A few years ago, when international travel was still an option, my wife and I undertook a coach tour of Croatia and Italy. These are some of the images from that trip…mixed in with a couple from other European trips that we have done in the past decade.
We spent a night in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia. This castle overlooks the entire city and as we did not have enough time, this was as close as we got. Currently a historical site, cultural centre and tourist attraction, it was, in one of its earlier incarnations a prison. Although we were only there for a short time, we were able to spend it exploring the streets, bridges, statues and markets of a civilization that has been in this valley since the 13th Century BC. Would you believe I even found a group of Slovenian musicians playing country music at a pub near our hotel?
It seems that ‘hands-free’ cellphone kits are not required in a gondola! And it looks like the Gondoliers are capable of multi-tasking. A morning walk through the alleyways of Venice allowed me to get some non-tourist images. The couple who are paying for the trip seem oblivious to what is happening behind them…or perhaps they paid him to take back-of-head shots?
As Venice is very expensive from a tourist accommodation perspective, we stayed in Mestre, a 15-minute bus ride from the city. This facade of this building caught my attention as I walked from our hotel to get to the bus stop on the main road.
Like all Gulls, if you have food, they become aggressive. This one is not ACTUALLY this huge, it is all about perspective. Now that Venice is almost devoid of tourists, thanks to COVID-19 lockdown, I wonder how these birds are coping seeing that they have to source their OWN food.
A wall at the entrance to the old Jewish Quarter in Venice. Having failed maths at high school and at tertiary level, I don’t know if the equation is correct or if it has anything to do with the chair.
Yet ANOTHER church building in Venice… the only reason that this one features is that we stopped for pizza and gelato close by.
A full moon over Venice, Italy
Some days you are the pigeon, some days you are the statue! From Athens, Greece this bird proves that point.
This might look like a set from a horror movie, but it is a hotel perched on a hill in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
One of the most impressive statues I have stood beneath. Gregory of Nin towers over the skyline of Split in Croatia.
East-West, home is always best. For the final image, we return to South Africa and more specifically the battlefield of Isandlwana in KZN. If the Zulu had attacked at the full moon, it would have been them silhouetted instead of the foliage visible in this image taken from the verandah of the Isandlwana Lodge, which is built into the side of the Nyoni Rock just below where the Zulu commander stood during the Battle of Isandlwana on the 22nd of January 1879.
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