Savona, Italy & Cruise 2011

For our Spring Break this year, we decided another cruise would be easy and the most relaxing for all of us.  Fortunately, there is a cruise ship port very close to us in Marseille.  So, we hopped on the same ship we took back in 2007.  The only difference was we had a third in our family.  So, a slightly larger room was needed.

The itinerary wasn’t exotic (France, Italy and Spain), but it turned out to be a great vacation.

 

So, our first stopping point was in the underwhelming city of Savona.  It’s rightly not known as a tourist town.  Nonetheless, with a little pre-planning, we were able to find enough fun things to do for the day.  We began with a walk over to this old castle.  The city is in the background and if you look close, you can see our ship… Alexander is checking out the water and rest of the castle to our right.

 

OK, it’s a little easier to see here. It’s the biggest building in the area … just on it’s side and floating in the water.

 

This cannon hasn’t seen use in a while.

 

Anna and X checking out the city.

 

Although I don’t normally like taking pictures of pigeons, this one whose home was in the wall seemed an acceptable exception.

 

This statue was in the art museum of the castle and I loved the presentation.

 

(Almost) another animal on the grounds.  I’m not sure what the symbolic significance was, but we thought he was pretty cool.

 

The entrance of the castle.

 

A wider angle showing most of the castle.

 

As it was Palm Sunday, some church goers apparently take it very literally.

 

If the weather is nice, there are a huge number of private beach clubs with equipment for rent lining the beach.  Unfortunately for us, it wasn’t very warm and not the best weather in general.  So, we didn’t go to the beach, but we did find one named after Anna.

 

We also found some very pretty flowers on the ~10km walk we took.

 

 

Perhaps the best experience of the day was one where we have no photos.  It was in typical Italian fashion a long, delicious meal highlighted by tasty wine.  The restaurant is called Luna and the couple who owns it make some of the most delicious food we’ve had in a long time (and sharp contrast to the plentiful, but mediocre cruise food).  We spent probably 3 hours on a traditional 6 course meal.  Without question, the fresh, fried anchovies were the best I’ve ever eaten.

 

So, with the meal complete and the day drawing to a close, we got back on the ship.

 

Onboard Costa Serena Pt 1

The following images are just a few from our balcony terrace as the sun was setting.  We were treated to a number of spectacular sunsets.  Not a whole lot to say about them … so, I’ll let the images speak for themselves.

 

 

 

 

Ok, I’ll finish here.  Up next we have a tour of Naples and Pompeii, plus more sunset images.  🙂

 

Until then…

 

–Jim

Paris Week

The second week in April, I had the opportunity to join the school and some of the students up in Paris for a week of touring around professional and cultural sites for the benefit of the students.  I was happy to tag along and participate.

 

Although I’ve already visited the Louvre several times, its always a pleasure to go back.  In this case, we had the added bonus of a personal guide.

 

Here is the entrance underneath the glass pyramid.  As you can tell, I used the ND filters to open the shutter longer and blur the action. The column in the middle is a cleverly designed cylinder that serves as an open-air elevator.

 

 

This 4,600 year old piece of art is the Great Sphinx of Tanis.  It was found in Egypt in 1825 and like so many things from that time period, brought back to France.

 

This is the iconic Aphrodite (AKA Venus de Milo).  You may remember her and our friend the sphinx from an earlier post (Paris 2006).

 

This is the painting I didn’t show in the earlier post.  Can you guess what it is??

 

Here it is … sorta. It almost looks big and impressive, don’t you think?

 

Here’s a better look at the reality of the situation (and keep in mind, this is off-season, in the middle of the week!).

 

This is the immense painting of the consecration of Emperor Napoleon I and the coronation of his wife, Empress Joséphine.  This was painted to be nearly life-like and life-size by Jacques Louis David in 1804 at the request of Napoleon himself.  At the end of David’s work, the Emperor was apparently delighted with the final result.  According to the Louvre’s website, he said, “What relief, what truthfulness! This is not a painting; one walks in this picture.”  I don’t know about truthfulness … there were a number of artistic liberties taken, but since the artist  was actually at the ceremony, it was certainly very close. I have cropped this image down just to highlight the central figures.

 

Another interesting image is this ginormous representation of Jesus’ first “miracle.”  According to the Bible, he turned water into wine at a wedding ceremony.  Not a bad trick if you ask me.  However, roughly 1500 years after this event supposedly took place, a Benedictine monastery on the Venetian island of San Giorgio Maggiore commissioned Veronese to paint the Wedding Feast at Cana.  And, they wanted something big.  Really big.  So big that it’s larger than the average Parisian apartment size today!  It measures 70 square meters (~750 square feet).  What’s also interesting is that Veronese had an eye for detail and this painting was an amazing amalgamation of the 16th and 1st centuries of the current era. Plus fans of Dan Brown’s “The Di Vinci Code” will remember this painting from the book.  Although fiction, Mr. Brown provides interesting hypotheses on certain details.

 

A couple of the cadets listening to our guide through the ear piece.

 

An artist working amongst some of the best.

 

More cadets…

 

Another artist…

 

The Paris Uprising of 1830 (when the Bourbon king, Charles X, was overthrown and replaced by Louis Philippe, Duke of Orléans) inspired the French master Eugène Delacroix to paint Lady Liberty (or in this case a Parisian woman who embodies Liberty) leading the Parisians in their “glorious three days” of uprising in May 1830.

 

Another famous symbol … but this time for Rome.  Romulus and Remus are disturbingly suckling the wolf.

 

While waiting for the other group, I had a little time to shoot the fascinating entrance way.  Here’s what I came up with:

 

 

Later that day, we continued with another museum.  The French Air and Space museum at Le Bourget.  It’s in an old airport terminal and huge!  It’s also the site of the famous (and also huge) Paris  Air Show (simply known at the  Meeting Le Bourget in French).

There were exhibitions from early aircraft pioneers (with slightly different emphasis than ours on the Wright Brothers).

 

They have so many beautiful, original pieces.

 

This image is emblematic of the original Franco-American Air Force cooperation.  Before the US entered WWI, there were American pilots flying with the French.  This was originally known as the Escadrille Américaine, but later renamed to the Escadrille Lafayette in order to appease the German government that the US was remaining neutral.  The members of the unit chose this head of a Sioux (or Seminole) warrior as their emblem. It adorned their Nieuport (and Spad) aircraft.

 

Then a later emblem from the same group:

 

One of the groups on the tour with a guide.

 

If you can imagine it, the pilot of this prototype aircraft sat in the small capsule.  This aircraft, the Leduc 0.22 was a test aircraft that combined a turbojet with a ramjet.  Unfortunately, the design proved unable to achieve supersonic speed and the project was abandoned in the late 1950s.  Still, it’s a interesting looking plane.

 

Some of the other French test aircraft on display.

 

The iconic Concorde used by Air France and British Airways.  The museum has two, and for a small fee, you can go see inside.

 

A model of the equally famous Sputnik satellite.

 

No good air and space museum would be complete without an American astronaut (or at least a space suit).  🙂

 

Well, that covers my week in Paris.  I know I only included pictures from the two museums we visited, but I promise there was a lot else we saw … I just didn’t have my camera along or wasn’t allowed to take pictures.

 

Today seemed fitting to post this entry, since we are celebrating the 66th anniversary of V-E Day in France today.

 

Next up will be the first series of images from our Spring Break cruise.

 

Until then…

 

–Jim