Enjoy your Saturday
The Rose Garden in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden has just re opened. If you live in New York, it's a great place to spend part of your Saturday.
Posts
Return to Erice
Whenever a new arrivals to Sicily visits me, I always take them to Erice, a wonderful medieval hilltop village that offers spectacular views. For example one can see the Egadi Islands of Favignana, Levanto and Marettimo alond with Trapani and the sea salt flats considered by experts to produce the best sea salt in the world. I fully agree. Naturally Erice has many streets full of crowds, restaurants and gift shops. The real pleasure is visiting the many side streets that are tranquil and peaceful. The modern state of the art cable car that one can take to avoid motor traffic is a marriage of modern engeneering and Italian creativity. This is definitively a must see place. And if you do go you must visit the Caffè del convento to really taste a true cannolo that is a life changing experience. Happy trails.
Giverny, France...la cuisine
Monet's garden in Giverny is perhaps the most beautiful garden in the world. Not as stately as le Jardin de Luxembourg in Paris and not as classsical as Villa D'Este in Rome, it is nevertheless a botanical jewel. I will post some flower images in the near future. But what also fascinated me was Monet's kitchen. These are some representative images.
Archival slide scan
Shot in Torre Molinas Spain long ago with a Nikon FTn. a 35mm f2.8 Nikkor lens and on the then new Kodachrome 25 that had just replaced the legendary Kodachrome II. The ISO. then called ASA. was a mere 25. Taking a picture required some skills then. Now of course cameras shoot practically in the dark and since it costs nothing to shoot a great number of photos are taken and the so called best are archived. Nevertheless, this ease has merely improved the level of mediocrity. Everybody is a photographer and an artist these days. Good for them.
Il Castello di Venere
iPhone image Il Castello di Venere or the Castle of Venus in Erice is a wonderful old structure that was recently restored. On our last visit there, on the beginning of May we found it enveloped in a deep fog that created a magical effect. I believe that just one image suffices in this post.
Little shool house
This wanderful building in northern New Jersey was once a great site to visit because on weekends volunteer would open it and allow people to visit and enjoy. A few years ago, it was handed over to the Federal Governmen and it never opened again. A pity.
