph and his wife Elizabeth (also known as Sissi and much loved in Hungary). Alas, Maximilian did not live to see this happen since he was killed in Mexico in 1867.
On one of those mornings where there is a layer of clouds that does not reach the horizon in the east, we have clouds lit from below in the predawn sky.
This east-facing coastal town had little in the way of an inviting beach to offer. But if you are a lover of fishing, golfing, or small town life, this is the place fo you.
When you read this, we will have recently left a house sit in Dunbar, Scotland. I thought I'd mi things up a bit with some photos from here as I continue to prepare future posts from the summer.
We drove to the Hoh Rainforest one day and took a short walk through the impressive forest. Here, the trees are bigger and denser on the ground. But it was so dry, you could hardly tell that this was a rainforest.
With a little in-camera adjust with a graduated neutral density filter and a slightly longer than usual exposure, we get a dramatic look at the sea and sea stacks.
It is still surprising to find logs washed up on a beach here and find that it had been basically ripped out of the ground by the roots.
Naturally, since this is a beach in the state of Washington, it is covered in (at least partially) with stones and lots of logs that have washed up in the many storms this area is known for.
Jumping ahead a few weeks, once back from our European jaunt, we went on a short vacation (like we needed another one) with the entire family. We stayed at the Quileute beach resort in La Push, WA. Neat little cottages along the pacific shore looking out on several sea stacks.
As we come to the end of our tour of the Central Cemetery, we find several imposing gravestones.
I find that these grave sites that are covered with old vines and lots of ferns to be very much in the spirit of a 19th century cemetery. At least the spirit that we have from the literature of the age.
Now, back to the museum....Here is a scene that was often seen at a 19th century funeral.
Also located at the cemetery is small but interesting museum filled with all sorts of things associated with death, and burial.
Away from the more frequently visited areas, we find markers that are in need of some maintenance. However, the lush vegetation does give it a quality that the more neatly tended graves don't have.
The cemetery is also home to a modern, but quite splendid church, the Friedhofskirche.
I cannot tell you who this marker is meant to remember. I was so jarred by the appearance of a naked woman sitting on the knees of a skeleton facing the deceased that I failed to note the resident. Many body parts of distorted and misshapen. This is a really strange gravestone.
This stone appears to have a fairy along with a cherub to admire and mourn the resident.
This cemetery is filled with finely crafted statuary of young women mourning the loss of family.
In the bushes along the sides of the road, we often spied rock ptarmigans monitoring the surroundings for predators approaching their nests.
