Travelling around… looking and seeing
Yad Vashem is the Israeli holocaust museum. It’s an incredible place. It’s basically a long tube that you go through. I went in at 11 and found myself at the end at 5pm, needing some food and water. Is intense. Very well done. I know a lot about this period of history but I learned quite a bit more. And the exhibits put it into better context. But no photos. All my shots are of the outside of buildings. The primary architect was Moshe Safdie. Very modern style. Beautiful shapes.
Low key, calm in the old town. Very lovely Airbnb place, sweet host.
Small town/city. Big push to settle new immigrants there: over 200,000 Russians and Ethiopians. No night life really, but some funky places for brunch, so I was happy.
Stores had signs in Russian. I bought loose tea in one place but couldn’t summon up my Russian to exchange conversation. Sigh…
But there are problems with the immigrants, as you can see by these posters:
The reason I came to Beersheva was to visit the dig at Tel Sheba, where I spent the summer after high school. I was with a group through the Jewish Agency and we took several weeks of classes at Tel Aviv University before ending up in an empty sand pit near Beersheva. I was the only gentile. Most of the others were kids from New York, as foreign as the Israelis to me. We got up at 4:30, worked until breakfast. Then a few more hours before writing at lunch time. Then we’d doze in our bunks the rest of the day. It was fun.
There was nothing there on the desert. I mean nothing! There want even anything in Beersheva worth driving over for. Now… Well, it’s all changed.
The empty sand has revealed buildings and walls and cisterns. It used to look like this:
And now it looks like this:
Quite amazing! Now it’s a UNESCO site and they maintain it well.
I wandered the town and found some cool things.
Here is my Airbnb, the metal gate just past the overgrown greenery.
Here’s a beautiful 19th century necklace:
And a cool model town:
And my lunch. I’m liking the sweet thick Turkish coffee!
These two bonus (!) photos are of camels being herded along as a train goes past and a lovely Thai woman I met at the dig. We chatted while the camels went by.
Well, I’ve been in Jerusalem for days and haven’t been able to get my head around what I’m seeing, hearing, thinking… My photos are of the place not the people because I didn’t want to intrude, but the people fascinated me. It felt like I was in another world. Made me realize how accustomed I’ve become to Europe. Sheesh… Now I want to go to Azerbajan and other really Really foreign places.
These two photos are of people rushing to the Western Wall in time for Shabbat.
These men are praying even while waiting in line to get into the Western Wall area. The police check bags as you go in.
And here’s the Shabbat crowd on Friday night:
…
Jerusalem is a very intense place. Everyone and everything is full throttle. Focused, enthusiastic, spiritual, thoughtful, deep.
I’m actually in Beersheva overnight and it’s such a relief to be somewhere low key. Sigh!
The distinct and unfamiliar ways that Orthodox Jews dress really the me when I first got here. Now it seems perfectly normal to see boys with shaved heads and ringlets or to see men in black shoes black pants black long coats black hats with black beards and white fringes hanging down their sides. I like the wraps women use for their hair. Very becoming. All the local women and girls wear skirts, often long, often black but not always. Most men wear skull caps, but the young ones wear normal western casual clothes. It kept jangling to my eyes to see a completely western guy smoking and drinking but wearing a skull cap.
And then there are the Catholic nuns and friar. And the Arab men in their long shirts and vests, some with the full long robes. The Arab women cover their heads, but below that varies a lot: jeans, medium-length skirts over leggings, long skirts, and full black robes. What is it with black that everyone wears it?!
…
Jerusalem reminds me of Assisi, although white stone not pink. The streets and alleys and buildings all use blocks of white stone. The effect is dazzling and calming, if that isn’t contradictory. I often felt as though I were on a stage set. Simple, good lines and angles. The simplicity of everything using the same materials means you take in the shapes more clearly. Your eye can rest on a detail or can step back and see the whole. Pleasing.
I only had an afternoon and evening in Rome. I stayed at a women’s hostel right in the middle of things. Very comfortable.
When I arrived Apollo was in his element, but Dusk was ready to slip in. It took Night a while to establish her sway but it was total. A full cycle of sun, twilight, darkness…
* * *
I was so happy to have some sunshine and enough light for a photo after I got into Rome from the airport.
I liked the angles and lines in the next shot. There’s a bike path along the Tiber and I went down onto it to get a different view. There are staircases all along the river, although once I was down, it took a long time before I found the next staircase. I feared I’d have to retrace my steps.
A wide apron of rain sweeping down to me.
The rain was well underway as I passed the “wedding cake” building, but patches of blue sky and pink clouds struggle to emerge.
Entering the courtyard of this church felt unreal when I went. Looks like Disney in this photo, don’t you think?
More pics of Manchester… I went for an early morning sun and caught some lovely warm rays. The best time for photos is dawn and dusk. 🙂
Here’s a sampling from my run:
I popped over to Manchester last week to see my youngest brother on his current play, Death of a Salesman, along with my other two brothers. It was the first time we all went together to one of Tom’s plays. We all hope it’s not the last. It was quite wonderful being all together!
A very simple setting: just a table and chair. Stitching the main characters to be black not white really changed the play for me.
Other adventures included the Airbnb place we stayed at. It was in the midst of a major construction area and had the trendy feel of industrial chic. One morning we opened a door in the kitchen/living room and discovered we had our own graffiti wall!
We went out for breakfast on the last morning to a converted marketplace. The food was excellent and the coffee divine!
My own personal highlight was catching up to the medical guy on his bicycle ambulance. He had parked the ambulance outside a building and I finally caught up with him (I’d been running ever since I saw him go by). Apparently English cities have bicycles set up as ambulances. Who knew?!
He said that most medical incidents don’t need an ambulance and, of course, there are places where it’s hard if not impossible to get one anyhow. He said that the bicycles carry everything an ambulance does and get an average of 16 calls a day. Compare that with the 7 that ambulances get.
I’ve seen police on bikes in Seattle, but I’ve never seen a bicycle ambulance ever. And now I have. 🙂
…on favorites…
My favorite London memorial is the one to women who served in WWII. I like that such a monument exists but I loved the soft shape of the empty coats.
As I walked through the V&A with my brother, we noticed this woman right near the exit for the underground tunnel. I’ve gone past her often but never stopped to look. It’s by Eric Gill, my favorite fontographer.
A final bright moment: I just loved the colors and shapes.
I love doing this blog. It makes me learn new facts and history!
I was just going to post this: “The festival of Saint Martin is the excuse for a two-day food festa in Pietrasanta and many other places.” And I got to wondering, how widespread is this festival and what the heck is it? So (via Wikipedia) I learned “The celebration of Advent began in the fifth century when the Bishop Perpetuus directed that starting with the feast of St. Martin, 11 November, until Christmas, one fasts three times per week; this is why Advent is also named Lent of St. Martin.” Wow, who knew!?
So I guess in medieval times, the feast of Saint Martin was the big kickoff before a lean food season. Is this, as with so many Christian events, built on top of a pagan event? After all, this is a significant moment in the farming calendar (again, from Wikipedia), “This is the time when autumn wheat seeding was completed, and the annual slaughter of fattened cattle produced ‘Martinmas beef’.”
So there you have it… There’s history behind this wonderful weekend of food and drink. I went last year and bought some delicious cured meats. I hoped that stall would be here again. And it was…
It’s mid-November and the tourist season is over. It’s starting to cool down, and rain. Jackets are out. It’s dark at 5:30. It’s Sunday…and the piazza was absolutely jammed! You can hardly move between the stalls
Mushrooms, cheeses of all kinds, beer stands, porchetta. A nearby town, Gombitelli, is renowned for cured meats. The Garfagnana region is famous for its pecorino (sheep) cheeses. There was a booth from the Tyrol area with sausages and a couple from Sicily with the most intense pecorino I’ve ever had. See how dark it is next to a normal pecorino:
There are huge bins of dried mushrooms and plenty of cheeses. Why don’t you come next year?
I love being in a crowd at night is the piazza. The buildings are lit up, the atmosphere is super festive, it’s great.
And for my final photo, here’s what I could be wearing this winter: cozy, cheerful, elegant. Isn’t this so me?
The Henraux marble mining company was founded in 1821 and still wields huge influence today. According to their website, Michelangelo explored around here in ~1518 and Cosimo I de’Medici started the excavation of marble here for statues in 1568. In the 1700s, marble quarrying declined, but then Henraux, who was the French superintendent of marbles for French monuments, built up a company to quarry and deliver marble for public statues.
The company chose the best quarry sites, but over time they have allowed a few to be abandoned. One such is on the road to Castelnuovo di Garfagnana that I rode the other day. I’ve ridden past a few times but haven’t ever stopped. I don’t know why.
This time I stopped. It was very special. I’ll go back when I have more daylight. It felt like a stage setting. Quite wonderful. And I was completely alone in the fading evening light. Sigh…
The road shoulder widens into a stony wasteland dotted with scruffy scraggly trees. You could park here, but it’s littered with massive marble boulders. High above there’s an old Henraux sign that’s missing a letter or two. Below there’s a narrow slot corridor beckoning.
How can I resist? I lean my bike up against a big piece of blackened old marble and go in. It’s like going into a tunnel at Petra, high arched and mysterious.
As I walk the last feet, I’m shocked. In awe. I’m in a marble theatre, tall walls curve away to the left, blackened by decades of water pouring across them.
I stand in wonder. The stones are scattered as if for a monumental production of Aida or Julius Caesar.
I’m not the first to slip into this remote marble gallery. You can see that others have left their mark.
On this facade, you can see the circular saw marks.
I notice the light is disintegrating. I’d better get going. I turn and make my way out.
What an incredible place. I’ll come back when I have more daylight.
To finish, another couple shots of the sliced marble walls.
Here the stone looks like it’s weeping…
One day I’ll hike all this…
