Travel – Page 22 – Michael Rappa

Happy Anniversary, Machu Picchu

August 27, 2013 Michael RappaLeave a comment

One year ago today I was standing here:

Sometimes it’s hard to believe that I was actually there, and that I survived the Inca Trail, particularly that hellish second day. It all seems like a dream now.

My Villa in Tuscany

May 6, 2013 Michael RappaLeave a comment

This video is a tour of the grounds surrounding the villa I lived in for two weeks outside of Florence, Italy in 2011. You may have already seen this if you read Part 1 of my Eurotrip journal, though the video is now much smoother thanks to youtube’s smoothing software (with the minor side effect of wacky looking text at the beginning).

The villa was over 100 years old and full of character. The view of the Tuscan countryside from the gazebo was sublime: the hills, the olive groves, the other villas; very peaceful. And on the other end of the grounds I could see Florence in the valley below—an amazing view at night. It’s not difficult to understand why someone would decide to drop everything and move to Tuscany; it’s such an easy place to fall in love with.

Featured Photo: Krka River Dock, Croatia

April 29, 2013 Michael RappaLeave a comment

I took this photo in November of 2011 during the Croatia leg of my epic monthlong trip to Europe. This is the dock outside of Krka National Park where a riverboat drops you off for a visit following a 30-minute ride down the Krka River from a nearby town. The park is home to some spectacular waterfalls, including the one featured in the panorama at the top of this blog.

After our tour of the park, I arrived at the dock about fifteen minutes early to wait for the boat. I was the only person on the dock so it felt like I had the entire river to myself (a major advantage to being in Europe in November is the lack of crowds). I snapped this photo and then lay down on the dock just staring out at the river accompanied by nothing but the sounds of nature. It was such a peaceful setting; I could practically envision myself as a character in a Mark Twain novel.

Featured Photo: In the Shade – Maras, Peru

April 24, 2013 Michael RappaLeave a comment

This is another one of those afterthought photos that turned out pretty well. I was on a tour that included the salt mines of Maras and the Inca ruins at Moray, which I wrote about in the second chapter of my Peru travel journal.

On our way back from Moray the bus drove through the village of Maras, a town comprised primarily of old colonial buildings, most of which are still in use. We didn’t have time to explore the village since it was only a half-day tour, but when the bus briefly stopped I stuck my camera out the window and quickly snapped this photo so I would have at least one clean shot of some of the buildings. In the process I captured this local woman sitting in the shade, away from the heat of the sun.

My Trip to Peru: The Movie

April 12, 2013 Michael RappaLeave a comment

This is a video montage of my August 2012 trip to Peru, including my visits to the Sacred Valley and my hike of the Inca Trail. This is the same video that appeared in my journal, so you may have already seen it, but I wanted it to have its own page in my videos section. The background music is In the Lap of the Gods by the Alan Parsons Project, which I thought was a fitting piece to accompany the visuals.

Photo of the Day: Overlooking Dubrovnik

April 9, 2013 Michael RappaLeave a comment

This is one of those happy accident photos. I was walking along the walls that surround the spectacular medieval city of Dubrovnik, Croatia, snapping lots of photos when I captured this woman lifting her daughter for a view of the city. I normally delete photos with strangers in them if I have a similar shot without them, but I thought this was a poignant scene so I kept it.

Eurotrip 2009: The Movie

April 2, 2013 Michael Rappa6 Comments

I finally got around to compiling the little videos I shot during my 2009 Eurotrip into a movie. These were shot with my old pocket camera, so it’s not HD video quality and I didn’t have the ability to zoom in and out during shooting, but it’s still a decent companion piece to my journal.

Dubrovnik, Croatia

March 26, 2013 Michael RappaLeave a comment

I stumbled across a few small videos I shot while in Croatia in November of 2011 that I forgot to include in my main Eurotrip 2011 video, so I thought I’d compile them here.

In honor of the upcoming season premiere of Game of Thrones and Dubrovnik’s connection to the show, I have scored the video with the main theme from the series.

I chose to smooth-out the video using youtube’s smoothing software, which resulted in quite wacky behavior of the title captions at the beginning, but the rest of the video is nice and smooth, so once you get past the opening captions, it’s smooth sailing—do you think I used the word ‘smooth’ enough in that last sentence? 🙂

See photos from Dubrovnik

Eurotrip 2011: The Video

March 16, 2013 Michael RappaLeave a comment

I thought I’d kick off the new Videos section of this blog with the very first video I made from one of my trips. This video covers most of my month in Europe in 2011, including visits to Italy, Switzerland, and Croatia.

This video is nearly 18 minutes long, so I’ll understand if you don’t want to sit through the whole thing :-), but it is accompanied by a couple of pleasant pieces from Holst’s The Planets.

Dubrovnik: A Tour of King’s Landing (and other locations)

February 15, 2013 Michael Rappa6 Comments

When I visited the medieval walled city of Dubrovnik, Croatia in November of 2011, I had no idea that one of my favorite television shows, Game of Thrones, had just recently finished filming its second season there. When the season premiere aired four months later, I realized that Dubrovnik had been used to depict King’s Landing (though I also recognized a few other parts of the city in other scenes, such as those in Qarth).

The strange sensation of seeing the city walls I had so recently walked and photographed being used to represent this fantasy world led to some occasional difficulty suspending disbelief, but I nevertheless thought it was quite cool to have actually stood in the same locations as the characters in the show.

I will write much more about my visit to the magnificent city of Dubrovnik in my travelogue, but for now I thought I would just share some of my photos that match up with locations from the television series (based on my foggy memory from seeing Season 2 nearly a year ago). Very minor spoilers ahead for those who haven’t watched the second season . . .

A CGI-enhanced version of this city line stands in for King’s Landing in the show.
The island in the background was used for some of the scenes with Daenerys in Qarth.

Streets of Dubrovnik, err, I mean King’s Landing.

This area was used for some external King’s Landing scenes.

The tower to the right was used to depict the
outside of the House of the Undying in Qarth.
Daenerys walked along this area before entering.

You can see why Dubrovnik makes such a perfect shooting location for a fantasy show.

Many scenes were filmed along these walls that surround the entire city.

This angle is similar to one used in the show, with
a CGI-enhanced version of the fort in the background.
The fort itself was heavily used for King’s Landing exterior scenes.

These hobbit-like doors built into the hill underneath the fort were featured during
the montage in which Joffrey had all of King Robert’s bastard sons murdered.

The interior of the fort was used for several scenes in and around the castle.

Another interior fort shot. Cersei and Littlefinger had a conversation in this hall.

This fort courtyard was frequently used.

This upper level of the fort was one of the main exterior filming locations for King’s Landing.

The fact that the background is all water and sky probably made the fort the easiest
location to use in terms of not needing to hide a bunch of stuff or crop it out with CGI.

A closer look at the island that stood in for Qarth (i.e., the Daenerys scenes).

The area among the trees down by the water was also used for a few King’s Landing scenes.

I’m sure there were several other areas used for filming that I’m not recalling at the moment, but I don’t feel like re-watching the entire season right now to find them :-), so I’ll just leave you with one final long-exposure night shot that feels a bit like a fantasy photo with the smoothness of the water:

See more photos from Dubrovnik