Travel... What A Way To Go... Part 4

Back In Switzerland, our friends did some traveling around and so they went to the hometown of the husband of the couple that  they were visiting.  He comes from a town call Brienz. In Brienz you will find beautiful scenery like this...

towering 5800 ft above Lake Brienz is the Rothorn (mountain). Our friends stepped aboard a  steam engine driven train which took them to the summit. The train in their photos looked quite benign but when I went looking for pictures of it I found these.... and they look anything but benign....

and this...

Brienz is a town where wood carvings abound and once I saw the pictures of it I realized why when in Canada the husband who came from there would do so much with wood carvings...his wood carvings were very folksy.  Still it brings them back to Canada ocasionally as they enjoy entering the ice carving contest in FSJ.

Next our friends went to Lake Lucerne. Lake Lucerne is surrounded by picturesque scenery and opulent buildings/vacation homes.  when I saw it I thought of the movie The Sound Of Music and the scene where Maria and the children down a country lane on bike singing Do Ra Me.... (only that actually happened in Saltzburg, Austria).

Have a look at these vistas....

The area is steeped in history ...

...and houses are traditional in the Swiss style....

But land is expensive... $4,000,000 for the smallest and steepest of pieces of property. I can only imagine how difficult it is to purchase land anywhere in Switzerland.

After Lucerne our friends were fortunate to be able to take in the local pumpkin festival.  Now here I ran into problems. I wasn't able to find any pictures from the pumpkin festival. Evedently the Swiss are absolutely besotted with pumpkins. They don't only carve them but build great structures riminicent of the rose bowl parade only not with roses... no indeed.... the Swiss like to use pumpkins. They build all manner of things from cows to hands held high in the air and the use pumpkins to do it.

I will end here today... and tomorrow I will bring you the last installment of Travel...  What A Way To Go. We will be visiting Warsaw Poland and we will be visiting a wind mill in the Netherlands. So come back and join me....

Travel.... What A Way To Go... Part 3

So our friends wanted to see Mount Vesuvius... and they were driving. This meant requiring a small car like most Europeans favour, and a heart stone and nerves of steel. S had the forethought to take some video of driving in Italy. Aside from the fact that the roads are narrow, every turn brought new dangers.  I can only imagine how it was likely very exhilarating to drive around a corner where convex mirrors were placed to help you see what was coming in the other direction.

Now imagine a motor cycle coming out of nowhere down the mid-line between the traffic ahead.... Ahhh,!  That's all I can say!

Then out of nowhere would pop a motorcycle or moped driving toward you on the mid line between the oncoming traffic and the line of traffic that you are driving in. I think I might get out of the car and walk! The most impressive thing about the drive was the fact that every turn you went around brought vistas of beauty and interest.

Beautiful views here...

...and here.

 G said that it was one city after another but they were small cities. You would hit a city and then shortly after you would be out of the city and heading into the country and then back into the next city.
And the communities were beautiful...

One after another towns of various sizes revealed themselves.... and each one with it's own unique appeal.

Teapot marvelled at how the homes were built so steeply on the cliffs with one house acting as the garden for the house above.

There were beaches too.... some near the towns and some that really were all to themselves...

Overlooking everything were feudal castles dating back to who knows how long ago...

And all the time the atmosphere was steeped in historical wealth, dreamy Mediterranean culture, and beauty above all. It is easy to understand why so many people travel to this part of the world.

Our friends stayed in a lovely domicile where they cooked their own meals each day after traveling to all the local spots of interest.

And of course the spot of interest that was of most curiosity to them was Mount Vesuvius... and the ancient town site of Pompeii.

Mount Vesuvius is best known for it's eruption in AD 79 when it spit forth lava and destroyed the Roman townsite of Pompeii.

Mount Vesuvius now looks like this...

and this...

and this...

 You can now go to the edge of the crater but it really is an active volcano, though it hasn't erupted since 1944.

The nearest community/city is Naples. But at one time the nearest city was Pompeii. Pompeii... the city of mythology was destroyed in AD79 and thereafter was forgotten and disappeared from memory until the 1800s when the town site of Pompeii was rediscovered.  Today it looks like this...

It is open to the public to wander about and see the effects of this devastating eruption that ended so many lives.

The bath houses of Pompeii look like this now....

and there is the remains of their amphitheatre....

then there are the remains of restaurants in what might have been a mall type of area.....

There are open ovens where bread would have been cooks and then there are holes in the surfaces of what might possible have been there to purposely hold bowls or pots of some kind. S had his picture taken next to one of these.

And though my friends didn't take pictures of it, the reality of Pompeii and the eruption of Mount Vesuvius really hits home when you see images like this...

How easy it is to forget the reality of natural disasters when they are so far away.  But by traveling or at least seeing the pictures of someone else traveling to these places will remind us that we are humans and it encourages us to have a depth of feeling that we might not have otherwise.

This is the reason for my desire to travel....

I will end here and let you know that tomorrow we head back to Switzerland to Lake Lucerne, and to Bienz and to a pumpkin festival.... see you then...

Travel.... Wait I don't Have Time This Morning

So just a quick post this morning since I have to make a mad dash into town with the Dear Ones.... will be back later today and will try to get that post finished...

...will be talking about Mount Vesuvius, Pompeii, Naples and the west coast of Italy. Stay tuned....

Meanwhile....

Guess what I've been working on.....

(It's a s-ck)

I'm using yarn I spun back when I was in level 1. The yarn is sucky but was dyed with nature dyes and looks horrible but for my first pair I felt that I should try some of the not so good yarn... and look at it... just look at it... I made my way through my first turned heel!!!!! Once I have them finished I will throw them into a dye pot with some lovely bright coloured dye... and some lucky person on my Christmas list will be receiving them.

It's great to sit in my chair with this little fellow loving me...

and knit, knit, knit.....
Level 5... well it's on hold again while I get these socks finished. Oops! I've done it now. I said the word socks.... there will be no end to the complaints from the toes now.

Travel.... What A Way To Go.... Part 2

Now one of the places that our friends went to visit was Tuscany, Italy.  I don't know about you but when I think of Tuscany my thoughts have always been of this kind of thing....

or maybe this....

But after being at my friend's house last weekend and having seen their pictures from there I will think of Tuscany no more, in the way that I did. The reason is because until Sunday night I had never heard of a wonderful artist by the name of Niki de Saint Phalle.  This wonderful artist has built a garden dedicated to the concept behind Tarot Cards. She has given the Tuscan countryside something a little different to look at.  When she died in 2002 she left a legacy of inspiration for modern artist and architects alike. I did not take any of the photos from my friends to post here but once again I spent a little time researching the Tarot Garden and finding pictures similar to the ones we saw at our frind's house on Sunday night.... If these are not inspirational I don't know what is!

This is a building.... to be exact... it is the home of Niki until she died.

Inside of her home you will find the kitchen as seen here.

Add to it spaces such as this and her architecture/art may be somewhat overwhelming if one had to live there permanently.

As if the house is not distinct enough as it is, there is a pillar of hands....

Moving out into the garden there are beautiful views framed by wonderful mosaics.

And then you see the Tarot Garden....

where fountains splash....

and every turn gives you something to look at.... and think about.....

Whimsical is a word to describe the statuesque....

...but gripping and somehow essential.

G and I discussed how all artists should go  to Europe and experience the freedom of expression that seems to be so fundamentally a part of their culture.... North Americans somehow seem not to revere art the way Europeans do.... (this is just a thought)... When faced with art of this nature most North Americans will be quick to judge the work as strange... and perhaps it is.... but there is something compelling about being free enough to expand boundaries through the expression of ones ideas.

And while this art is not necessarily something that I love... I can see the value of the artist expression. The house is overwhelming and I need much more sublime surroundings for peace and tranquility.... I could not live in such a dwelling. But I would love to go and visit this site and see the work of this great artist. Another reason for wanting to travel....

If you would like to see more of Niki de Saint Phalle's art

the garden is called Il Giradino Dei Tarocchi, and her web site is www.nikidesaintphalle.com

See you tomorrow with views of further south in Italy.

Travel.... What A Way To Go

So further to my post of yesterday... our friends decided to take a trip to Europe and went to visit friends of theirs (and ours) who lived in Canada for a while before moving back to Switzerland. The main part of the trip was to visit Switzerland and both couples would drive to Italy and then our friends would travel on to Poland before coming back to Canada. Boston and the Netherlands were stops on the way to and from.

I will eventually tell you about all of their trip but there is so much to tell, that I will start with the part at which I most marveled....

They chose to go to Poland for several reasons. Primarily because Poland has one of the only old growth forests left in Europe... and they did visit that but it is so heavily controlled for environmental reasons that they did not get to see as much of it as they hoped.   They also wanted to go to Auschwitz Concentration camp. (I will not be talking about that part of their trip for personal reasons... I might cry...)  But in their research of their trip they decided to go to a salt mine while in Krakow which is where my story begins....

I have been listening to the Ideas program on CBC radio for many years and a few months ago they did a two part series on Salt mines and the history of the Salt trade.  This was fascinating to me with my interest in history etc... and though I have never been to a salt mine and really had no desire to go, I suddenly found myself sitting on the edge of my seat as the photos of our friend's visit to the salt mine went by.  It was beautiful....

In particular this picture captured me in a way I cannot describe.... the only thing I can say is that by looking at it I felt as though I was in the room with them...

Taken in 2011 by G. Okada

So based on that, I had to do some research and find out more about this beautiful place.

It is called the Wieliczka Salt Mine. And never have I seen anything so inspiring as this...

The mine's attractions include dozens of statues and an entire chapel that has been carved out of the rock salt by the miners. The oldest sculptures are augmented by the new carvings by actual artists. It is now open to the public for viewings... it is, in my opinion, a place worth visiting and a thing now added to my bucket list....

The following are photos taken not by my friends but from websites I researched on the salt mine.... I just wanted to show you in addition to the above, a taste of what we saw...

See the chandeliers...? 

yeah... all made from salt.

The floor is not tiles... no it is just the floor of the mine engraved to look like tiles.

 Commercial mining was discontinued in 1996 due to low salt prices and mine flooding.

I can only wonder at the devotion these miners had to this place that pushed them to build such beautiful works of art. There are places where the wooden supports are white from salt and are so preserved that there is not much likelihood of them ever decaying.

My admiration for such dedication to beauty and such creative energy is overwhelmed.

I will leave these pictures with you to mull over and ruminate on.

And I will return tomorrow with some photos on the Italian Riviera.

While You're Waiting...

I have spinners coming today so I won't get a chance to post all those pics I intend on showing so while you're waiting.... here's a little something for you to watch....

check this out....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3i6lK7EyVc

or this might give you a laugh..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VELQ39QAYP4