Street Scenes
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Box
I have mentioned before about my liking of the box or kei cars in Japan. On my recent visit I was pleased to see they are as abundant as ever on the roads, and the most recent designs are even smarter than before. This one caught my eye early on in the trip – I’m…
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Vittoriosa
The old town of Vittoriosa was once an important place. Originally known as Il-Birgu, it became the headquarters of the Knights Hospitaller when they established themselves on Malta, and following the successful repelling of an Ottoman siege in 1565 it gained the name Città Vittoriosa (Victorious City). Today it is much quieter, and there are…
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Bruges – Steenstraat
Here is another picture of Bruges, this one of a baroque Flemish building that is now a clothes shop on Steenstraat. I have attempted a degree of what I think is called geometric abstraction – and whilst the amount of abstraction that I have achieved is rather limited, nevertheless the overall result is quite pleasing,…
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Plaça Nova
Despite the name. Plaça Nova (New Square) is rather old, as are several of the buildings around it. However, this view is looking resolutely the other way at the newer buildings, in particular the building of the Architects’ Association of Catalonia, which sports a large Catalonian themed frieze designed by Picasso (which I have rather…
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Dunster Yarn Market
Just down the hill from Dunster Castle is the village, which contains a very fine 17th century Yarn Market. Given the weather that we had when we first arrived in Dunster I can only imagine this building was erected primarily to keep the cloth in the market dry! The angles of this building seemed well…
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Dunster – Entrance
A stone archway can often be relied upon to make a good frame for a picture, as long as there is something interesting visible through the arch. In the case of the entrance into Dunster Castle (or more precisely the exit as this is the vista as one leaves the castle!) the view through the…
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Girona – at High Speed
Girona is a beautiful old city. It is a place apparently well known as the backdrop to a series of “Game of Thrones” – a popular drama series that I have never seen, but which apparently many others have enthusiastically watched. Girona is also on a high speed train line from Barcelona, with an ultramodern…
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Bruges – Heilige Geeststraat
I don’t recall ever seeing a road in the UK named “Holy Ghost Street” – nor indeed anywhere else in my travels. However, rather than declare this to be an unusual name for a road and assume that this is a particularly Belgian thing, I am quite willing to admit that perhaps I just have…
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Monte dei Paschi di Siena
Around about a decade ago, Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena was attracting more publicity than the bank probably wanted, mainly due to problems they were having at the time with bad loans and losses. This general view of the bank’s historic headquarters accompanied many of the press articles at the time, but in the…
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Murano – Canale San Donato
Venice is lovely, but quite intense. The nearby islands of Murano and Burano offer a respite of calm – both the building and the tourist density on these islands is noticeably lower than the slightly misnamed “Serenissima”. This painting is fairly faithful to the photo that I took during our visit to Murano, in that…
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Fünf Höfe, Munich
I was rather taken with the greenery hanging from the ceiling, and indeed with the view and colours of the whole space. I suspect that I was supposed instead to have been taken by the range of shops, but getting me interested in shopping is not easy, as my wife will readily attest! I think…
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Roadside Banana
I have had a banana plant growing indoors in a pot for well over twenty years. Although it has continued to produce new leaves, in all that time it has only managed to grow to about half a metre in height! By contrast, throughout South-East Asia we saw these plants grown to many metres in…
Doodling ... 