Excited Spanish Travel, Rail Pass Matanza July 10, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Air Tickets, Andorra, Europe, Rail Pass, Sightseeing, Tickets, Tour, Trails, Trip , 4commentsSix-thirty am. I’m already dressed and out of the couchette as the train slows to a halt in the darkness. Outside, nothing but gravel and a road on one side: on the other, the small halt with its sign L’Hospitalet and the bus waiting to bear us on the long winding climb, leaving behind an ever-lengthening panorama pierced with points of light. The snow stands in cliffs on the uphill side of the road, cut by snowploughs only hours before.
In Old Andorra, Peter is waiting with his Santana Land-Rover, and greets me heartily. Has there been a matanza yet? I ask. “There was one at Margarita’s on Monday. I think there’s another tomorrow at Mestre’s,” he answers.
Our goal is fourteen dizzying kilometres up into the Spanish Pyrenees. A community still living in an almost cashless economy, to a pattern already set in the fourteenth century. One of the last outposts of a peasant culture which is rapidly passing from the world, governed entirely by the seasons and depending little on manufactured inputs. (more…)
Passing on Victoria Water Falls, Shooting the Zambezi, Escape into Africa July 10, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Botswana, Hotels, Lodges, Passport, South Africa, Tour, USA, United Kingdom, Victoria Falls, Zambia , 4commentsA white line still bisected the bridge, but its meaning had gone and the menace with it. Now the only sentry was a baboon sitting on a fence barking at a warthog on the other side of the road.
Early morning, sun up but cool, just two of us on the bridge at Victoria Falls, between Zimbabwe and Zambia. We looked down at the pale green Zambesi 300 feet below. Cecil Rhodes had wanted the bridge built close enough to the Falls to catch the spray. Usually it does. However, this was September and the “Falls” in front of us were just a curtain of rock. The rains had been good; not good enough, though, to make up for years of drought.
Only on the Zimbabwean side did the river reach over and plunge in. Its noise was like distant motorway traffic.
We were about to go down the river on a rubber raft. We were to start at the bottom of the Falls and travel six miles down the Zambesi through zigzagging gorges . . . and over nine rapids. Why on earth had we agreed to it? Sarah didn’t even like putting her head under water in the bath. As for me, the wake of a passing launch under a scull on the Thames was the nearest I’d ever got to white water. (more…)
Unforgettable Florence Tour continue… June 20, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Europe, Hotels, Museum , add a commentI would like to examine the Lucca Choirbook, that treasure of illuminated music manuscripts from fifteenth-century Bruges, given to Lucca Cathedral by the banker Arnolfini, whose face, as rendered by Jan van Eyck, may be the most familiar from all Europe of the period. The thirty or so bifolia that survive from a codex of some 300 folios are in the Lucca
State Archive, but no one there has heard of it and my accreditation is questioned. We go instead to see the controversially restored tomb of Ilaria del Carretto. (more…)
The relentless uniformity of the bays of the south facade of the Escorial continue… June 3, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Austria, Europe, Library, USA , add a commentThe church itself is a central-plan building focusing on four great piers that support a hemispherical crossing dome. The general scheme of the interior follows the example of St Peter’s in Rome, but the architect has transposed the details into a solemnly majestic key, his personal interpretation of the Doric order. The enormous scale, the relative absence of ornament and the unrelenting austerity of the granite surfaces produce an awesome, almost suffocating effect. Fortunately this tension is relieved by the presence of a number of outstanding works of art, which act as aesthetic oases, so to speak. The east wall is entirely filled by a great retable designed by Giacomo Trezzo of Milan, incorporating paintings by Pellegrino Tibaldi and Federico Zuccaro and sculpture by Leone and Pompeo Leoni. (more…)
River Thames bank: Historic royal palace of Hampton Court continue… June 1, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Europe, London, USA , add a commentThe splendour of Henry VAT’s enlargements can be assessed in the Great Hall, built in 1531-6 to replace Wolsey’s smaller hall. So eager was Henry to see the room finished that he ordered the workmen to labour throughout the night by candlelight. The interior of the hall, which measures 97 by 40 feet, is dominated by an imposing hammer- beam roof that recalls the pioneer example in Westminster Hall, London. Another remarkable ceiling of Henry’s time is the wooden fan vaulting added to the Chapel Royal in 1535-6. Here the carved and gilded pendants stand out against a dark blue ground powdered with stars. The royal pew of the chapel leads to an L-shaped room asso¬ciated with the tragic fate of Catherine Howard, Henry’s fifth andsecond-to-last wife. (more…)
River Thames bank: Historic royal palace of Hampton Court June 1, 2008
Posted by dodo in : England, Europe, Jerusalem, London, Museum, Spain , 4commentsThe historic royal palace of Hampton Court stands on the north bank of the River Thames about 11 miles west of Charing Cross in London. This large complex is in fact two palaces in one, for as one moves eastwards from the west front the Tudor wings built in the time of Henry VIII yield to later work designed by Sir Christopher Wren for William and Mary. These two halves represent two distinct and important periods in the history of English architecture—the late medieval Perpendicular style tinged with Renaissance elements and the English Baroque affected by French and Italian influence. Yet overall unity is preserved by the use of warm-toned brickwork and the more-or-less symmetrical balancing of successive low wings. (more…)
Sans Souci: The light-hearted summer-house of King Frederick the Great May 18, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Air Tickets, Airlines, Art Gallery, Beach Resorts, Cars, Coliseum, Destination, Flight Schedule, Gymnasium, Hotels, Library, Memorial, Museum, Oceanarium, Planetarium, Restaurant, USA , add a commentIn 1744 FREDERICK the Great gave instructions to build a vineyard of three terraces (only later increased to six) on the southern side of a shady and sandy little height in the woods above Potsdam. On the 13th of January 1745, a cabinet order was given that building materials were to be assembled because the King intended to build a Lusthaus there. By 1747 the King was able to use the east side of the little palace; the term ‘east- wing’ is rather too much for a villa which is only ten rooms across the entire front and with only a service passage behind them. The decoration of the rooms was only properly undertaken after 1753, the year in which Frederick’s architect, George Wenzeslaus Freiherr von Knobelsdorff, died. In the miniature library one can still see a drawing in the King’s own hand with the first sketch for the palace : on the north side a colonnade leading to an entrance, a rectangular entrance hall opening into an oval cupola hall, the right wing ‘pour le roy’ consisting of four rooms, an ante-room, music-room, (more…)
Schönbrunn : The palace which symbolizes the peak of Viennese maturity May 3, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Europe, France, Library, Lodges, Memorial, Museum, Spain , add a commentSchönbrunnis perhaps the most exalted monument ever to be erected to that famous national characteristic of the Austrians — their Gemütlichkeit, or easy-going cosiness. For over 200 years, together with the Hofburg in the city centre, this palace in the western suburbs of Vienna was the main seat of the Hapsburg dynasty, and thus the centre of all the Austrian history that the world remembers. Yet, unlike its great architectural and political rivals, Versailles and Potsdam, it remained also a home. Despite its size (there are no fewer than 1,441 rooms in the building), and the sumptuousness of its galleries and state apartments, something of this domestic aura clings even to the untenanted palace of today. (more…)
