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The hammering of woodpeckers can often be heard in my back yard. A few years ago I captured a photo of one.
You can view more featured photos at my Photo of the Day Collection.
Here’s a shot I took of The Mall in London, bathed beneath soft shards of sunlight piercing the clouds as I gazed toward Buckingham Palace.
You can view more featured photos at my Photo of the Day Collection.
It’s been a long time since I posted something, a combination of a trip to England, a lengthy illness, and being super busy, but it’s time to get back in the saddle. Here’s a photo from my recent trip to England, taken during an evening stroll along the Thames.
You can view more featured photos at my Photo of the Day Collection.
July 11, 2014: Today was the beginning of my ill-fated, three-day trip to Amsterdam and Bruges—to call it a disappointment would be an understatement. Before getting into it, however, I want to first state that the tour company, International Friends, was very attentive to my complaints and issued me a partial refund. It should also be noted that the three-day Scotland tour I took with the same company on the previous weekend was phenomenal, so I would feel comfortable using them again; I’ll just chalk the Amsterdam tour up to an outlier for an otherwise reliable tour company. That being said, I feel it is my responsibility to write about my experience without sugarcoating it…
As I mentioned above, I had an amazing tour of Scotland with this company the week before (it was my favorite part of the entire two-week trip). Because of that experience, I was expecting this tour to be just as wonderful. It would quickly become apparent, however, that this tour would not live up to those expectations. The biggest difference, as far as I could tell, was that the Scotland tour was professionally handled by an engaged and competent guide, while the Amsterdam tour was mismanaged by a disengaged guide and an incompetent bus driver.
We were late for everything on the entire trip, which gave us little time to actually enjoy anything on the itinerary, culminating in the disappointment of only getting two hours to spend in Bruges, which had been the biggest selling point of this tour for me, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
Things got off to a bad start when the bus was 30 minutes late picking us up at our location in London. The bus driver did not seem to know where he was going for most of the trip. He repeatedly made wrong turns throughout the weekend, including pulling into the wrong ferry in the wrong town on the way back to London. According to the tour company, the bus driver was given an itinerary for the trip but did not appear to read or refer to it (the drivers for these tours are not affiliated with the tour company but are hired out from a third party, and there was an apparent personality clash between the driver and the guide).
Eventually we reached the ferry in Dover and waited to board. I was stunned at the size of the ferry—it was massive enough to hold big buses and tractor-trailers. Once on the boat I was afforded a much better look at the white cliffs than I got earlier in the week, though it was raining so the pics below are not the clearest.
The inside of the ferry was like being on a cruise ship: they had dining, shopping, gambling, etc. I started getting a bit seasick at one point. Normally I would just step outside and I would be fine since it’s only inside ships that I start feeling the motion sickness, but all of the smokers were out on the deck, so I stayed inside.
After exiting the ferry in Calais, France, we sat in a major traffic jam, which led to our extremely late arrival in Amsterdam, 12 hours after we first departed. I don’t know if the traffic jam could have been avoided by a more experienced bus driver, but it’s worth noting that one of my fellow tour members observed the bus driver making several wrong turns during this drive, which likely contributed to our hitting the freeway during rush hour.
On the way, we stopped for a 45-minute lunch break that I could have done without, but it was apparently a legal rest period that the driver had to take. I wasn’t able to eat anything at the rest stop (or even use the paid bathroom) because I did not have any euros yet and the rest stop did not have an ATM, so I waited on the bus.
Eventually we arrived in Amsterdam, but we were so late that the city walking tour was canceled (and never rescheduled), checking into our hotel was skipped, and we went directly to the boat cruise. Here are some photos from the cruise:
We were not able to check into our hotel until 9 p.m. While we were waiting to check in, we discovered that our guide had sent two girls to the wrong hotel–the two girls did not have a firm enough grasp of English to understand that they were supposed to depart the bus with the guide in the city center and walk to the hostel, so they ended up taking the long ride with those of us who chose the three-star hotel. The guide was forced to send a cab to our hotel to pick them up after we discovered this error. This problem could have been averted if she had bothered to take a simple head count, as guides usually do (later, in Bruges, instead of taking a head count she just asked if everyone was off the bus. I thought, “Take a head count, then you’ll know!”).
Anyway, the guide scheduled the optional Red Light District walking tour for 9:30. This left no time for those of us in the three-star hotel to eat dinner because the hotel was so far outside the city center (per the company’s web site, we were supposed to have a hotel in the city center, which they apologized for not being able to secure). So we had a choice: take the Red Light District walking tour or eat dinner. I chose to eat in the hotel (since I hadn’t been able to eat lunch), so I missed the tour, but I figured I could see the Red Light District on my own the following day.
After dinner I decided to call it a night. In the morning we were scheduled to visit Zaanse Schans, a touristy village featuring historic windmills and other buildings, but since I had not yet had any opportunity to actually see Amsterdam, I chose to skip this tour and instead spend my only full day in Amsterdam exploring the city, which will be covered in the next installment.
View more of my photos from Amsterdam and Bruges.
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July 10, 2014: Today was my final day in London before I would head out on a three-day trip to Amsterdam and Bruges. It was a light day overall as I allowed myself to sleep in following two days of excursions featuring early-morning wakeup calls and long bus rides. Since I had been in London for nearly two weeks and hadn’t yet visited Buckingham Palace, I thought today would be a good day to do so.
But first, after grabbing some lunch and buying a new umbrella, I hopped on the tube to Baker Street so I could walk in the footsteps of Gerry Rafferty while also stopping by the Sherlock Holmes statue. I then took the tube to Hyde Park Corner and walked through Green Park past some war memorials and through the Wellington Arch before making my way to Buckingham Palace along Constitution Hill. Here are some photos from my day:
One interesting tidbit about Buckingham Palace: apparently the Queen does not like the palace. According to a guide from one of my tours, she derisively refers to Buckingham as “the office,” only going there long enough to dispense with official duties before retreating to one of her preferred palaces. She was actually staying at her palace in Edinburgh when I was there the previous week. I can see her point: it’s not the most attractive palace in the world.
After spending some time outside the palace (the inside was not open to tourists at this time of the year) I walked around Green Park for a bit longer before grabbing some dinner and then heading back to my flat. I decided to call it an early night since I had a lot of packing to do and an extremely early wakeup call the next morning. I was looking forward to my visits to Amsterdam and Bruges, though I felt as if, despite spending two weeks here, I had only just scratched the surface of everything London had to offer.
View more of my photos from London.
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Since I’ll be returning to London in three weeks, I thought it might be a good idea to actually try and finish the journal of my previous trip, which I began writing oh so long ago…
July 9, 2014: After our visits to Leeds Castle and Dover it was time to head to Canterbury, home of the famed tales by Chaucer. We parked and walked through the charming pedestrian market area to get to the cathedral. Unfortunately, we were denied access to the cathedral because the BBC was shooting some TV show there, so that was a bummer. We had to settle for the crypts, which we only had 15 minutes to explore before they closed. The crypts were really neat, but the feeling of being rushed did not make for a pleasant visit.
I then headed back into town and ate a late lunch at an outdoor French café, enjoying a dish of beef bourignon. Later I would discover that I had left my umbrella at the café—and an umbrella is not a good thing to be without in England. Oh well, stuff happens when you travel. Luckily, it didn’t rain before I was able to buy a new one back in London the next day. Anyway, here are some photos from my visit to Canterbury.
The next stop after Canterbury was Greenwich, London, home of Greenwich Mean Time, at zero degrees longitude. We waited here to catch a boat that would take us along the Thames back into central London. In the meantime I walked around and snapped some photos:
I also tried unsuccessfully to use a bathroom in a restaurant. I’m well aware that most places in Europe either charge you for the bathroom or will only allow patrons to use it. However, a large restaurant along the river had a sign on the outside advertising bathrooms, so I thought this place was an exception, especially since I had just watched one of my fellow tour members head upstairs to use it. So I headed up, figuring if anyone said anything I would just buy a soda or something, but as soon as I began ascending the stairs a restaurant employee came running across the restaurant to yell at me. I would have offered to buy something, but this person’s behavior irritated me so much that I just left.
Speaking of bathrooms, here’s a travel tip: never ask for a ‘restroom’ in the U.K. because nobody will know what the hell you’re talking about. One person thought I was looking for a place to rest. 🙂
Eventually the boat arrived and we were off. Here are some photos from the cruise:
I was disappointed to discover that it was a simple commuter boat rather than the cruise with tea, wine, and scones that had been promised on the web site through which I had booked the tour. This, on top of the denied Canterbury Cathedral entry and arrival to the crypts at closing time, as well as other missed itinerary points in Dover, left me feeling a bit ripped off, so I complained to Premium Tours. As it turns out, my booking was secured through a third-party web site that contained outdated itinerary information, but Premium Tours still made good on my disappointment by giving me a 25-percent refund, which was much appreciated.
Overall, I booked four tours through Premium Tours and found them to be a very good tour company. Although this tour was somewhat disappointing, I very much enjoyed the Bath/Stonehenge tour (worth every penny), and the Paris tour allowed me to see a lot of the city in just one day.
In the end, however, I felt as if I booked a couple of tours too many and did not spend enough time in London itself, so one bit of advice I would give someone coming to London is not to overbook yourself on tours that take you out of the city . . . unless you don’t care about seeing that much of London, then book away!
I decided to depart the cruise near the London Eye ferris wheel since I had pre-purchased a voucher to ride it and this would probably be the last day I would have a chance to do so. I waited in line for a half hour only to get to the front and be told that my voucher was no good, that I needed to go to the building nearby and exchange it for an actual ticket. I had naturally assumed that I could simply present my voucher to the ticket taker, just as I had done with my voucher to enter the Tower of London, both of which had been purchased from the same tour company: The Original Tour. The tour company should have made it clear that the London Eye voucher did not work the same as the Tower of London voucher, so this was partially their fault.
It was also the fault of the ticket takers at the London Eye, who should never have allowed me to enter the line with just a voucher: the attendant confirmed this, but she was completely unsympathetic that their screwup caused me to waste a half-hour of my time–she refused to allow me to go get a ticket and return to the front of the line; I would have to go to the back of the line and wait all over again. So I left the line (which was even longer now than when I had first queued up), and entered the building to get my ticket–until I saw how long the line was there. At that point I was so fed up that I said “screw it” and left; I had better things to do with my life. I ended up not using the voucher at all.
To be honest, once I realized the London Eye cars were enclosed and that any photos would be taken through glass, I wasn’t too upset about missing the ride (I had already gotten a bird’s eye view of London at The Shard anyway); I was just annoyed about wasting my money on the voucher. The lesson here: if you purchase vouchers in advance from ‘The Original Tour’ company, make sure you know which vouchers are good for entry, and which must be exchanged for a ticket.
After that debacle I decided to just do some more walking before heading back to my flat. Here are some photos from that walk.
I freshened up in my apartment and then decided to venture back out since I hadn’t really had a chance to experience London at night. I made my way to Picadilly Circus and snapped some photos before taking a stroll through Chinatown, where I planned to eat dinner. It was my first visit to any Chinatown, despite living halfway between Philly and New York (a few days later I would also visit Chinatown in Amsterdam, and a few months after that I would visit San Francisco’s Chinatown, so I made up for lost time). One thing I discovered about Chinatown is that, with so many similar restaurants to choose from, it’s hard to pick one place, so I found myself walking around in circles.
I eventually settled on a Vietnamese restaurant, where I had a funny (and somewhat humiliating) experience. The waiter brought out a dish of greens and I thought he said the word “salad,” so I poured what I thought was dressing on it and started eating. After a couple of bites I thought to myself, “This tastes like pure cilantro.” That’s because it was. I was supposed to put the cilantro in the soup he later brought out. So I threw the rest of the cilantro and “dressing” into the soup when it arrived, but this was also a mistake because the “dressing” was actually dipping sauce for the spring rolls and meat that the waiter would be bringing out next. Oh, and the spoon I had used to ladle the “dressing” on the “salad” was my soup spoon. I’m sure the owners had a good laugh at my expense. I’ll just chalk it up to being the end of a long and exhausting day. 😉
After dinner I headed back to my flat. Tomorrow would be my final full day in London, so I thought I should at least go have a look at Buckingham Palace. That will be covered in the next installment. In the meantime, here are some night shots of Picadilly Circus and Chinatown.
View more of my photos from London
View more photos from my visits to the English countryside
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WordPress recently sent me an annual report for my blog. Here are some of the highlights:
These were my five most viewed posts of the year. Interestingly, almost all of them are over two years old, so I either have writing with staying power–or my most recent writing leaves something to be desired. 🙂
I posted 61 new articles in 2015, the majority of which were posted between June and July. Hardly any articles were posted between January and May–lingering winter blues, perhaps? It may also be because I was busy during that time period trying to finalize my novel for publication. In any event, I’ll try to be more consistent this year.
Well, that’s it for 2015. Thank you to all of my loyal readers and I hope you have a happy New Year!
I finally have a smartphone capable of taking halfway decent photos and I happened to be in the right place at the right time to capture this stunning sunset over one of the buildings on my work campus the other night.
You can view more featured photos at my Photo of the Day Collection.
We decided to spend Halloween in Cape May this year since we had never seen it in the middle of fall. While walking the promenade I stepped out onto the beach to take this shot. It’s the first panorama I’ve ever taken with my 35mm prime lens and I really liked the way it turned out–nowhere near as much distortion as I get when shooting a panorama with one of my wide-angle lenses. I might have to start using this lens more often.
It was such a clear day that you can actually see Delaware in the distance across the ocean.
You can view more featured photos at my Photo of the Day Collection.
A sunny day at Watkins Glen State Park in New York is the perfect opportunity to practice HDR photography because the high contrast of the dark areas of the gorge versus the areas that catch rays of sun can make it difficult to properly expose a scene with a single shot. Here are a few of the HDR photos I took during my hike in September, 2015. They were all done handheld, three exposures each. You can click on any image for a larger view.
You can view more featured photos at my Photo of the Day Collection.
Also, don’t forget that the eBook version of my novel, The Eyes of Mictlan, is available for free during the entire month of November, and, if you download it through Story Cartel and write a review, you will be entered into their monthly drawing to win prizes such as Kindle eReaders, Amazon and Barnes & Noble gift cards, and bestselling print books.
There are three ways in which you can obtain a free copy:
There are no strings attached and the book is yours to keep, but I would be most grateful if you could take a few minutes to leave a review on your favorite book site (such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Goodreads). And as always, I thank you for your support!
Michael Rappa 