Ted's Excellent Pictures Taken In Europe May 2011
Venice: Busy Grand Canal, with Rialto Bridge in the distance and at least 4 vaporetto (water bus) before it not incl the one I'm on
More of the Grand Canal
St Mark's bell tower and the Doges (Dukes) Palace
A traghetto (stand-up gondola shuttle) is an inexpensive way for Venetians to cross the canal and avoid the tourist-choked Rialto Bridge
Scala Contarini del Bovolo (spiral staircase of the Contarini family palace), ca. 1500
- supposedly added to compensate for the modest palace being in a bad location.
Bovolo = snail's shell i.e. spiral.
Friday, 6:30 am : Venetians on their way to work along Via Garibaldi
You don't have to know Italian to recognize a couple of names that should be familiar to anyone schooled in Canada
At the church of Santa Maria Formosa is this ugly face over the entrance to the bell tower.
"Back in the Middle Ages, people believed that church bell towers were vulnerable to invasion by evil spirits
(maybe because the towers were often getting struck by lightning or falling down).
So a tradition began of putting some kind of protective sculptural image on the towers."
- from a blog on slowtrav.com
It's also an optical illusion: some people see an ugly old man - some, like me, see a pretty young lady ;-)
Wroclaw, Poland: Stare Miasto (Old Town) Market Square
By the way, if you pronounced it "Ro-claw", nobody in Poland would understand what you're talking about.
The correct pronunciation is something like "Vrots-wahf", however if you're speaking in German you can get away with calling it Breslau (it's a long story!)
As everybody in Toronto knows ... not! ... Wroclaw is twinned with Toronto. Whatever good that does!
Wroclaw: Church of Saint Elizabeth
Oia, Santorini: A favourite place to get a daily fix of bougatsa, gyros & galaktoboureko.
(That's real gyros, not the crap called gyros served in other countries!)
This will be my office from now on
Santorini (name comes from Saint Irene) is popular for wedding shoots; I thought the ladies might like to see a few
Awww...
Another day and ... Hey, wait a minute - isn't that the same bride in a different dress with a different groom?
Every evening the same thing happens in Oia - it's like nobody has seen a sunset before!
Fishing boats in Adamas bay, Milos island, Greece
Milos claim to fame: it's where a 2000 year old statue of Aphrodite was found in 1820.
Quickly purchased by the French ambassador in Constantinople,
it now resides in the Louvre, where it's better known as Venus de Milo.
Athens: The Acropolis at night from the hotel roof-top bar
East Berlin: Neue Synagoge (originally Germany's largest); survived Kristallnacht but was bombed in 1943.
Rebuilt after reunification.
The Adlon is Berlin's most prestigious and historic hotel.
But let's face it, it's better known now as the hotel where Michael Jackson dangled his baby daughter from!
Rebuilt 1996.
Berlin: Now that's a hot dog stand
Click here for pictures taken on this trip in Turkey 2011
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