View allAll Photos Tagged Pixel8Pro
Mrs. Orca following friends we met on trail down toward the Rilska River Valley far below. Notice the large glacial lake in the perfect hanging valley on the other side, I believe Smradlivo Lake, or Stinky Lake (2298m), Five Mountains Trail (E4), Rila Mountains, Bulgaria.
A moment suspended between control and chaos.
Fire spinning against neon lights, music in the air, bodies watching in silence.
Not staged. Not clean. Just alive.
Captured in Phi Phi, where nights burn brighter than days.
đź“Ť Phi Phi Islands, Thailand
2024
đź“· Google Pixel 8 Pro (Manual Mode)
A small medieval chapel overlooks Debed Canyon and Sanahin (below and just out of frame to right). To the left, some few hundred meters deep in the canyon, sits the large and interesting industrial town of Alaverdi. It was once a major supplier of copper to the USSR but is now in steep economic decline. The Debed Canyon, viewed from the Trans-Caucasian Trail just above Sanahin, Armenia.
Yerevan's name derives from the Erubuni Fortress, founded in 782 BC by the Urartian King Argishti I. While we were there what appeared to be a joint French and Armenian team of archaeologists were wrapping up a recent excavation. The on-site museum and the History Museum of Armenia already contain remarkable inscriptions, artifacts and frescoes that paint a vivid picture of that distant world of more than 2800 years ago.
When not under local control, Armenia has since been ruled over by a succession of empires: Medes, Achaemenids, Macedonians, Seleucids, Romans, Parthians, Sasanids, Byzantines, Abbasids, Seljuks, Mongols, Safavids, Ottomons, Russians and Soviets. During all that time Yerevan has been inhabited continuously. Today it has over a million people and is noticeably overcrowded, and promises to become more so: huge apartment blocks (back of image) are going up everywhere on the outskirts of the city. Walls of the Erubuni Fortress, Yerevan, Armenia.
Hagphat was at the height of its importance as an Armenian religious and intellectual center when the absurdly rapid Mongol Expansion of the 13th century overran Central Asia, East Asia, the Middle East and (briefly) Eastern Europe. Kayan Fortress was built in 1233 by the Hagphat monastery as a defense and refuge against the coming onslaught. It towers above Debed Canyon and has steep cliffs on three sides, but it fell to the Mongols just eight years later and was never rebuilt.
It can be reached as part of a footpath that connects Sanahin and Hagphat and also passes the ruins of one or two old chapels and some hermitage caves, all of which are contemporaneous with the monasteries. When we visited we found nothing much to look at except the ruins of a chapel (with grass growing on its roof, above) and an extensive system of walls. We were also quite surprised to see many workers employed at clearing away trees among the ruins and attempting to make the site more accessible, I presume using UNESCO funds. Workers were similarly employed on trail and at the caves, so it appears there is a project underway to develop the trail for more tourism, something that seems unlikely to succeed to me, given the fact that almost everyone who visits the monasteries appears to do so as part of a day trip via tour bus from Yerevan or Tbilsi. Kayan Fortress, in the Debed Canyon between Sanahin and Hagphat, Armenia.
Human occupation of Castle Hill and present day Bratislava date back millennia. In antiquity a sophisticated Celtic civilization emerged here. Archaeological investigation on Castle Hill revealed Celtic-minted coins bearing the names of chieftains in Latin letters and evidence of significant trade with Rome. Unfortunately, historians have no idea what the Celts called the city that is now Bratislava.
Sometime in late antiquity or the early middle ages the Slavs arrived, eventually organizing themselves into Great Moravia, a hazily understood Slavic Christian state that once ruled over large areas of Central Europe. A Frankish text from this era refers to the city as Brezalauspurc, Old German for "Braslav's castle."
After Great Moravia's collapse much of present day Slovakia came under the control of the Hungarians, who called the city Pozsony. But in 1526, the Hungarian King Louis II was killed by invading Ottomans at the Battle of Mohacs, and the Hungarian crown--including what remained of Hungary outside of Ottoman control--passed to the Austrian Habsburgs, who called the city Pressburg.
The city now became the capital of Royal Hungary, the Habsburg ruled portion of Hungary that did not fall to the Ottomans. For three centuries, Hungarian monarchs were crowned in the Gothic Saint Martin's Cathedral (left of image) and Castle Hill became the site of a great Habsburg palace. Pozsony/Pressburg was a thriving multiethnic city, with many Slavs, Germans, and Magyars, (not to mention migrants from elsewhere in Europe) calling the city by its various names according to their own language or preference.
After the Habsburg reconquest of Ottoman-occupied Hungary in the late seventeenth century, the political center of Hungary gradually shifted back to Buda. By the late eighteenth century, Castle Hill lost its military and royal significance, and it eventually burned and fell into ruin. Meanwhile, Slovak resentment of Hungarian influence gave rise to a growing nationalist movement, and--with the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the end of the First World War--to the formation of Czechoslovakia, conceived of as a Slavic nation.
In 1919 Czechoslovak authorities, wanting a new name for the city that distinguished it as a Slavic, as opposed to German or Hungarian city, renamed it Bratislava. Ironically, this name was adopted because a Slovak scholar somewhat misinterpreted the Old German term Brezalauspurc, believing the city was named for a Slavic Duke Bretislav, rather than Braslav's Castle. In the 1950s and 60s the ruins of the old castle, once a symbol of Habsburg and Hungarian power, were rebuilt to house the Museum of History in Bratislava, a branch of the Slovak National Museum.
Castle Hill, Saint Martin's Cathedral, and Bratislava Old Town, taken from the tower of the 13th century Town Hall, Bratislava, Slovakia.
After the conquests of Alexander Armenia became a part of the Hellenistic world. Upon his death in 323 BC his empire was divided among his generals, with Armenia and much of the Near East going to Seleucus. In time these Hellenistic kingdoms gave way to better organized powers, particularly Rome and Parthia, who collided wherever their empires met, including Armenia.
In 63 AD the two powers worked out a strange compromise whereby it was agreed that a member of the Parthian royal family would rule Armenia, but he would have travel to Rome and abase himself to receive his crown from the Roman Emperor. So it was that in 66 AD the Parthian Prince Tiridates I traveled to Rome and was crowned King of Armenia by none other than the infamous Nero.
An inscription found near the Garni Temple strongly suggests it was built in 77 AD by this same Tiridates I and dedicated to the sun god Mihr/Mithra. Today it is the sole surviving pagan or classical building in Armenia. In 301 Armenia became the world's first Christian country and essentially all pagan architecture was destroyed, but the Garni Temple alone survived, probably because it was incorporated into a royal complex.
The temple stood for sixteen centuries before it was toppled by an earthquake in 1679. It lay in ruins for three more centuries, but was reassembled in 1969-75 with the approval of a new overlord, the Soviet Union (it is the only Hellenistic building in the former Soviet world). Note the plain replacement pieces--very distinct from the original--that were used to bring the temple back to life.
Mrs. Orca at the Garni Temple, Armenia.
Ode To Enchanted Light
by Pablo Neruda
Under the trees light
has dropped from the top of the sky,
light
like a green
latticework of branches,
shining
on every leaf,
drifting down like clean
white sand.
A cicada sends
its sawing song
high into the empty air.
The world is
a glass overflowing
with water.
The endpoint of our hike in Bulgaria. I believe the cluster of flowers are Anthyllis aurea, a Balkan endemic with a long history of medicinal uses. On our final day we saw many small groups on the mountain picking various teas and medicinal herbs, a practice which is common everywhere in Bulgaria. Strictly speaking I do not believe this is legal at this particular location, though it is customary, and I doubt there is much if any harm in it. Gotsev Vhrah (2212m) and Anthyllis aurea, Slavyanka Mountains, Five Mountains Trail (E4), Bulgaria.
A must-do while in Madeira is to take an exhilarating 2 km ride down the streets in a wicker toboggan guided by two white-clad locals. While presently a tourist attraction it previously was the local transportation to get from Monte to Funchal.
Alcatraz takes its name from the archaic Spanish word for the large seabirds ("alcatraces"--typically denoting pelicans, cormorants or gannets) that 18th century Spanish explorers found there in large numbers. In fact, the location had long been a site at which indigenous people harvested eggs. When the US took over after the Mexican war (1846-48) it became a military installation and then a military prison. It was a federal prison from 1934-1963, but closed because it is a very expensive and impractical site to run a prison (the island has no fresh water, the facilities are constantly battered and eroded by the elements, and it is hardly a practical commute for its employees). After the prison was decommissioned, the island became a popular national park and has even been recolonized by nesting seabirds. Strangely, I have never been there, I suppose because I grew up in the Bay Area and it seemed like such a tourist thing to do. Alcatraz island and the Golden Gate Bridge (1937), as seen from the Larkspur Ferry, on San Francisco Bay, California.
We cycled about 15 kilometers upstream from Bratislava on rented bicycles to visit the ruins of DevĂn Castle, which sit at the confluence of the Danube (left) and the Morava River (just visible at the foot of the castle). The hill overlooking the river confluence has been occupied since the stone age, and became a strategic fortified location throughout the Celtic, Great Moravian, and Hungarian periods. The most conspicuous parts of the castle date to the mid 13th century, when King Bela IV of Hungary embarked on a castle building campaign in response to the Mongol invasions of Eastern and Central Europe. With the advent of modern artillery the castle lost much of its military significance, but it was nonetheless blown up by Napoleon's army in 1809. The ruins visitors see today have changed little since then, except for the addition of some lawns mowed by robot mowers, a coffee stand, and an abundance of historical signage indicating the ruins' present status as an open air museum.
Despite the destruction of the castle, it remained a contested site through the 19th and 20th centuries. In the mid 19th century Slovak nationalists adopted the ruins of the castle as a symbol of medieval Great Moravia, which they saw as a predecessor to the Slovak state they hoped to create. Hungarians, however, tended to view the castle as a symbol of the greatness of the Kingdom of Hungary, and in 1896 Hungary erected a twenty-two meter column at the site to commemorate the millennium anniversary of the Magyars' arrival in the Carpathian Basin. With the creation of Czechoslovakia at the end of the First World War the monument was removed, but two decades later the castle was annexed by Nazi Germany and renamed Theben, its traditional German name. The castle reverted tp Czechoslovakia at the end of the Second World War, but it soon became part of the militarized Iron Curtain dividing the Soviet Bloc from Western Europe.
Devin Castle at the confluence of the Danube and Morava Rivers, Slovakia.
We saw a lot of these on trail but this was where we saw the highest concentration. I believe Dactylorhiza maculata, but am willing to be corrected. Above 2000m in the Demirkapiiska River Valley, on the Five Mountains Trail (E4), Pirin Mountains, Bulgaria.
It's not a nice place to visit, and you really don't want to live there. Mrs. Orca and I took the ferry from Larkspur to Oracle Park in San Francisco to watch the Giants game. The ferry carries 750 baseball fans from Marin County across the Bay, drops them at the park entrance, and waits while the game is played, departing about thirty minutes after the last out. It was morning when we left Larkspur, but people were already drinking and the atmosphere was festive as we idled out of the harbor and past one of the more depressing places you are likely to encounter in the Bay Area.
San Quentin was founded in 1852. It began as prison ship anchored in the Bay, the inmates of which constructed what was to be their new home: a cellblock of fourteen 11' by 7' windowless granite cells called The Dungeon. The above is the prison hospital (1914), which was built atop and incorporates the repurposed original cellblock. As we passed, the guard in the tower above came out on his little balcony and slowly and deliberately waved hello to the ferry passengers, something I regrettably failed to get in the photo. San Quentin Rehabilitation Center (formerly San Quentin State Prison), viewed from San Francisco Bay, California.
The Slavyanka Mountains form a natural border between Greece and Bulgaria. The border was militarized until the 1990s, but now some of the border military outposts have been converted into backcountry huts. Our buddy Vladi joined us at one for the last stage of the Five Mountains Trail, a climb to the highest peak in the range (Gotsev Vhrah, 2212m), which was made more enjoyable as we did it as an out-and-back without our backpacks. Mrs. Orca leading the way in the Slavyanka Mountains, Five Mountains Trail (E4), Bulgaria.