What I'm Focussed On - Land and City Scapes

[kimmar067]

 

[klmall]

New Mexico

 

[MarkBarbieri]

Madonna di San Luca sitting above Bologna, Italy.

 

[kimmar067]

 

[klmall]

 

[MarkBarbieri]

That's the Cupola del Brunelleschi in Firenze as seen from the Campanile di Giotto. You can walk up stairs to the top of the Cupola and to the top of the Campanile. We did both one morning, which was a bit tiring.


I love Florence. It's a little too touristy, but it is still an amazing place.

 

[klmall]

Christchurch Cathedral and College

 

[MarkBarbieri]

Tokyo as night was falling, taken from our hotel room in the Akihabara district of Tokyo.

 

[klmall]

Seattle monorail to the Space Needle

 

[MarkBarbieri]

That's an old school cityscape. It's picture of the cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde taking on September 10, 2001. We woke up the next morning to see the start of the awful events on TV the next day. After seeing the planes crash, we boarded an old steam train and were out of contact until the afternoon.

 

[klmall]

sunset along the Arkansas River in Colorado

 

[MarkBarbieri]

That's the bridge at the back of Sprague Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park looking back over the lake to Halletts Peak. That picture was taken Christmas Eve back in 2003, almost 20 years ago. Time flies.

 

[MarkBarbieri]

Is that the Riverwalk in San Antonio?

 

[klmall]

Hoh Rainforest, Olympic NP

 

[MarkBarbieri]

Hoh Rainforest, Olympic NP

Oooh. That's on our list. We'll be there for a few days later this year as part of a big western loop trip (up to Calgary, over to Vancouver Island, down to San Diego, and then home to Texas).

 

[klmall]

Oooh. That's on our list. We'll be there for a few days later this year as part of a big western loop trip (up to Calgary, over to Vancouver Island, down to San Diego, and then home to Texas).

You will love Olympic NP if you get there! It's the only NP that has all three landscapes that I love: high mountains, temperate rainforests and ocean beaches! We couldn't believe the number of huge trees we saw everywhere we drove. We spent a total of two weeks in three locations. We spent a few days in Seattle downtown near Pike Place Market in a condo then moved across to the peninsula by ferry and spent a few days near Sequim with views across to Canada in a rental house. Our final stop was Mt. Rainier in an A-frame cabin with me hiking up several trails, falling and breaking my ankle though we didn't know it until I got back to Maryland! We very seriously considered moving to Washington for our retirement because of this trip!

view across from our Sequim house but Canada was obscured by clouds the whole time we were there although we did see huge tanker ships and submarines heading out to the ocean

our first view of Mt. Rainier

We have also ventured to Calgary on our way to Canmore to tour Banff NP and the Icefields Parkway. Maybe you'll be amazed too by the humongous number of look-alike subdivisions that circle the north and west of the city for miles. We thought you'd need a GPS to navigate the hundreds of streets in these subdivisions with houses closer together than those allowed in the US.

A poor quality shot from the car; imagine miles and miles of this!

Vancouver is also on our bucket list perhaps on our way to Alaska some day!

Sorry I got carried away with talking about our Washington trip back in 2009, my first with a dSLR and then Canada in 2011! But both were wonderful.

Looking forward to seeing your pictures from your upcoming trip!!!

 

[MarkBarbieri]

We've been to most of the places on our itinerary already, but Olympic is one we haven't seen. I think we only have a couple of days there. We've been falling into the habit of doing two broadly different types of trips - tours and destination trips. With the former, we spend a few days in a lot of different places and with the latter we spend a lot of time in a single place. When doing tours, we look for places we want to go back to and spend more time.

For Calgary, we are mostly stopping there to visit friends. A guy we used to kayak with in Houston about 25 years ago moved up there and married a local. Also, a lady I worked with for about 15 years also retired and splits her time between Palm Springs and Calgary.

When we started planning the trip, my oldest son lived in Redmond. We thought this would be a good time to see him. But since then, he has moved back to Texas (not coincidentally where his girlfriend lives). We'll see his brother in Dallas, him in Austin, and other friends and relatives in San Diego, Colorado, and the upper California coast.

A little over a year ago, we took the opposite approach. We rented a house on the coast in Pacific Grove for a month and had family and friends come stay with us there.

 

[klmall]

We've been to most of the places on our itinerary already, but Olympic is one we haven't seen. I think we only have a couple of days there. We've been falling into the habit of doing two broadly different types of trips - tours and destination trips. With the former, we spend a few days in a lot of different places and with the latter we spend a lot of time in a single place. When doing tours, we look for places we want to go back to and spend more time.

For Calgary, we are mostly stopping there to visit friends. A guy we used to kayak with in Houston about 25 years ago moved up there and married a local. Also, a lady I worked with for about 15 years also retired and splits her time between Palm Springs and Calgary.

When we started planning the trip, my oldest son lived in Redmond. We thought this would be a good time to see him. But since then, he has moved back to Texas (not coincidentally where his girlfriend lives). We'll see his brother in Dallas, him in Austin, and other friends and relatives in San Diego, Colorado, and the upper California coast.

A little over a year ago, we took the opposite approach. We rented a house on the coast in Pacific Grove for a month and had family and friends come stay with us there.

Sounds like a good plan for this year. We are traveling far less now that DH is disabled and can't walk much and is in pain most of the time due to his scoliosis and other problems. DS and I went to WDW in late 2022 and I still want to get to Alaska and Vancouver with or without him! Like you we have also talked about renting a place back in Maryland at the beach and having friends and relatives visit us there. All my friends and relatives are still either in PA or MD nowadays.

 

[klmall]

view from a house we rented in the Smokies one fall

 

[MarkBarbieri]

That's Positano on Italy's Amalfi coast. We were staying in Nerano, but we chartered a small boat for the day and took it up the coast. We went diving in the morning near some small islands and then stopped in Positano for lunch and some sightseeing.