Tag: destinations

The Lights of Budapest

On By Jim BellomoIn Photography6 Comments

This is the first post of this trip that I am writing from our own living room. We flew back yesterday on another nightmare of a day of flying (a birthday I won’t soon forget). It is 2:43 am, and of course, I am still on Budapest time, where it is almost noon. But I shouldn’t complain because jet lag is always easier to handle at home. I will get into our flight day as soon as I am more coherent, but I will say that it was another bad one and that we will never fly through or to Charles DeGaulle Airport in Paris again. If we have to go to Paris (we are not planning on it), we will fly to Amsterdam and take the train.

In the meantime, I will give you the photos of Budapest at night that I promised would knock your socks off. After spending three and a half days there I can say with total certainty—this is the most photogenic city I have ever had the pleasure of visiting—and it’s at night when it really shines. On the first night, we were in port. I was going to go out after dinner and take pictures, but with the sun setting so early and it getting really dark by 5:00 pm, I went out before dinner. It was truly a photo walk I will remember. You are going to see 25 photos in the gallery below. I took 346 on that early (very cold🥶) evening walk. Well, enough narrative; here are the photos. Don’t forget; if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping…and PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

Just opposite where Gulveig (our ship), was docked was the Four Seasons, where Steve and Jamie would stay.
Then I turned and crossed the Chain Bridge.
It was beautifully lit up…
And I could look back and shoot our ship moored just below it.
The real prime parking spot.
There will be some duplication here because…
…the light kept changing.
And as I walked further out on the bridge I could start to see the Parliament Building.
And an excursion boat went underneath as I looked out.
The Parliament Building just keeps on catching my eye.
But incredible views are everywhere…
Off the bridge and headed back up the Danube/
I keep seeing more and more of the Parliament.
And the river walk had some nice shadows.
But oh, that amazing building.
It’s like the Opera House in Sydney….
if you see it, it just screams, “TAKE MY PICTURE!”
But so does the bridge.
And the castle.
And the lions at the end of the bridge.
And the castle again.
And the traffic on the river front.
We would see a lot of this view…
…because when we moved from our ship to the hotel, we were looking right at it.
And the bridge again as I turned to go back to the ship for dinner.

There is nothing like walking that riverbank at night. Every single place you look, you see something you HAVE TO TAKE A PICTURE OF! What an amazing place to be a photographer. I sometimes wonder if the people who live in Budapest end up getting jaded by these views. I am sure they do, but I hope they don’t. I hope I wouldn’t.

Editor’s Note: My plan is to do two more posts about Budapest (we were there for three days), one about our flight day and then do a summary of the cruise, what we loved and what we didn’t like so much. And I have been getting some questions. So I will try and answer those with the follow-up. I really want all this wound up before Christmas, but that will depend on three things: a cut/crack I have developed on my ring finger that makes it really hurt to type (you never realize how much you use any individual finger while typing until you hurt one). How much time do I sleep versus writing as I finish up with jet lag? And how much time it takes to get ready for Christmas?

Photogenic is a stupid, nonsensical word, but it is also a great mystery.   —Blaise Cendrars

 

Day 2 in NYC: I Need More Power! And better feet.

On By Jim BellomoIn Photography5 Comments

Pre-dawn photos

Our second day in New York City started early for me (Like, when is that a surprise?) with a two-hour photo walk. But that walk got interrupted before it even began…twice. First, as I was leaving the ship, I looked at my phone (that I use to track my travels, navigate by GPS, call Kathleen if I need to, etc.) and found that it had not charged overnight even though it had been plugged in. Damn! So I walked back upstairs and plugged in. I knew I could get it up to around 40% in under 30 minutes, and that would be enough. Half an hour later, I was on my way.

This time, I got off the ship and through security before I thought, “You should check your camera batteries as well.” (I always have two on me. One in the camera and one in a pouch on my camera strap.) The one in the camera was at about 25%, but the one on my strap was…dead. So, back through security, back on the ship, up 4 floors to grab my third battery, which thankfully was fully charged. Finally, I was on my way. Whew! That was frustrating.

My original intention had been to re-walk the High Line, but since I had done that the day before and also five years ago, I decided to go out and shoot some light—Times Square. On the way, I thought how ridiculous it is that I would NEVER walk in the dark for that distance in Seattle. I would never have felt safe. But here I was in the Big Apple, and I felt totally secure. Working people were everywhere, a friendly cop on most corners and strangely enough, walking three miles around Manhattan, I did not see a single person high on fentanyl, asking for money or doing anything but getting on with their day. What a difference a few years makes. Seattle wishes it was as safe as NYC.

At any rate, I had a fun walk around the Times Square/Broadway area and these are the photos I brought back (and of course they have captions). Don’t forget; if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping…and PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

I wasn’t going to include this shot of the aircraft carrier Intrepid (it sits right next where we were moored) but Kathleen liked it.
Trying some more artsy stuff as I crossed the Westside Highway.
And playing with shooting in the dark.
Love the way this building has kind of lit up set of stairs.
Reaching Times Square.
Love this ad campaign.
And this old building lit up by all the neon signs across the street.
One of the reasons you feel safe there at 5:00 am is that it is lit up like noon.
We are Good Morning America watchers at home so I had to go by their studio.
Robin was doing a segment.
Looking straight up Times Square to the split of 7th and Broadway. NYC has made about four blocks or so pedestrian-only.
Just one wall, on one side of Times Square.
More lights
And more lights.
See the little dot on the building…the ball drops at midnight on December 31 there.
A live on-the-street newscast going on.
On my way back to the ship, I was stopped at a light and saw this proud Mom taking photos of her daughter.
I shot these surreptitiously but I love how they came out. She was so cute.

Midday trek

Back to the ship, and after a quick breakfast, and five of us were off in an Uber to explore NYC. Jocelyn was still getting over her cold, and Kathleen felt like it was coming on, so they elected to stay on board. We were first headed to Zabars on the Upper West Side. If you have never heard of Zabars, just imagine the most well-stocked grocery store you have ever been to, where you can get ANYTHING, and it is all crammed into two 7-11s…with an entire kitchen shop on top of it. That’s Zabars. Here are three quick shots to show you what I mean.

The front door.
And this is just the cheese section…
…except it isn’t all of the cheese section. This is looking the other way.

All the sections of the store were as well-stocked, with as many choices as the cheese section. Add an upstairs cooking supply store, and for people like me who love to cook, it was magic. We stuck around there, but I knew I wasn’t going to buy anything because I didn’t want to have to lug it around the rest of the day. I am ashamed to say that every product I saw in the kitchen supply shot that I really wanted, I took a photo of with my phone and will be ordering those from Amazon when we get back home. I love to support small businesses but Zabars looked like they will survive (they have for a very long time).

I got done looking long before the rest of the gang, so I went outside to find a mailbox to drop some postcards I had written. Yes, I still write postcards. And then I planted myself in front of the store and did some street photography until everyone else had made their purchases. Here’s a quick gallery of photos from that session of waiting about 15 minutes. Don’t forget; if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping…and PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

Women talking
Cell phone looking
This man sat down at the other end of a table I was leaning on.
He was an interesting subject. I shot all these, without him knowing it) while my camera was laying on the table.
Off to work.
Colorful scarf
Loved the look on his face.

I forgot to mention that this midday foray into Manhattan had totally broken one of my absolute travel laws—never go anywhere unplanned. For me, the worst thing to be when traveling is just wandering around and going, “What do you want to do now?” Just typing those words bothers me. I know. I should just be spontaneous. But more arguments and ruined vacation days have come from those seven words than I want to remember. But there we were outside of Zabars, asking ourselves where we wanted to go. So we checked the map and found out we were just north of the entrance to Central Park, and since no one in our group except me had ever walked through the park, we decided to head that way.

Once we were in the park, the next question was where to go. I had never been to the Belvedere Castle, so we headed off to find that. Hopefully, it would make a good photo-op. It did. After exploring the castle and the views from the castle, we spoke with a park guide who suggested a great walk down the rest of the park to Columbus Circle. I was all up for this, but that’s because I am the walker in the group. The rest of the group decided that what they wanted most in NYC was a pastrami sandwich at a deli. So they headed off to find one on Lexington Avenue, and I headed south into the park on the route the guide had suggested to shoot more photos. Here’s what I got in the park. Don’t forget; if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping.

My first shot in the park was from Belvedere Castle.
With the direction of the sun, this was the only shot I could get of the castle from anywhere close to the castle.
But I could see The Dakota from there.
So I gave up and walked quite a ways to be able to look back and get this shot.
And this one with the Dakota in the background.
Then it was off to the Bethesda Fountain.
And the courtyard in front of it.
And the fountain again.
And for some reason I always seem to run into a wedding on every trip.
Looking back at the fountain. And this John Wick fanboy will tell you a lot of scenes were filmed here for the four movies.
Ran into a bubble maker.
An incredibly pastoral scene.
Two young lovers on a bridge.
A statue outside the southwest corner of the park
The whole thing.
And finally, Columbus Circle.

After I took the second Belvedere Castle shot, the battery in my camera died, and I had to switch to my partially charged backup. Talk about worried. I knew I had a long way to go to get back to a charger. So I walked through the rest of the park, making sure my camera was only turned on to take a composed shot that I liked. For me, this was sheer torture. I like taking pics of everything (that’s why my batteries keep running out) and then sorting them out later. I probably discard 80% of the photos I take. But on this walk, I only took the ones I absolutely HAD TO HAVE. And this situation put me on another search. I was in Manhattan. There must be a camera store nearby where I could buy a new Nikon battery. Hopefully, they will have one fully charged and ready to go. So I popped out Google Maps on my phone and Googled nearby Nikon stores. I about fell on my face when I saw I was only 1.9 miles from the midtown home of B&H Photo.

For those of you who are not nutso, serious photographers like me, B&H is our Mecca. They are the ultimate camera store. They are only in NYC, but half the serious photographers in the USA buy from them. I had considered going there earlier, but I would have been the only one interested, and it would have been way too tempting for me. They literally have everything! Of course, as it turns out, they don’t have everything. They don’t sell fully charged Nikon batteries. Damn! (But that was OK. I got to spend about an hour browsing B&H and didn’t spend a cent.) Did I mention that B&H was at 34th and 9th? Because now I was way past Pier 88—so off I went to get back to the ship and to rest my feet. My total miles walked on this day in the Square, The Park and B&H was 14.2. To say my feet and legs were mad at me is a huge understatement.

The walk back was uneventful. I didn’t have any more photo opportunities because, by now, my camera battery was totally dead.

Sailing away from Manhattan

My plan (since I had shot our sail-in to NYC) was just to take a few photos as the ship was sailing back down the Hudson to the sea. But when I went up on deck and found that there was almost perfect light focused on the city, I had to stay and take more than a few photos. It was a good thing I had completely charged one of my camera batteries as soon as I had gotten back to the ship. Because, in that 45-minute trip from Pier 88 to the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, I shot almost 300 photos. Everywhere I looked, there was perfect light on something else. I hope you agree. And don’t worry. I culled them down to a few of the best. And these you really shouldn’t look at on a tiny phone screen. Don’t forget; if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping.

This panoramic shot of the NYC skyline is one of my best panos.
And the light was just golden.
We went by the Little Island again…
…so I had to take a few more photos of it.
And this boathouse that caught my eye because there were people running back and forth in front of it.
This combo sculpture and running track is called The Vessel.
The Empire State Building peeking out between two much more modern skyscrapers.
Looking down the Hudson.
Just amazing light.
And the skies kept changing. Like the clouds behind the Jenga Building.
The building with the spire is the courthouse where they film all those Law and Order step scenes.
A few more views of the World Trade Center.
With the incredible light.
I think the boat really makes this shot.
And I had to add one of the Oculus that sits at the bottom of the WTC.
And the light did not cooperate in the other direction making Ellis Island (where my grandfather came to from Italy) totally backlit.
As well as a backlit Lady Liberty.
And of course I wasn’t the only one taking pics but most of these folks were just on cell phones.

Other than an evening meal at Ember (another of Vista’s specialty restaurants–That I will review soon along with the other three and all the food), that was about it for this day. It’s a good thing because my feet could not take standing anymore. I was thrilled that yesterday was a sea day, and I didn’t have any place to go except an onboard culinary class—more about that tomorrow. Today, we are in Charleston, South Carolina, and I look forward to a short walk to pick up a rental car, a covered surrey ride around downtown, some of the world’s best Carolina BBQ at Rodney Scott’s and a tour of the Magnolia Plantation. With a 90% chance of rain…this should be fun.

“I get out of the taxi, and it’s probably the only city which in reality looks better than on the postcards, New York.”   — Milos Forman

 

Whew! NYC wore me out…but it was GREAT!

On By Jim BellomoIn Photography11 Comments

So much to tell you. I hope I get this done before I have to go upstairs to do laundry (If I’m not the first person there on a sea day, I will never get it done.)

So, to go back what is now three days, there will be no report on Martha’s Vineyard. After a fairly bumpy ride on Saturday night, the Captain made the decision that the seas were too rough and the swells too high to use the tenders safely, so we skipped the Vineyard and floated around out at sea for most of a day. But that worked out as early Monday morning, we sailed under the Verrazano Narrows Bridge into New York Harbor. We got incredibly lucky with the weather for both of our days in NYC. From the sail-in until the sail-away, we had either sunny or partly cloudy skies. Temps in the 50s and 60s, so I was loving it.

Day 1—we sail in

My day started at 4:45 a.m. when I headed up to the Horizons lounge at the front of the ship to watch the city get closer. Then, around 5:45, we sailed under the aforementioned VN Bridge, past Lady Liberty and all the way up the Hudson to Pier 88. We arrived at around 8:00 a.m., and the captain made what I thought was a miracle turn into our berth… I came back in from shooting photos to warm up. Even though the temps weren’t that bad, the wind on the deck made it feel a whole lot colder. But I got some great pics, and here they are. Don’t forget; if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping…and PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

Incredible sunrise to start the day.
I am not going to caption all of these but…
…I had to include them because I can’t decide which ones I like the best.
The Narrows Bridge…
From both sides
Coming into the city…
…with the World Trade Center in view.
The Staten Island Ferry from New Jersey to the Island.
No words here.
Or here.
I really appreciate the color of the ferry.
Can you tell?
Lady Liberty at her finest.
With the ferry in the foreground.
And closer. The lady was on our left as we sailed up the Hudson.
This was on our right.
I believe this is the original Customs House.
56 Leonard Street. Known as the Jenna Building.
It seemed like there were so many more buildings than when we were there five years ago.
The sunrise was spectacular.
This is Little Island.
A man-made, Gaudiesque island on the Hudson.
Largest pilot boat I have ever seen.
The leaning condo of NYC.
The Empire State Building almost disappears amidst the new construction.
Not sure I could live in this one. Not sure how the elevators work???
Looking up 48th Avenue from our berth for two days.

Day 1–The Whitney and a High Line walk back

After a quick breakfast, the entire group (minus one who was still not fully recovered) set out to the Whitney Museum of American Art. We had pre-purchased tickets to see their collection. We had planned this because we were on the East Side of Manhattan, and the gigantic Columbus Day parade was on the West Side. We would head that way tomorrow. The main reason I wanted to go to The Whitney was that they have the largest collection of paintings by my favorite American artist, Edward Hopper. Sadly, not a lot of them are displayed (BOOH!). But we still enjoyed our two-hour visit. Then we walked across the street to see The Little Island up close and personal.

The Little Island. Taken from the outdoor viewing area of The Whitney Museum

The Little Island is one of the newest parts of the waterfront. It is entirely man-made and very reminiscent of the Gaudi architecture in Barcelona. The entire island sits on what looks like flowers coming out of the water, but once on the island, you would never know it. We walked all over the island. There’s an amphitheater, food stands and some incredible views up and down the Hudson. You will see them in a few minutes when I get to the midday slide show.

After our visit to the Little Island, we grabbed a quick bite of pizza in front of the Whitney, and Kathleen, Mike and Cathy took an Uber back to the ship while Steve and Jamie did a little shopping, and I set off to walk back to the ship via the High Line. If you are not familiar with the High Line, it is an elevated platform that runs from just outside the doors of the Whitney up Manhattan’s west side to just about where Vista was berthed. It used to be an old elevated railway but is now a beautiful pedestrian walkway.

I had previously walked the High Line on our last trip to NYC in 2018, but that was before sunrise when it was empty. This time was midday, and it was jam-packed with people out for a holiday (Columbus Day—which is still celebrated in NYC) stroll. As I walked north towards the ship, I shot a bunch of pics…and here they are. You know the drill. Don’t forget; if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping…and PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

My three favorite exhibits at The Whitney
Can you imagine showing up in these shoes and seeing this?
An awesome display of clothing worn by Black activists in the 1960s. Can you tell what the gloves are about?
Took some shots from the outdoor gallery on the Whitney’s six floor. First, imagine King Kong here.
The start of the High Line I would walk back to the ship on later.
This new building which is obviously owned by Tony Stark. You can see Loki up there.
Nothing like NYC architecture. It’s like they all compete to out crazy each other.
The view from the highest point on the Little Island.
Me being artsy.
Looking down from the High Line.
I shot this same photo from this exact spot 5 years ago.
Some great fish sculptures on the High Line.
And a super mural.
Lots of art everywhere. Can you see the mermaid here?
Loved the reflections. The skies were perfect.
Different parts of the track are still in place…
…from the original elevated railway.
I love that they have kept them in.
Did a little street photography.
Loved the way she is looking at him. Like he is telling her his dreams for their future.
Maybe the world’s largest sculpture.
The reflections make the building almost transparent.
Just liked this guy.
Looking up 34th to the Empire State Bldg.
The High Line ends with a huge yard full of old rail cards.
Me being artsy again.

Our evening—sorry, no pics

After I got back and gave my legs a rest, we all met up at 4:15 to go to dinner at Kellari Taverna. Kathleen and I had eaten there on our honeymoon in 1999. We loved it then, but not so much now. Their menu had gone from traditional Greek to pretty much seafood, and we had all come with dreams of a great Greek feast. The only truly Greek dish on their menu was mousaka, but it was a vegan dish (are you kidding me???). They did have a tasty octopus that I liked and a nice Greek salad. At least their baklava was excellent.

Almost forgot to explain why we were going to dinner so early—we had tickets to a Broadway show! Come on, you can’t come to NYC without seeing a Broadway show. When we booked the cruise, one of the highlights was this overnight stay in New York. But one big problem—most Broadway shows are dark on Monday nights, and we were there…on Monday night. But thankfully, a few still run, and we were lucky enough to snag tickets to Six. If you have not heard of Six, it is the story of the six wives of Henry the Eighth. I know, sounds boring, right? But what a high-powered, amazing musical that turned out to be all about feminine empowerment. Each of the wives sang in the style of two of our current pop stars—for instance, Catherine of Aragon sang in the style of Beyonce and Shakira. And she and the rest of the Six could sing. Grab the cast album from your favorite streaming site and have a listen—an uplifting and energizing show. It is on a national tour currently, so if you get a chance, go see it. You won’t be sorry—we weren’t. By the time we were done with Six, we were exhausted, and it was back to the ship and bed. I needed to be up for Day 2’s predawn photo walk. More about that in my next post.

“I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York’s skyline.”    —Ayn Rand

 

Please Stay Tuned…NYC got in the way

On By Jim BellomoIn Photography3 Comments
Taken very early today as we sailed by.

Good morning, all! Just a quick note: your favorite travel blogger will return in a few days. I usually write in the mornings before dawn, but today, I took this photo (and a lot of others) as we sailed into NYC. We will be here until late tomorrow night, so I will be using tomorrow morning for a long walk on the Highline before the sun comes up. Thankfully, we have a sea day after we leave here so that I can catch up. Until then…stand by.

Quebec City…in the Daylight

On By Jim BellomoIn Photography4 Comments

I tossed in that “in the daylight” line because the last time we were in Québec City, we were here overnight, and I was lucky enough to be able to get some incredible shots. This time, I got a chance to actually take the same photo at midday that I took five years ago at 5:00 a.m. It will give me a great photo to show to people when they think I am crazy for getting up so early just to take photos. In fact, while I am mentioning it, here are the two pics, side by side. Five years ago at 5:00 a.m. and yesterday, at around noon. Click on the photos to read my captions.

It was around 5:30 am and as usual I was wandering around downtown Québec City, taking pictures. If you have never been to Québec, it is built on two levels. You can get from the bottom (where our ship was docked) to the top in one of two ways. There is a funicular (which I rode with Kathleen later in the day) and a very steep climb which is what I was doing when I looked down into the lower part of the city and got this shot. Again, for me, the light made all the difference. That and the solitude. It’s photographic proof that there are great photos to be had at as the sun comes up. And it’s a huge reason why I love cruises that have overnight stops so I can get up and take photos like these in cities around the world
It was noon. There were a lot of people and the sun was HARSH!

We had a pretty good day in Québec City. Kathleen and Jocelyn had gotten totally worn out from our three days in Montreal, so I set out with Cathy, Mike, Steve and Jamie to explore the city. As I mentioned above, we were here just about exactly five years ago. It was a lot warmer yesterday than it was five years ago. Our ship was docked just a few hundred yards up the pier from where we had been that time. But both were just a short walk from downtown. We walked through the lower town to the funicular that, for $5CAN, would take you to the upper town. It’s a good thing we were early because when I walked by the lower station later in the day, there was a line the proverbial mile long.

Once up at the top, we found something that amazed me—the Québec Marathon. What were the chances that the two times I would come to Québec City in my lifetime, I would be there for the marathon? Of course, that meant that we would have to see the city and work our way around the city, avoiding the race. We were able to get across the track with the help of race officials, but we still seemed to run into the racers wherever we turned.

We walked around, as Cathy was looking for a kind of embroidery museum that she had seen on her previous land-based visit. It was part of the works of the Ursuline nuns who pretty much-founded education here in Québec City. When she had been here before, she said it had been a cute little shop attached to the convent. Now, they have a complete museum, but it was more about the order’s history than the embroidery. The others decided to take a look and I decided to shoot a couple of photos of the church next door. Mike and Steve were out in almost no time, but Cathy and Jamie really enjoyed it.

I decided at that point to head off on my own to take some more photos and then head back to the ship to have a late lunch with Kathleen and Jocelyn. We ended up trying the Waves Grille. I would tell you all about the lunch and the Grille, but I am saving those thoughts for a big post on the food. That is really what Oceania is all about, and I want to hit it all at once. So here’s my meager number of photos from Québec. The light was just too harsh for me to really get into taking photos. Don’t forget; if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping…and PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

The first thing I saw off our verandah.We were docked net to the Coast Guard station and I am assuming these are buoys waiting to be placed.
The Château Frontenac Hotel.
Hotel Frontenac in Québec
It dominates the city.
And I have a very hard time NOT taking photos of it.
Even up close when we get into town. It is incredibly photogenic.
Pork Restaurant in Québec
I kept this one of the area in front the the Château because of the great clouds.
Street performer in Québec City.
We see our first marathoner.
A very cool sculpture in a park.
I tiny hotel that looked so French I had to shoot it.
A French street not far away.
The provincial capital of Québec.
The Ursuline chapel. I loved the tin roof.
From different angles
And over the top of it.
The inside had a nice altar but after the Cathedral in Montreal, it was just meh.
Back on the ship, I saw this boat behind Vista that I liked.

On openness

When I do a live report on a cruise, I also put most of the text and one of the photos on a thread on Cruise Critic (for the non-cruisers, find out about Cruise Critic here). Fellow cruisers will ask me questions on the board, and I got one this morning. I thought I would post the question here as well. The person asking was comparing Viking Ocean to Vista and wanted to know if this was an “open ship.”

Here’s their exact question:

“Does the new Vista have the same openness as a Viking ship? Can one see the sky and water when in common spaces? Or is there drapery hanging from the ceiling, or are there walls of windows?  I am a Viking Cruiser because of the ship design, first and foremost.”

Here’s what I told them:

If it’s sky and water you want, stick with Viking. Thanks for making me think about this. It’s not something I usually would even contemplate, but you really made me realize how little there is below deck 12. When I got up in Québec, I wanted to see the city. I had to climb to Deck 14 and go into the Horizons Lounge to be able to see the Hotel Frontenac. On Viking, I could have done that from at least three lower decks.

I would say, on the whole, this ship is more closed up. I know exactly what you mean. I found the Viking ship we sailed on to be VERY open. Like most cruise ships, some lower decks are public (in the case of Vista, that is, five and six) and some upper decks that are public (12 through 16—there is no 13). You can only see the water from the upper decks or your own verandah. I am typing this sitting on deck six. You can’t see a thing anywhere on this deck except in the dining room, and there, we have been put in a windowless corner every night because of the size of our party. Most of the rest of the dining room is covered with sheer curtains you can see through. Some people sitting by the windows have opened those up.

This also reminds me that on sea days, I exercise by walking on the ship. On Viking, there is a wrap-around promenade deck that I walk on. Here, the only place to do that is a very nice walking/jogging track around the back portion of deck 15. The Viking promenade is 1/4 mile, and the Vista track is 1/10th of a mile. So you see a lot of the same things again and again.

Quebec City is the most European of any city in North America; they speak French all the time. There is a part of the town called Old Quebec, which is really like being in France. The architecture is just gorgeous, food, shopping. I’d say Quebec City is the most beautiful city in North America I’ve seen.  —Sebastian Bach

 

We visit the Florida Mouse

On By Jim BellomoIn Air travel12 Comments

Originally I was not going to write a review of this trip. This was a family trip with my kids and grandkids, and I usually do not do a lot of writing about that kind of trip. They are more private, and I hardly ever put a recognizable photo of my grandkids on my blog. But our experience may help other grandparents (and we know a lot of them) deal with Disney better than we did. Don’t get me wrong, we had a great experience most of the time, but we are also happy that Walt Disney World is now a sure “Been there, done that, not going back” experience for us.

This trip was our Christmas (and birthday) gifts for our kids and grandkids this year. We have previously taken them to Disneyland in California (about seven years ago) on a cruise (the summer before the pandemic hit), and we had promised them the big Disney experience when they were both old enough to remember it. And it just happened we went on my grandson’s birthday. This brings me to the first thing I would have loved to avoid but couldn’t—crowds.

When we went to Disneyland seven years ago, the grandkids weren’t in school yet, and my daughter wasn’t teaching, so we only had to work around our work schedule and my son-in-law’s. So we could go whenever we wanted. That is the key to all amusement parks—go when others can’t. Sadly, both kids were in school this time, and my daughter is back to teaching, so we had to coordinate with school schedules. I refuse to do summer. The heat is just horrid and would be worse than the crowds. Maybe it’s worse. And it was still pretty darn hot. Not oppressive like it would have been in the summer, but really hot for us Pacific Northwesterners.

I have done a lot of research about the best time to go to WDW (Walt Disney World), and it used to be that the worst week of the year was the week between Christmas and New Year’s. But not anymore. It turns out that it is now worse during President’s Day weekend…which is when we were there. I base this on the report from the folks who write the book, “The Unofficial Guide to WDW,” who reported that this shift in crowds has now occurred. The Unofficial Guide books and their companion Lines app have been my go-to for avoiding crowds for years. Since way back when I took our kids to WDW in the 1990s, they have been amazing in helping me plan. With their book, their website and their app, they help you develop touring plans that can work. But not this time because the crowds just overwhelmed the plans.

This is the MOST frustrating vacation to plan. When I plan our other travel, I can make specific plans for specific tours and set specific times. Once in a while, a problem will occur that throws things off, but with Disney, it’s all a crapshoot. You can’t plan around the crowds. And there is so much to learn about WDW. Like how the Genie+ works (I didn’t figure that out until the last day), how the transportation system works, and just so much…AAAAGGGHHH!

I feel like I am rambling here, so let me get on with it.

What was good

  • Spending quality time with my wife, my daughter, her husband, my brother, his wife, my niece and my two incredible grandkids.
  • Having my Star Wars fan grandson celebrate his 12th birthday riding the Millenium Falcon, helping the Rise of the Resistance and taking Star Tours.
  • Our hotel (Disney’s Contemporary Resort), which was convenient, had decent food, comfortable beds, great bathrooms, helpful people at the front desk and one of the best showerheads I have ever used.
  • Some of the food was pretty darn good (but expensive) for a theme park/hotel. For instance, the turkey sandwich at the hotel “food court” was so good I had it three times during our stay. Our lunch in Epcot at the Coral Reef and the quick dinner at La Cantina De San Angel, also in Epcot, were all great. But sorry, WDW has some real problems with basic dining. More about that in the what needs changing section below. I also loved that at many restaurants, we could pre-order on our phones, pick a window of time we wanted to eat and then click a button when we arrived, and they would have it ready in minutes.
  • Disney’s free transportation gets you to all four parks in a hurry even when you are going really, really early. From our hotel we took Disney busses to two of the parks and the monorail to the other two.
  • The rides we were able to get on were awesome. Disney still does an amazing job with those. The newest Star Wars rides were great, but even I (who is not an Avatar fan) loved the Avatar ride in Animal Kingdom. There was nothing quite like it. I am still kind of awestruck by how amazing it is. You literally believe you are flying on a winged animal.
  • Magic Bands work great! Disney should hire out the people who make their Magic Bands to help cruise lines that are having problems with their RFID devices. A Magic Band is a device that looks like a wristwatch that you can use for EVERYTHING at Walt Disney World. It’s your room key, you can charge anything to it while on the Disney properties (food, souvenirs, drinks and just about anything else you can buy). You just hold up (like I do my Apple Watch) and tap it. It never failed—it worked every single time. It was so great to walk out of the room every day and not worry if you had your key, your wallet or anything but your sunglasses and sunscreen as long as you had your Magic Band on your wrist. And you can customize them as well. Mason had a Star Wars band; mine was Goofy, so I could walk around saying “Gorsh” all day. BTW: You could also use your phone to do anything that the band would do.

What REALLY needs improvement

  • The problem with Disney dining is NOT the food itself; it is the selection of places to eat it, especially at breakfast. About 90% of the in-park food venues do NOT open until 11:00 am. When you get up at 5:30 am to be in the park by 7:30 am so you can get at least two rides in before the non-Disney hotel guests are allowed in at 8:00, then there should be more than one place open to catch a quick breakfast. In three of the four parks we visited (Animal Kingdom, Magic Kingdom and Epcot), the only place we could find to get food or coffee before 11:00 am was Starbucks. Seriously. And don’t tell me it’s because no one eats breakfast at WDW because those places were PACKED! SWAMPED!And I know that the Touring Plans folks say you should get breakfast stuff to eat in your room. Well, that is all well and good, but if you fly in and take a shuttle to your hotel and have no car, how are you supposed to get to a grocery store to buy those breakfast items? Pack them in your luggage?
  • Genie+ sucks! This is what Disney replaced a great program they used to have called Fast Pass. You could reserve a spot on a ride and come back at a later time to take it. It was FREE. Now they have this thing called Genie+. You get to do the same thing, but it costs you big $$$. So you have paid $100 plus for a ticket, and if you want to be able to get on rides without waiting in line for hours, you can pay an additional $15-$20 per person/per day to be able to make an appointment to come back in two hours to ride a ride. This way, you could be standing in two lines simultaneously…kind of. But it just does not work well. It’s kind of like TSA Pre-Check at the airport. So many people have it now; it’s almost faster just to do the regular security line. And Genie+ is a huge ripoff. We were offered it free for an afternoon to make up for something (more about that later), and when you use it, you can book a ride time for a future hour. But until you do that ride, you can’t book anything else. For instance, at 2:00 pm, we booked a ride at the first available time for something my granddaughter wanted to do. The soonest we could get the reservation was 5:00 pm (I will admit that Grandpa messed up our first reservation). So that meant we could not book any other Genie+ reservations until three hours later. When we got off that ride and attempted to book another reservation, nothing was available until 8:30 or later. Being exhausted and having to catch a 5:30 am bus to the airport, we bailed. Worthless. And a huge ripoff.

What was just stupid

  • The crowds. And a lot of the people who make them up. There were:
    • Adults who had kids with them that were all under five years old.  Who are you there for? Your kids won’t remember this. Mason was five when we took our grandkids to Disneyland seven years ago. He remembers much of what we did; Maylee was two and remembers nothing about the trip. What a huge waste of money for a few pics of your child with Mickey. And you are making it so much more crowded (because you take up a ton of space with your damn strollers) for those who can’t come at another time.
    • Adults with no kids in their party. Why are you there during one of the BUSIEST weeks of the year? Did you really want to honeymoon with half of the USA? A week before we were there, the crowd levels were at fours and fives (on a scale of 10). When we were there, every park was between eight and ten. If you had come one week earlier, you could have had a better time yourself and lightened the load on the parks. Idiots.
    • The usual rude people who run you over with their motorized carts, wheelchairs, strollers and sometimes just their bodies. I can’t count the number of times someone in our party was run into.
    • The abomination that is the big, fat tubs of lard who rent scooters because they are too lazy to walk. We actually saw one family where the son, dad and granddad were all in scooters. All of them were able to get out and walk (I saw them do it a number of times as we followed them around Animal Kingdom). They had no problem riding the rides. Sadly, their kids whined because they didn’t want to walk either. We also saw a couple with two kids who had a motorized scooter rental and kept taking turns riding it. The mom would ride it onto the monorail, and the dad would ride it off. What are the chances they were both disabled but yet could walk behind the other on the scooter? I fully realize that some people have handicaps you can’t see, but this kind of stuff goes too far. My mom spent much of her last years on a scooter because she could not walk after a stroke. These people are taking up the space of those who need it. Shame on them and the example they set for their children.

The worst parts for us

This one is easy—illness. We arrived on a Thursday night. We spent Friday day in Disney’s Hollywood Studios, standing in one line after the other. By the end of the day, my granddaughter was exhausted, dehydrated and feeling queasy. Queasy became a full-blown illness, and she and my daughter were flat on their backs in bed with a stomach ailment for the next two days. They missed two complete parks, and even on our last day (Monday), even though they could come to Magic Kingdom for a while before they got really tired out, they never got to do much of the fun stuff. And my son-in-law missed that Monday as he got whatever they had, so he was down for all of that day.

I will say that Disney came through on fixing this as much as they could. The manager at the hotel made sure that for every day they missed, they were credited with another day in the park (more than a $150 value) sometime in the next ten years. I hope they can go back and use them sometime in that time frame.

I should also say I feel terrible that my brother, sister-in-law and niece came with us because they could have gone at any time and avoided all the lines. But they wanted to see WDW with the kids (it is an entirely different place with kids) and us, so they came along.

Alaska Air did us wrong!

There was one non-Disney thing that happened on this trip that TOTALLY TICKED ME OFF! I purchased our Alaska Air airline tickets in July of 2021. I bought them with our annual companion fares we get for being Alaska Air VISA cardholders. I got six seats in one row (row 18) so that we could all sit together. About two weeks before our flight to Orlando, I checked our reservation to make sure everything was good, and it was. Then the day before the flight, when I went online to check in, I found that the kids and grandkids were still in row 18 but that Kathleen and I had been moved to the back of the plane to row 29. WTF?? Since we had done nothing to precipitate this, I got very upset and called Alaska. We were told there was nothing they could do about it and that we should ask at the gate to see if those people could change seats with us. Really—would you trade two aisle seats for an aisle and a middle seat? I wouldn’t. But how dare Alaska Air change us on a whim or let a computer change us? Kathleen tells me that one of the two people who got our seats was a 20-something with long shaggy hair that was sick most of the flight (maybe that’s how our kids got sick), and the other was a businessman who spent the entire flight on his computer. My guess is that he was a high-mileage Alaska Air flyer.

Whenever I hear someone complain about their seat assignments, I always want to say, “you should have booked and chosen your seats earlier.” Which is exactly what I did, and then they moved us. I still don’t understand how (or why) they did that. But I was told it says they can in the fine print.

Recommendations

  • When you first decide to go to Walt Disney World, get the book, “The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World.” Then download their app called Lines. Do their touring plans and stick with them until the crowds overwhelm your plans. You have to do your homework before you take this vacation.
  • Don’t go during a school holiday, the summer or any other time of the year not recommended by the Unofficial Guide unless you have no choice. And realize that things change from year to year. President’s Day Weekend had NEVER been that crowded prior to this year.
  • Stay in a Disney hotel. Not only will you be closer to the parks, but you will get to get into the parks anywhere from 30 to 45 minutes earlier than the general public. That was the reason we got on the Avatar ride in Animal Kingdom in less than 30 minutes. When we got off, the wait was close to 2.5 hours. The same with some of the Star Wars rides.
  • Get up early! Be in the park when it opens. On two days, we were literally the first or second people in a particular park.
  • Download the Disney Parks app from Disney. Great maps and suggestions as well as making it possible for you to unlock your room with your phone if you don’t get Magic Bands.
  • Train for the experience. In our party, Mason (my grandson) and I were easily the ones who did the most walking since we never got sick. We walked a total of more than 40 miles in four days. Ask my Apple Watch. That’s in the neighborhood of 20K steps a day. Start walking a few weeks before your trip.

That’s about it. I might add some more later, or I would be happy to answer any questions you might have. We all had a great time when some of us weren’t sick, and I wouldn’t trade my memories for any of it. But I am also glad it is over.

I am hoping my brother will add via comment (below) anything that I forgot.

Our motley crew on the morning of Day 1. No one was sick, and no one was tired.

Oops, I almost forgot one thing I wanted to throw in here. After we got home, my niece Cassie sent us a DisneyWorld Bingo. I thought it was hilarious and wanted to share it here. If you go, you will understand all of this…100%.

If you can dream it, you can do it. —Walt Disney

 

Panoramas just won’t fit

On By Jim BellomoIn Photography6 Comments

I love shooting panoramic (pano) photos. Not the kind you do with your iPhone. The ones I take are usually composed of a series of photos I have taken from the same place, with my feet firmly planted on the ground. I swivel my upper body and shoot anywhere from six to 15 photos. Before I start shooting them, I take a photo of my left foot. Then when I finish, I take a photo of my right foot. When I am doing my photo triage, later on, I know where the pano starts and ends.

Then I process those photos in Camera RAW and stitch them together in Photoshop. From that, I have gotten some pretty good panoramic photos. But I will let you decide. I decided to put together this post because I have so many panoramic photos, but I can’t post them on Facebook or Instagram because they crop them severely. When I do, you can only see the very center section. So here are a few of my own with a caption that tells you where I took them. As you will see, I take them both indoors and out, of scenery and people as well. Anytime I have a subject that won’t fit into one frame. My shortest (the indoor one in Naples) is only three photos stitched together. My longest (not sure which one) might have as many as 20.

Don’t forget, if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping…and PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. To really see these, you have to see them BIG!

My best pano…Puerto Vallarta sunrise
My most recent pano…The Boeing Museum of Flight
Victoria, British Columbia
Venice, Italy
Cinqe Terre, Italy
Split, Croatia-1
The first Olympic stadium, Athens, Greece
Taromina, Italy
Bonaire
Split, Croatia-2
Taromina, Italy
New Orleans, Louisiana
Toronto Aquarium
Athens, Greece
Niagara Falls, New York
Monte Carlo, Monaco
Mariner Spring Training Game, Peoria, AZ
View from the Acroplis, Athens, Greece
Athens harbor, Athens, Greece
Sedona, Arizona
The Parthenon, Athens Greece
Kotor, Montenegro
Dubrovnik, Croatia
Naples, Italy
Taromina, Italy
Monte Carlo, Monaco
Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Akaroa, New Zealand
Dubrovnik, Croatia
Dunedin, New Zealand
Interior of the dining room on Holland America’s Nieuw Statendam
The beach at Seaside, Oregon
The Biosphere outside Tucson, Arizona
Bonaire
Bonaire
Avalon Harbor, Catalina Island
Celebrity Century
Downtown Curacao
Dawes Glacier, Alaska
Allure of the Seas
Inside a mall in Naples, Italy

In the beginning, the cubists broke up form without even knowing they were doing it. Probably the compulsion to show multiple sides of an object forced us to break the object up – or, even better, to project a panorama that unfolded different facets of the same object.
—Marchel Duchamp

Disembarkation and our trip to Barcelona

On By Jim BellomoIn Food Experiences, Photography7 Comments

When we cruise, the first thing the real cruisers want to know about is the food. But the second is the embarkation/disembarkation. It’s been my experience after more than 30 cruises that if things are going to go wrong, one of these two times is when that will happen.

With this disembarkation, I am happy to say that nothing went wrong…except to say that they made us get off the ship (this is every cruiser’s lament). Pretty much everything went off without a hitch getting off the ship. We got up, had breakfast, and were asked to be out of our stateroom by 8:00 am. Sat for an hour in the Atrium, got our tag colors called, grabbed our luggage, took it to a van (since we were doing Viking’s post-cruise two-day extension), it was loaded into a van that followed our “luxury motor coach” into Barcelona from Tarragona.

That’s where thing kind of went bad. Viking now had to do something with the 35+ people on the “luxury motor coach” from 9:30 am when we got on until 1:00 pm when the Nobu Hotel in Barcelona would be ready to check us in. So they arranged a “luxury motor coach” tour that would drive us from the ship to Barcelona and then drive around Barcelona, showing us some of the sights. This started with them getting us lost before they even got the “luxury motor coach” out of the port (Seriously!).

Then they sent us a guide who admitted up front that he usually worked with Japanese tourists, so his English was not very good. On top of that, he also (like other guides we had previously toured with) felt like they had to fill every moment of the three-hour sojourn with the sound of his voice. He even started singing at one point. I overheard another passenger say, “I thought the guy with the flute yesterday was bad, but this guy is so much worse!” I had to agree. And since he was not confident in his English, he seemed to be much less confident in his directions and tour facts.

It took us about 70 minutes to get from Tarragona to the outskirts of Barcelona. He talked about 90% of the time. Mostly gibberish to us because his English was so poor. Our first stop in Barcelona was at the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya. This gorgeous art museum we thought was built high above and far from the city and not near anything. I took the header photo I am using today from in front of it.

We later learned that we were less than a mile from our hotel but that it would take almost three full hours to get there. And we didn’t stop to see the museum, just to use the bathrooms. Viking had bought tickets for us to get into the museum, but then we had 15 minutes to use the bathrooms and get back on the “luxury motor coach”…so we could be driven around and mumbled at while seeing the sights through a “luxury motor coach” window. As a photographer, this is my idea of torture. Seeing things I want to shoot but not being able to shoot them because the reflections in the “luxury motor coach” make it impossible to get a good shot. I did take a few when we got off at the museum. Here’s what they look like. Don’t forget, if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping…and PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

The inside of the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya
From here, I could have walked to our hotel in 30 minutes but, it took us 2.5 hours to drive there.
La Sagrada Familia from the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya.

Once we arrived at the hotel around 1:15 pm, we were told to go up to the second floor and that we would be checked in at a special desk just for Viking cruisers. When we got to the second-floor room they were using, there was about an hour’s wait to get registered. This is because they had planned well by sending the first “luxury motor coach” off and then not sending the second one for about 30 minutes. That way, we should have been staggered when we reached the hotel and able to check in without any lines. But this was not to be after our “luxury motor coach” driver got lost getting out of the port, and by the time he figured out how to get out, “luxury motor coach” number two was ahead of us, and we were not that far ahead of “luxury motor coach” number three. That meant we all pretty much got there at the same time. Viking had close to 250 people staying at the Nobu Barcelona. It was very much like the Marriott where we had done our pre-cruise extension in Athens. Both of them were four or five-star, high-rise hotels that were well outside (not in easy walking distance) of the main attractions of their respective cities. The rooms were nice, and the included breakfast at both places was delicious, but I would have traded that for something a little closer to where I wanted to shoot pics.

So instead of standing in line to register, we left our bags with the bellman at the front desk and took a taxi to a wonderful restaurant that Kathleen and I had eaten in when we were here in 2007—La Rita. The restaurant had been there for about 10 years before that and is still going strong. The menu was exactly as we remembered it. I made reservations almost a month in advance because when we go to Spain, we make our main meal, our lunch. People in Barcelona eat dinner around 9:30 pm, and we just can’t eat that late. So we have our main meal at lunch (around 2:00) and then grab some tapas in the evening.

After lunch, we came back and were able to check in easily, with no lines at all, and our rooms were ready. We unpacked, I did some posting on this blog and some photo processing, and we hit the hay for a very busy day on Sunday, our only full day in amazing Barcelona.

I had thought I could wind up the entire cruise with two more posts, one about Barcelona and disembarkation and one to sum up the cruise. But once I started talking about disembarkation, this one got too long to include our awesome day in Barcelona, so you will have to read two more. See you tomorrow. (BTW: we are home in Redmond after a hellacious day of flights and being up for 26 hours straight.)

You’d have a hard time finding anything better than Barcelona for food, as far as being a hub. Given a choice between Barcelona and San Sebastian to die in, I’d probably want to die in San Sebastian.  —Anthony Bourdain

 

Tarragona not Barcelona—it all worked out!

On By Jim BellomoIn Photography11 Comments

When we first booked this cruise with Viking, the itinerary finished in beautiful Barcelona. About three months later, we received a note from Viking that we would NOT be docking and spending an overnight in Barcelona. We would instead be docking and spending the night in Tarragona, a (we researched) small, industrial city south of Barcelona. (You can see how far apart they are above.) That kind of ticked me off because I was really looking forward to being able to wake up on the ship and then go for my pre-dawn photo walk and still be able to sleep on the ship that night.

We later learned that Viking had to switch because even though Barcelona is a HUGE port for cruise ships, there were going to be so many there over the two days (Friday and Saturday) that she would not have been able to stay for three full days. She needed four days tied up at a pier because we would have two days there (arrived Friday morning, disembarked Saturday morning) and then the cruise that followed ours would need the same (embark on Saturday afternoon, sail late on Sunday). Viking just could not take up a berth in Barcelona for that long. So that’s why we wound up in Tarragona.

In hindsight, I am so very glad that we did because it turned into one of my favorite photographic experiences on the trip. And I almost missed it once we were there. I almost missed it because we had tickets for the Viking-included excursion called “A Snapshot of Tarragona,” and when we got up, we just weren’t sure that we wanted to go. After being on the road since August 29, we were pretty much done. Kathleen wanted to just stay on board and pack, but she encouraged me to go ahead and take the excursion. I still (up until 15 minutes before it left) had not committed myself to go. But go, I did.

The first thing to note about leaving the ship was that it was docked a VERY long way from the gate to the port. In other words, this was NOT a port I could have walked out of. And then, once you got out of the port, it was a long way to the city. To say it was a very long way is an understatement. When we got on the “luxury motor coach,” we were then driven for about 30 minutes, and we were still in the port. It is a HUGE industrial port, and we were moored all the way out as far as you can get before still being at sea. And the road out of the port had what seemed like continuous speed bumps that the “luxury motor coach” could not go over quickly. Once we were out of the port, it was another 20 minutes before we were off the coach at the edge of downtown.

At this point, I am beginning to think that I made a mistake in coming. Viking was running shuttles all day long, about every 15 minutes, so I knew I could go back whenever I wanted. Our guide for the day was another guide that seemed to be paid by the word. She walked us around some Roman ruins (as much as I love Italy, if I never see a Roman ruin for a few years, that will be OK with me), which were pretty cool, but they didn’t really hold that much interest for me. I have so many photos from my Tarragona day that I will put the Roman ruins and what we could see from them here. Don’t forget, if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping…and PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

The first Roman wall and turret.
Closer view
Looking behind me, this more modern church.
More ruins
Of a chariot race track.
More ruins.
More ruins still.
And the obligatory narrow street scene.
And more ruins.
Lived the cool patterns on this tile.
And another cool street.
On the other side of the citadel.
More narrow streets. But cooler colors.
More citadel but another view point.
Inside the ruins
Upstairs on the ruins.
More and more ruins.
Stop the ruins!
And the (even though they are cool) narrow streets.
But I did live this actual ruin that was left in place. Each door goes into a different restaurant’s patio.
Yes, more ruins.
With cool windows
And cool verandahs.
One more ruins for you.

What did grab my interest were explosions and gunshots going off about three blocks away. We had been told that there was a Catalunya-wide festival going on that weekend (Catalunya is the “state” that both Tarragona and Barcelona are in) so we were pretty sure that this was what we were hearing. We could also see fireworks and a parade at the end of those three blocks. Here’s what I saw when I looked down the streets and then walked around to do some more investigating.

You can see the crowds.
I took this from about two blocks away. You can see a lion “float” on the right.
Throughout the city center you could see people like this having a festival breakfast on the sidewalks.
And the crowds were growing.
The square was filling with people.
There were many more people having a meal together.
The wine was flowing at 9:45 am
Note the different colors of shirts everyone is where.
Here’s the green team.
And this is what they would be competing in later in the day—human pyramids.

No, I did not get to see the human pyramids in Tarragona. To show you the photo above, I took a picture of a picture. But we did get to see one being built on Sunday in Barcelona. We weren’t able to see one built in Tarragona, because around noon, it started to rain, accompanied by quite the thunderstorm, so they were canceled for Friday. After looking at a few more ruins, the guide said we would now have some free time, but not to go downtown, it would be too loud and dangerous near the parades. So you know what I did…I went right downtown where the parades were. I am so glad I did. An amazing experience, as you will see.

On the way downtown, I found people getting ready for a parade. It turns out they do the parades twice in the morning. Once from the square and once back. So I ran into a bunch of people getting ready to march on my way down. Here’s a quick gallery of those people.

The red team members getting ready.
Not sure which neighborhood these guys represented.
Or these
Or these.

When I finally reached the city square, I could tell they were getting ready for something. At this point, I thought I had missed it all. Then I heard (from a side street) firework explosions. I headed from the square to where the parade would be coming from, and this is what I saw. Don’t forget, if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping…and PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

What downtown looked like before the parade.
I heard the parade comiing so I headed up the side street where the explosions were coming from.
This curve was just a little up the street
But it was close confines.
All that smoke you see is coming from the fireworks and it was LOUD!
Costumed characters lighting off fireworks.
You can see how smoky it is.
The mascots of each neighborhood led their groups down the hill.
The mascots had fireworks attached to their costumes.
The fireworks would scream for a while and then explode.
It was beyond loud.
I will try and add a video so you can see how loud it was. Probably not on this post.
These people are placing the fireworks
And lighting them.
And now the bull is fully loaded.
When he snorts, they go off with their screams.
He rears up and they explode.
There were bulls, dragons…
…strange dragons.
Very strange dragons
Each mascot was followed by a band from that neighborhood.
All of them were followed by peopel with muskets that when they fired them, it was louder than the fireworks.
And another band.
Then the golden chicken
With a pigeon in its mouth.
Everyone cheered the pigeon while he danced.
The king golden chicken/
And there was a horse.
Kids would pose with the mascots before they started marching.
The horse would dance into the crowd.
And the bands play on.
Here comes the armadillo.
And his band
Did you know there were Spanish bagpipes? Neither did I.
Here comes the lion
Followed by some huge dolls.
And another band.
This is a sequence. The man on the real horse has drums…
…and recognizes a man in the crowd.
He decides to pull the man up on his horse.
Found out later, the man being pulled up…
…was the Mayor of Tarragona.
He had a heck of a time climbing on.
But he finally got there to the cheers of the crowd.
Hurrah!
Now he as to get off.
That may be hard than he thinks.
Friends try and help him off.
Quite the job
Ended up taking four people.
They finally got him down.
And our rider got his hat back.
More incredible figures in the parade.
They just kept coming.
People would greet each other on the steets like they hadn’t seen each other in years.
Everyone was so friendly.
Including this guy.
The red team gets ready to march.
Big heads.
The remains of the fireworks were everywhere.
Huge
This woman had no idea he was behind her.
More marchers.
Colorful costumes.
Spanish knights.
Ladies with swords.
Kids dancing.
Teens getting ready to dance.
And I turned to a side street and this is what it looked like. No one there.
Back around and ready to go again.
The teens dancing in the street.
Loved the action.
This festival was amazing.

OK, sorry to post so many photos, but it was a photographic bonanza where I got to combine travel photography with street photography, my two favorites. I spoke to so many other photographers during the parade. They would see my camera and comment on it, and I would ask about theirs. Or about what was happening in the parade. They all spoke some English, and I speak zero Catalan, but they were so hospitable, and they did their best to tell me about their city and the festival. This, to me, is what travel is all about. What an incredible time I spent shooting in this awesome city.

After I had shot all these photos, it was back to the ship (I actually shot more than 900 photos of the festival—aren’t you glad I didn’t put them all online?) I was actually back on the ship in time for lunch with Kathleen. Then we spent the afternoon with Kathleen napping and packing and my processing photos, posting the photos and writing about our adventures. Speaking of processing and writing, I have had a couple of people ask about what cameras and lenses I use and how I decide what to post and not to post. I promise to do a separate post about that when I have finished the cruise write-up.

Two more posts will finish this trip. One for our disembarkation and full day in Barcelona and another to sum it all up and review the cruise. We are sitting in Barcelona airport, ready to board our flights home. See you soon.

I saw a human pyramid once. It was very unnecessary.
—Mitch Hedburg

 

Marseille and Seti finish our time in France

On By Jim BellomoIn Photography3 Comments

Let’s get this out of the way quickly. We have been to Marseille before. We were not impressed the first time, and the ship was moored a VERY long way from anything worth seeing. So to make a long story short, we stayed onboard. No reason to get off and see the same 500-year-old churches and museums we had seen before.

Now let’s talk about Seti. It seems to us that in every country we have visited (except tiny Montenegro), Viking has planned a stop in a small but interesting village that did not have a major draw; they just gave the visitors a taste of what life is like in the real world. Sibenik, Croatia, Crotone, Italy and now Sete, France.

Sete is a tiny (by French standards) fishing village. It is so small that we could do a tour of downtown without leaving the port on a “luxury motor coach.” We did have to take that “luxury motor coach” from the ship to the front of the port because it was a very industrial port, and they didn’t want people walking around. It was kind of funny that the “luxury motor coach” we got on to go less than half a mile was the nicest “luxury motor coach” we were on for the entire 21 days.

We were doing the Viking Walking Tour of the village, and we had a guide who we thought was going to be great. He led us along by playing the flute. We looked like the rats being led to the sea by the Pied Piper. But once we were in town and he got down to the actual touring, he became just like every other guide—paid by the word. Instead of telling us that the town’s main canal held its fishing fleet, he had to tell us how you fish for this and that fish. To be honest, if I want to know how to fish for tuna, I will look it up. I wanted to know about Sete, France. Here are my pics from Seti. At least the ones that are interesting enough to share. Don’t forget, if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping…and PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

Our Pied Piper Guide
Markets were opening
They have a jousting tournament every year when boats like this have a man standing in the front with a lance, trying to knock another guy, on another boat in the water.
The main canal out to sea for their fishing fleet
Loved these boats and the colors.
The market was setting up.
It was a very nice waterfront walk.
Blue boat. Kind of a theme for me.
Cool, old hotel.
There is always that church steeple.
Loved how the 2nd floor was boarded over.
Great black and white art on the inside of the seawall.
A blue door. More theme.
Downtown Street.
Boats lined up to go.

That about sums up our time in France. Of course, we had Eze and Nice yesterday, but this tiny town, Sete, was the real deal. Just a sleepy fishing village.

I woke up one time coming out of a blackout, and I was on an airplane, descending to land in Charles de Gaulle Airport in France. And all I can think is I must have decided it was a good idea to go to France, and got my passport, and got on a plane.  — Joe Walsh, lead guitarist of the Eagles.