Common Sense and Whiskey

Friday Photo Quiz #162

This week's quiz might be tough, so here are two photos:

It's a densely populated archipelago of a country, and in land area, one of the ten smallest states in the world.

Can you name the city? The country? And what sea is that?

The answer is after the jump.

Luxury without the Hotel

The London company OneFineStay looks to have a portfolio of several outstanding, higher-end vacation rentals that look like the kind of thing that would appeal to CS&W readers. They've been good enough to describe a few of their properties here. This photo is from the Violin Factory, described below, and there are several more photos below the fold. Contact OneFineStay.com.

The London ‘unhotel’

Traveling is all about immersing yourself in the culture and lifestyle of your destination, and what better way to do that than bypassing a hotel and living like a local instead. London based company onefinestay allows you to do exactly this, as they have over 500 upscale homes which they rent out to travellers while the owners are out of town. When you arrive at your new home you are handed an iPhone for your stay, loaded with local information and recommendations collected from the home owner. The collection of onefinestay homes includes some pretty unique vacation rentals in London and New York, so if you are looking for accommodation with a difference you will certainly find it. For those with a taste for the unusual, here is a little London preview:

The Violin Factory

Behind an unassuming set of old wooden doors lies this breath-taking home right in the heart of London. Once a violin factory, it has now been transformed into a modern architectural masterpiece where sunlight from the ceiling windows floods into illuminate the triple height main room. The home is no stranger to the limelight as its journey to completion in the loving hands of its architect owner was featured on UK TV show Grand Designs, and sci-fi fans may recognise it from Dr Who.

St Pancras Clock Tower

If you’re looking for unusual then look no further than the Clock Tower at London St Pancras station.

Ten Places of Worship - Wednesday HDRs

Enjoy these HDRs of churches in Ethiopia, Italy, Lithuania, Panama, Cuba, Latvia and on St. Helena Island. Click any of them to make them much bigger. There are almost 400 more HDRs in the HDR Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.

The first two are from St. James Church, the oldest Anglican church in the southern hemisphere, St. Helena Island, South Atlantic Ocean:

These next two are from the Riga Cathedral, Riga, Latvia:

Here is the Catedral de la Virgen María de la Concepción Inmaculada de La Habana, Havana, Cuba:

Two New Things to Read

One's on the web, the other's a book.

Enjoy Where is Cuba Going? by John Jeremiah Sullivan, in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine. It's long and meandering, in a good way. Sullivan is as flummoxed by the Florida Cuban community and the embargo as everybody else is, except the Florida Cuban community and anybody who has to navigate through them toward election.

Just one thing - he writes:

"Barack Obama was going to open things up, and he did tinker with the rules regarding travel, but now they say that when you try to follow these rules, you get caught up in all kinds of forms and tape."

Since his wife is Cuban, he can enter Havana under rules that are different from the ones we used on our visit a few months back, so he wouldn't have any experience with the new rules. For the record, there is a little more paperwork than, say, flying to Paris, akin to the kinds of things you have to file to visit, say, Belarus.But it's no big deal.

And staring down the epic Cuban Embargo had us anxious and alert re-entering Miami, but immigration couldn't have been more bored to see us. We might as well have brought along those Cuban cigars I left behind.

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I've also just been reading, and recommend Chasing the Devil: A Journey Through Sub-Saharan Africa in the Footsteps of Graham Greene by Tim Butcher. Tim Butcher is a former British newspaper reporter and war correspondent now living in South Africa, who has that knack for travel in places you probably don't want to visit.

His previous book, Blood River: The Terrifying Journey Through The World's Most Dangerous Country, in which he retraced Henry Morton Stanley's 1870 trek, was harrowing. In the new book Butcher sets out to cross Sierra Leone and Liberia. There's a particularly frightening section, and touching tribute, to two friends killed while reporting in Sierra Leone in 2000.

It's good stuff. Both Butcher books are worth a read.

Maritime Canada - Wednesday HDRs

There's been a little time to process some of the photos we brought back from Nova Scotia. Here are five: 1. The waterfront at Halifax. 2. The lighthouse at Peggy's Cove. 3. Boat, Peggy's Cove. 4 & 5 are two treatments of another boat at Peggy's Cove.

All processed in Photomatix and Photoshop using Nik Software. Click 'em to make them bigger. The texture in photo number five comes from SkeletalMess with thanks. More HDRs here.

Friday Photo Quiz #161

The skyline of this country's capital, and largest city. The city's population alone is just over two million, yet the entire country receives a total of only some 1,100,000 visitors a year.

Can you name the city? The country? What's that body of water out there?

The answer is after the jump.

Forgotten History: Halifax

Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Halifax has one hard luck history. Part of it is other peoples’ hard luck. But that only helps so much.

Fourteen years ago this month Swissair flight 111 fell into Margaret's Bay, just outside town, killing all 229 people aboard. The Halifax military bases responded. There are two memorials out on the bay.

After the crash, Ian Shaw, a Swiss national who last saw his daughter Stephanie when he drove her to the Geneva airport, moved from Switzerland to the tourist village of Peggy's Cove and built a restaurant called Shaw's Landing, to be near his deceased daughter. Shaw’s Landing only recently closed, Shaw presumably having finally worked through his loss.

•••••

As in the Swissair tragedy, when the Titanic sank in April 1912, ships were dispatched from Halifax to recover bodies, since Halifax was the nearest big port with continental rail connections.

Industrial Montreal - Wednesday HDRs

After a week in Quebec and Nova Scotia, it's fun to play with some fresh photos. As usual, industrial stuff and machinery lend themselves well to the HDR treatment, so that's where we start. From the top, a big view of the Viterra agri-products facility along the St. Lawrence River outside Montreal and then a closer view of two cranes you can see in the long shot. Then two shots of the Jacques Cartier bridge, opened in 1930, connecting Ile de Montreal to the shore. The bottom photo is looking up from underneath.

All processed in Photomatix and Photoshop. Click 'em to make them bigger. More HDRs here.

Tomorrow CS&W will have a little story about Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Friday Photo Quiz #160

Beautiful downtown __________.

Hmmm.... That boat suggests this may be a city in Asia. No more clues, though. Can you name the city? The country? For extra credit, how about that river? The answer is after the jump.

And a good weekend to all from CS&W & Earthphotos.com.

Fruits of Labor - Wednesday HDRs

Both Labor Day in the U.S. (the first Monday in September) and the International Worker's Day (or May Day, May 1st) seem to have sprung up almost simultaneously in the 1880s. The U.S. Department of Labor says that the first Labor Day holiday was celebrated on Tuesday, September 5, 1882.

The movement in Canada may have been a little out in front of the U.S.:

"Labor unions existed in Canada in the early 1800s but legislation was adopted to make it illegal for workers to form unions.... At the beginning of May, thousands of workers and their families would march peacefully through the city streets into the parks where they would enjoy picnics, and listen to speakers talking about working together to force employers to reduce working hours.... In 1872, the Canadian government changed the law so it was no longer illegal to be a member of a trade union."

Martyred Communist Rosa Luxemburg wrote that the Americans were also behind May Day:

"The happy idea of using a proletarian holiday celebration as a means to attain the eight-hour day was first born in Australia" in 1856, she wrote, and "The first to follow the example of the Australian workers were the Americans. In 1886 they decided that May 1 should be the day of universal work stoppage." 

Ms. Luxemburg never got round to how Labor Day moved from May to September, and it's a good question, since today some 80 countries celebrate Worker's Day on May 1st. Here is Britannica's answer:

"In 1889 an international federation of socialist groups and trade unions declared the date of May 1 as Workers’ Day to commemorate the  Haymarket Riot in Chicago (1886). Five years later, U.S. Pres. Grover Cleveland, uneasy with the socialist origins of Workers’ Day, signed legislation to make Labor Day—already held in some states on the first Monday of September—the official U.S. holiday in commemoration of workers. Canada followed suit not long afterward."

So, both Americans and Canadians celebrated a holiday with a day off last weekend. Montrealers were out in unusually warm weather for a street festival in Old Montreal. Here are a few HDRs. Click them to make them bigger:

All processed in Photomatix and Photoshop. Click 'em to make them bigger. More HDRs here.