The Painted Hills

Just got back from a trip to Iceland, Greenland, and France, which can only mean one thing: I'm falling even further behind on posting photos from previous trips.

While I recover from jet lag this weekend, I thought it would be a good time to catch up on at least one trip's worth of photos.

I travelled to Oregon back in July for work. I have a couple customers up in the Portland area that I visit periodically (e.g. Here's a video from a trip a few years ago). I always enjoy the trips to Oregon because they provide the opportunity to see my mom.

This time I finally managed to squeeze in a day trip that I've wanted to take for years. There's a beautiful spot in Central Oregon called The Painted Hills. I first saw photos of it back in 2010, and between my work-related trips, a trip for a wedding, and just-for-fun trips to visit Mom, I've never been able to get to the Painted Hills.

Having travelled more than a million miles in my lifetime, it strikes me as a tad bit ironic that this 400ish mile journey could have been so challenging to undertake. Sometimes it takes longer than expected to get to where you want to be.

But this time I did it - with Mom along for the ride. It was a bit of a time crunch. I flew up on Sunday around noon, and I needed to be at my customer's site the very next day. The drive alone is an eight hour round trip. That plus an hour or so to stop for dinner plus the time at The Painted Hills meant it was going to be a late night.

Before the trip, I asked Mom - an Oregonian for how many years now? - whether the trip was feasible. By our calculations, it was. Just barely.

When I landed at PDX, I quickly made my way to Avis, picked up my rental, and called Mom to see if she was at the meet-up location that we had prearranged. She was, so I headed her way.

Our drive to The Painted Hills (and back) was a pleasant outing. We had hours and hours to talk and catch up.



After some time, we arrived at The Painted Hills.

And the Hills were, indeed, beautiful. Here are a few photos.

Click if you'd like to see a 360° view. The 360° view is even more fun if you view it from a smart phone and click on the gyroscope icon.

And for more photos, I've created a quick video...

The weather was beautiful, the drive was pleasant, the company was enjoyable, and the views were spectacular.

It would have been nice to have more time to spend admiring the view, but the clock was ticking. We hopped back in the car, and started heading back towards Portland. We stopped briefly for dinner in the nearest town, Prineville, and hit the road once again.

In the end, the timing worked out fine. I was back at my hotel by around 11:00 - 11:30. That was plenty early enough to get the necessary amount of shuteye.

A day and a half later, my trip to Oregon was cut short when I received the sad news that my mother-in-law, Marilyn, had passed away. Thankfully work was understanding. We quickly arranged for a co-worker to fly up and take my place. It all happened so fast. I heard the news around noon, and I was back home that very same evening.

In light of the sad events, I was glad to have taken the opportunity to spend time with mom. Life is too darn short. We don't get to keep our loved ones around forever.

Spend time with those you love, and don't miss the opportunity to let them know that you love them.

Yesterday's Commute

My commute is a bit variable. It takes me somewhere between a few seconds to roll out of bed (i.e. home office) and travelling 24+ hours to a far flung corner of the planet. Yesterday I did a rather low key commute from Las Vegas back home.

As is often the case, we were in the landing pattern that goes above Milpitas, over the salt ponds, up the bay, and landing on runway 28L or 28R. I always like to get a window seat in order to enjoy the views.

Yesterday, just after we flew past the Foster City sign and the San Mateo bridge and we were a few moments away from landing, the pilot gunned the engines and we were quickly gaining altitude again. Not sure why we aborted the landing - it wasn't terribly foggy - but I'm glad we did.

The photo above is of the salt ponds across the bay in Menlo Park. Ordinarily this is the view you get. But after the aborted landing, the flight was re-routed out over the Pacific, back inland over Palo Alto, and down towards Menlo Park.

The following photos are of the salt ponds and marshlands on that side of the bay.

So there you have it. That was my commute yesterday. This week I'm working from home. And the following week I'm off to glamorous Pittsburgh. Not to worry... I'll find somewhere else exciting to go before year's end. Already have somewhere in mind and planning is underway!

Back from Europe

Got back from Europe yesterday. Woke up at 3:30 this morning. That's actually by design as I'm flying out to San Antonio again tomorrow. No need to adjust to Central time zone!

Getting up so early this morning has given me the opportunity to work a bit on some of the photos I took over the last 3+ weeks. I'll put them up on Picasaweb in a while, but first here are some videos that I made from the photos.

The photos in the first video are from Budapest, and they were taken on the big camera (Canon 30D). There are some capabilities that I still count on from that Camera such as its ability to shoot in low light.

I took the bulk of the photos, however, using my phone (iPhone 6). While the iPhone is woefully inadequate when it comes to low level lighting and its zoom can't stand up to real glass, I continue to be very pleased with the photos I can take. Having the phone on me at all times and being able to whip it out practically instantaneously is super convenient. I like that the limitations of the phone as a camera forces me to think much more about the composition of the photos I take.

The following video is a small sampling of the photos I took while in Ireland.

A tip 'o the hat to the anonymous stranger that came to my aid in Dublin.

It was raining, and I was rushing to catch a double-decker bus. The sidewalk was a bit crowded, so as I approached the bus from behind, I was right on the curb... Until in a freakish accident I wasn't right on the curb. My foot landed on the edge of the curb, it slipped to the road surface below, and that immediately threw off my balance. I quickly moved to recover, got my other foot planted in front of me, but there was no saving myself from the fall that was to come.

I was top heavy with all the stuff in my backpack, and the resulting high center of gravity plus my momentum kept my top half moving even though my successfully planted foot had righted my bottom half. I was soon falling face first toward the narrow space between the curb and the bus. I took the fall in several phases. First I took a portion of the fall on my knees. Then I absorbed the next part of the fall with my arms and hands. Next it was my left shoulder's turn. Fortunately I didn't whack my head on the curb. I did end up sprawled out unflatteringly in the curb itself.

I knew that the bus was about to leave, so it was imperative that I move... and fast. That doesn't mean that my body was moving as fast as my brain, however. As I was just beginning to get back up, I was very much consciously aware that a portion of my body - my legs - were physically under the bus. Having had my legs for nearly a quarter of a century now, I am rather attached to them - both figuratively and literally. If the bus drove straight ahead, I was going to have a very serious problem on my hands. Alternatively, if the bus had started driving forward and turning out in to traffic, a pair of crushed legs was going to be the least of my problems - or perhaps my last.

As I got to my hands and knees, that stranger's hand reached out and pulled me the rest of the way up.  By the time I was completely upright again, my brain had switched from survival instinct mode to oh-great-everyone-just-saw-me-fall-embarassed mode. I thanked him, and he went on his way.

I have more photos from Ireland and Hungary, plus I have loads more from Northern Ireland, the Czech Republic, and Austria. Didn't get many photos from England. Rather than sight seeing, the short time in England was about visiting friends.

Hood River and San Juan Bautista

Happy New Year!

I'm taking advantage of the holiday (and the recent momentum I got from working on my India photos) to catch up on some other photos from 2015.

What do Hood River, Oregon and San Juan Bautista, California have to do with each other?

Ordinarily very little.

In our case, those were the locations for two weddings that we attended in 2015. With the exception of 2015, we've been a lull. You get to an age in life when all your friends who are going to ever get married are married. As a result the number of wedding invites tapers off considerably.

The nieces and nephews will get married some day in the not too distant future, but those weddings are likely many years in the future.

Right now it's lulls-ville.

So it was a surprise in 2015 to attend not one but two weddings.

The first was Richard and Sabrina's wedding in Hood River.

This was our first trip to Hood River, so we took the opportunity to explore the area. One thing that confused me initially was that I wasn't aware that I was looking at multiple mountains. If recollection serves, the photo below is of Mt. Hood.

We spent much of our free time touring the "fruit loop".

And we had the opportunity to meet some friendly alpacas. I say "friendly" because at the time I couldn't remember whether it is llamas that spit or alpacas or both. Still not sure which ones are the spitters. Fortunately, these guys weren't spitters.

You can see more photos from Hood River here.

Interestingly, I found out recently that I'll be returning to Oregon for a third time. The first time was the wedding in Hood River. The second time was for work in November. And I'll be returning the week of January 18th again for work. Not sure yet whether it'll be Beaverton or Hillsboro or Lake Oswego. All conveniently located to let me visit my mom again.

The second wedding was Larry and Dianna's in San Juan Bautista.

Mission San Juan Bautista is beautiful...

The plants on the ground of the mission were intriguing...

But some of the best photos weren't ones that I took. Rather, these were taken in the photo booth at the wedding reception.

Extra credit to me for the creative use of the mustache. :-)

You can see more photos from San Juan Bautista here.

Photos from India

Absent life’s daily interruptions, I would dedicate more time to one of my hobbies: photography.

Right?

Ironically I spend so much time travelling that I find it a challenge to find the time to organize and post my travel photos.

For instance, I have some photos that I took while in India last month. Here it is December, and it has taken till this week to post those them.

In my defense I could explain that since returning from India, I've been in Chandler Arizona, Hillsboro Oregon, St. Helena California, and Stafford Virginia. To round that out, I've been at home in Aptos for all of - maybe - a week or so. And later this week I'll be travelling to the east coast -- twice.

But what kind of defense is that, really? You show up for life, or you don't. You do what matters to you, or you don't. You make your dreams come true, or you don't. The choice is yours.

Yes, I'm busy. Yes, that poses a challenge. But there are people in this world facing challenges that expose my "but I don't have time" whining for the FWP that it is.

I'm grateful to have had the good fortune to spend my entire adulthood traipsing across this beautiful planet of ours. For me, the travels that I undertake and the photos that I bring home are my way of telling those with the ears to hear it that life wants us to live our dreams.

Okay, enough of the philosophizing. On to the photos of India.

I would like to begin with this photo...

One note about this photo... This never happened. Yes I took this photo of the iron pillar and the archway at the Qutub Complex in Delhi, but that blue sky with the fluffy clouds... That sky definitely didn't happen. I freely confess that I Photoshopped in the sky.

The whole two weeks in India were spent in a haze. No, I don't mean I was caught up in a whirlwind mixture of sights and sounds - one blurring into the other. Rather, I mean that each and every day and in every city, air pollution dominated the skies.

I've been subjected to this sort of relentless onslaught of air pollution many times before (I'm talking about you, Beijing), but I don't recall a time I've ever traveled throughout a country and encountered air pollution like this in city after city.

Mind you it's not my intention to look down on India and publicly shame them for their air quality issues. They have a challenge of balancing their desire to grow their economy against the need for natural resources such as breathable air. I endured the air pollution for two weeks. I don't envy the people trapped in it day after day, week after week, month after... You get the idea.

Call me an eternal optimist. There was at least one positive side-effect of the air pollution: Some of the sunrises and sunsets were beautiful. Consider, for instance, one of my favorite photos from the trip to India:

Whenever I think of the Taj Mahal, I think of the staggering amounts of white marble. But this sunrise photo presents the Taj Mahal in a very different light. Yes there is the white marble, but the color of the marble is muted by the haze. The Taj Mahal is framed by the mosque archway. The floor reflects the sunlight in the stone bordering what I assume to be stone prayer mats. The overall hue of the photo is brown. Brown, brown, brown, much like the skies of India.

BTW... Earlier when I wrote that part about how I was going to be travelling to the east coast twice this week... I was still in California at the time. Now I'm on the other side of these here United States where I'm pleased to report that the winter is thankfully mild.

I'd like to write more about each and every one of the photos, but I'm going to lame out for the time being and just provide links to the photos of Mumbai, Delhi, and Agra. For now, I've got to get some sleep.

Too Caught Up To Catch Up

In my last post, I optimistically said that I might possibly catch up on some of my photos. No such luck. Been having too good of a time seeing the sights and taking more photos.

Till I get around to those Tokyo photos and the news photos from this trip, you can see some 360° panoramic photos I've taken in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, and Japan (and plenty of other destinations before those if you want to work your way back through the archives).

BTW... The 360s are best viewed using a iOS device. When you go to the link above, you'll see a icon on the screen that looks like this:

Click that icon, then twirl around. The 360 will move with you. You can pretend you're right there in Tallinn or Riga or Villinius or Moscow or St. Petersburg or Tokyo with me. :-)

More Beijing Photos

Two of my hobbies - besides collecting key cards - are travel and photography. I enjoy taking the photos, but I don't always get around to doing the post-trip processing (i.e. selecting, editing, posting, and writing about them) that I'd like to do.

The work that funds these hobbies often sucks up the time that I need to fully delve into them. For instance, I selected, edited, and posted the photos from the first trip to Asia last year, but I never got around to writing about them. You can see those photos here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. On the other hand, I haven't even gotten around to the photos from the other two trips to Asia last year.

But I'm on top of it this time with Beijing! I've already posted photos and written about Beijing Olympic Park.

In addition, just last night I completed working on the photos from the Beijing trip. If you want to see those photos but you're in a rush (or can't be bothered clicking through photo after photo after photo), you can see a video I made of them below.

(Click Full Screen button to enlarge)

Alternatively, if you want to see the same photos but you want to see them bigger and at higher resolution and without the cheesy royalty-free music, you can see them here.

Hope you enjoy them.

BTW... For all the other photos that I've posted but never gotten around to writing about, you can see them here.

Beijing Olympic Park

I took on a photography project last week in Beijing. Given the large crowds of people in Beijing, I knew that time-lapse photography would be fun to create and watch.

One essential piece of equipment for creating time-lapse photography is something to keep the camera pointed in the direction you want and to keep it very still. Ordinarily that  piece of equipment would be a tripod. I rarely even use one at home, and I never travel with one.

I was forced to improvise. I had some success using a few 1 yuan coins to prop up the camera at the desired angle. Unfortunately it was a bit breezy, and the wind kept knocking over the camera. I rummaged through my backpack to find something better suited for the task. Ultimately I found that propping up the camera against a water bottle worked exceptionally well.

One thing that I like about not using a tripod in this video was that it forced me to shoot from the ground. I think the shooting from ground level make this video more interesting looking that shooting from 3-5' off the ground.

The other thing about shooting from ground level is that doing so drew a lot of attention from the people around me - or should I say behind me. You can't see it in the video, but the whole time I was shooting, there were half a dozen to up to twenty people standing behind me (and behind the camera) watching inquisitively. Alas none of the people are likely to see the video any time soon. The video is hosted on YouTube, YouTube is owned by Google, and Google is one of the main targets of the GFC.

The cold breezy night and crawling around on the ground reminded me of the efforts required to get the Chinny shot years ago. The big difference in this case was that I wasn't crawling around in penguin poop. :-)

On the way home from the airport, I saw about a half dozen billboards for the iPhone 6. Each featured a striking photo scaled up to billboard proportions. Underneath the photos the caption read "Shot with iPhone 6". [ BTW... I think it sounds totally pretentious the way apple never uses the articles "the" or "an" in front of the word "iPhone". ]

I assume the point of the ad campaign is - at least in part - to tout the high resolution of the iPhone 6 camera. The photos did, indeed, look mighty impressive. But there was one thing that quickly jumped out at me about the photos in the ad campaign: they're all daytime shots.

I love the versatility and portability of shooting with an iPhone. One thing that almost always disappoints me about the iPhone, however, is its poor performance in low light conditions. More often than not, I find any nighttime shots I take to be far less than stellar.

Given the poor low light capabilities of the iPhone, I'm rather pleased with how well this video turned out.

BTW... The video was shot on an iPhone 4S. Thinking of upgrading today. Happy Birthday to me. :-)

Back in Beijing

I arrived in Beijing a couple nights ago. It is my first time back in about eight years. Much (a.k.a. most) of the Mandarin and Simplified Chinese I've picked up on previous trips has been unused for so long that I'm rusty - very rusty.

But it is slowly coming back to me. For instance, I think I've figured out this poster I encountered yesterday. I recognize the first two characters  北 and 京.

北 (bei) + 京 (jing) = 北京 (Beijing)

FYI...  北 = North and 京 = capital, so Beijing is the northern capital.

I'm also pretty certain that the characters 6 and 0 means 60. But don't quote me.

I think I understand the rest of the poster from context. From what I can tell, the poster says that piddly little firecrackers are not an acceptable way of celebrating CNY 2015.

Given the number of explosions I heard on the night I arrived, setting off fireworks anywhere, any size, and at any time is not only acceptable, it's apparently a requirement.

I've put some photos of my walk yesterday through parts of Beijing online. Enjoy. :-)

Roatan

Herbert Woods of Roatan Ocean Adventures is a man of his word.

He led us on a tour of Roatan, Honduras recently. During the snorkeling portion of the tour, he was popping off shots on his GoPro, and he promised to send the photos. "Promises, promises," I thought.

But Herbert delivered.

I received his underwater photos by email today. I freely confess that his underwater photography puts my feeble attempts to shame.

I'll include some of his fabulous photos here in this blog post, but there's more of Herbert's photos to see.

If you find yourself headed to Roatan, I highly recommend ROA. Herbert knows the island, he knows the underwater sights, and he knows how to go above and beyond. I wish him success in his business!

Here are some of his photos...

I, too, took photos. Big surprise, I know.

Here's some of the underwater action I captured on the GoPro (forgive the hurly parts of the video)... 

This cute guy is a capuchin monkey.

By himself, he's quite cute.

But there were three or so others in the cage with him. They all seemed to delight in digging through my pockets, burrowing into my collar, commandeering my iPhone, and doing parkour on my head. You can witness the monkey mayhem here...

After visting the monkeys and other critters (you can see more here), we headed to Arch's Iguana Farm. I have never - ever - seen so many iguanas in my life...

If you'd like to see more, there's more Roatan photos here.

And time permitting, I'll post photos from Belize City, Costa Maya, and Cozumel soon.

I Saw Warsaw - Part Trzy

See parts one and two if you missed them.

I began day two bright and early. I was up by 5:00 a.m., but breakfast wasn't going to be available till 6:30 a.m., so I spent that very dark part of the morning getting online and researching what I would do with my day.

After breakfast, I headed out northward to the tourist information center located at the Palace of Culture and Science. I'd read that there is a "Warsaw Tourist Card" that provides an all-day pass for all the forms of public transit plus access to all sorts of museums and the hoho.

Turns out that it was a three day pass for something like 50-60 zł. Even though it is a surprisingly good deal (approx. $15 - $20 for three days) I started losing interest because I only had one day left in Warsaw. But the kicker was that the card didn't include access to public transit.

I asked the tourist info lady if I could buy a all-day, all-modes transit pass from her. Unfortunately she said no. She explained I could get a transit pass at lots of newsstands.

I mentally prepared myself for a long day of walking. It was all too likely that either I was going to spend a lot of time walking from one newsstand to another looking to find someone who spoke English or I was going to just give up and spend the day walking.

Eventually I did get the all-day pass, but I walked to the Warsaw Uprising Museum first. On the way to the museum, I encountered the building-sized mural shown in these two photos.

Don't know if you can see it, but the puppet-stringed soldiers in the mural are wearing helmets with a derivative of the Soviet hammer and sickle on it. Instead of a hammer, there are two lines which turn the sickle into a Euro symbol. Someone isn't on board with the EU, methinks.

The Warsaw Uprising Museum is far from a happy place, but it is definitely worth experiencing. Here are a few photos from outside the museum. FYI... They fail to capture the experience awaiting inside the museum itself.

  

It's getting close to time to board my WAW > MUC Lufthansa flight, and I'm tired, so I'll spare you a lengthy history lesson.

Let me just give a few key take-aways...

I knew about the invasion of Poland during WWII. I knew that Germany invaded Poland. I remember the Soviet Union absorbed (a grossly inadequate euphemism) Poland after WWII, but I didn't recall that the Soviets had initially signed a non-aggression treaty with Germany just before Germany's invasion in which they essentially divvied up Poland between them. The Soviets insisted that their action was in reaction to the Germans' invasion. Yeah right.

Another key take-away was the massive loss of life that took place in Warsaw.

But the lasting impression I was left with is the massive scale of the destruction Warsaw was subjected to. If I recall the numbers correctly, 1.3 millions people lived in Warsaw before the invasion. After the war, only 1,000 had homes.

After the museum, I started heading back towards where I'd seen a tram stop. I knew that the 1, 8, 22, and 27 were heading the direction I wanted to travel next, but there was still the matter of a ticket to take care of.

As I headed to the tram stop, I noticed a ticketing machine. Note to self: All of the ticketing machines that I saw in the vicinity of tram stops are surprisingly far from the tram stops themselves. Go figure.

I hopped the 1 and headed north. It was packed, so I couldn't see how far the tram had gone. In desperation, I hopped off the 1 to re-orient myself. Turns out I'd gotten off too soon.

I sat for a few minutes at the tram stop and then hopped on the 22. This tram was less lightly loaded, so I was able to tell when to exit the tram.

I stopped off at the Okopowa Street Jewish Cemetery.

This cemetery is massive and it is packed with graves. Stopping at the Jewish cemetery right after the museum was quite poignant.

The cemetery was mostly deserted. Cemeteries can be quiet peaceful places. Under the gloomy overcast sky and with stories from the museum fresh in my mind, this cemetery was unnerving.

I've got to go catch my WAW > MUC flight, so I'll wrap this up for now. There's more to come in part cztery.

I Saw Warsaw - Part Dwa

In case you missed the first part of this blog post, I'll catch you up quickly. I was standing on the inside of the the Barbican and was about to walk out through its gate. It was 4:00 a.m. (i.e. The time I was writing, not the time I was standing at the gate), and I needed to get some sleep before my flight home today.

I didn't get to bed for another thirty minutes, and I awoke - reluctantly - at 6:00 this morning. Ugh. I could have slept in - my flight isn't till 1:00 p.m. - but I wanted to get to the airport to talk face-to-face with Lufthansa about letting me use my system upgrade. There's more to the story than that, but I'll spare you the details.

So here I am in the lounge returning to this blog post but operating on a piddly two-ish hours of sleep. Cross your fingers that I can be coherent.

I continued walking southwest outside the wall. After a while, I came upon a statue I'd seen during my Internet reconnaissance before I departed the U.S.

The statue is Mały Powstaniec (a.k.a. The Little Insurgent).

I'm embarrassed to admit that my first reaction when I saw a photo of the statue online was to think, "Aw, how cute." I saw this statue of this cute little kid wearing a comically over-sized helmet, and it looks like a kid wearing a funny hat. Then I noticed that he's holding a rather large gun. Ha ha funny juxtaposition.

But the subject matter of the statue isn't funny. The statue is a monument to the child soldiers who fought in the Warsaw Uprising (not to be confused with the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising). While I was back in the U.S. doing my research, I quickly realized my initial reaction to the statue was wrong. Seeing the statue in person and learning what I learned about Warsaw's history during WWII further reinforced my understanding of the statue.

I continued on my meandrous route through the old town.

I ended up on ulica Świętojańska. There, side-by-side stand Kościól Jezuitów (the Jesuit Church) and Bazylika archikatedralna św. Jana Chrzciciela (St. John's Archcathedral).

I have seen photos of both that were taken during daylight hours, but I have to say that the lighting at dusk combined with the lights on the outside of the churches makes for much more interesting looking photos.

One thing that struck me about these two churches is how very different they are architecturally even though they stand side-by-side.
















As I walked back towards Plac Zamkowy (Castle Square), I came upon the following view of St. Martin's Church:

I love the lonesome solitude of that photo.

When I returned to Plac Zamkowy, they had the full light show on.

The tree and the gift wrapped boxes below it were still lit up. But now the light show included snowflakes (click on the photo to see it larger if you can't see them) cascading down the walls of the west wing of the Royal Castle.


 







Once again, here's the same photo all bling'ed out, compliments of Google Auto-Awesome.

It was a beautiful sight, and people were standing around mesmerized by the sight.

Off in the distance I could hear caroling. I headed off that direction, and that's how I ended up getting the video of the caroling. If you're interested, I wrote a brief blog post about the video.

From Plac Zamkowy, I zig-zagged my way to Plac Piłsudskiego (Pilsudski Square). I crossed the square to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Standing guard at its eternal flame were two members of  the Representative Battalion of the Polish Army.

By this point, what little sunlight I'd seen during the overcast day was a distant memory. As I continued zig-zagging back towards my hotel, I used my internal compass (a dubious plan in the winding streets of Europe) supplemented by sighting a landmark to navigate.

I came upon Kościól pw Wszystkich Świętych (All Saints' Church) located at Plac Grzybowski 3. The church was dimly lit.

What little light there was was shining on a bronze statue of (whoops I forget who).

While I love the convenience of having a fairly decent camera in my pocket at all times (i.e. my iPhone), low level lighting situations like this one are not where the iPhone shines.

I knew that the lighting conditions were suboptimal, but I loved the lighting and wanted to try to capture the scene.

As you can see from the photo above, it turned out better than expected. I hadn't anticipated being able to pick up the vibrant colors of the offerings placed before the statue.

But as pleased as I was with the photo above, I was even more surprised by the photo to the right.

I instinctively knew that if I took the photo from in front of and below the statue, it would create a different sort of feel because the statue would be towering above me.

And with my naked eye I could see that the columns were going to add an interesting perspective to the photo.

What I completely failed to intuit or perceive at the time is the shadow that the statue was casting. Even though it was right there before my eyes the whole time, I didn't see the ominous shadow.

That's sort of a metaphor for life. How many times have I completely missed something that was right before my eyes? Countless times, no doubt. Fortunately they're usually not ominous.

The landmark that I was using to navigate which I mentioned earlier is the Palace of Culture and Science. Completed in 1955, it remains the tallest building in Warsaw.

Provided the cloud level doesn't drop too low, this big, imposing building makes a great landmark because it is visible from far away.

I composed this photo to emphasize the details of the building and to focus on the colorful lighting. My photo, however, doesn't capture the building's sheer massiveness. See the previous link for a photo that will give you a better feeling for the size and architecture of the building.

I don't know how tall the other "tall" buildings were at the time the Palace of Culture and Science was built. It was completed only a decade after the end of WWII, and given the state of ruins that Warsaw was left in, I suspect this building must have seemed even more massive to the Poles then than it does today.

 I capped off my day with a stop in Złote Tarasy (the Golden Terraces). My eye was drawn to it earlier in the day because of its unusual roof. See the previous link for a photo.

Once I stepped inside, however, it quickly became apparent that Złote Tarasy is actually Polish for "inexplicably mobbed mall on a Thursday night".

I popped off some shots of the glass ceiling from inside, but the most memorable photo I took was of what I shall henceforth refer to as the Escheralator. There is something distinctly Relativity-esque about it.

I count at least five levels, each askew from the others.

That brings me to the conclusion of day one of my two-day miles run to Warsaw.

In the next blog entry, I'll show you the sights from day two.