“Trolleys and Tuk Tuk” — Trolleys, tuk tuk,, and crowds near Miradouro das Portas do Sol, Lisbon.
We walk a lot when we visit cities, and on this Lisbon day we had walked to and then through portions of Alfama. This neighborhood is full of very old streets and buildings. It is built on a hill rising above the water, so many of those lanes are quite steep. Overall it was a slow and mostly quiet walk… until we emerged on this busy street!
“Alfama Laundry” — Laundry hung by entry door and stairs, Alfama.
I know. Laundry hanging above urban homes in foreign cities is more than a bit of a cliche. I’ll try to minimize it, but sometimes I cannot resist. Here it is really more about the wild range of colors in the photograph, from that laundry to the colorful overhead streamers above the lane, and the contrast with the other less-colorful surroundings.
“Church Interior, Ghent” — Angled light falls across a wall inside a church in Ghent, Belbium.
I have a somewhat embarrassing confession to make about this photograph. I know that I made it in a church in the Belgium town of Ghent… but I failed to record which church it was! In my (weak) defense, this is a town of many churches — I don’t think I’ve seen many others with so many steeples. And after a few weeks of visiting Various European cities it is possible that I was starting to suffer from an overdose of church architecture.
“Eglise de Notre-Dame Des Victoire” — Altar and stained glass windows at the Eglise de Notre-Dame Des Victoire, Brussels.
This beautiful church in Brussels, the Eglise de Notre-Dame Des Victoire, doesn’t seem to be on the tourist map. But we think it was well worth the visit. We walked there from our lodgings in the touristy old part of Brussels. Walking away from there changed our perspective on the city. It appeared that we may have been the only tourists at this church.
Entering the church it was rather dark. But once our eyes adjusted to the natural light, we noticed that sunlight was streaming in through stained glass windows along its east side . At the front of the church, the stained glass windows comprised most of the vertical surfaces, and this created a lovely, light-filled area.