My Holidays Photoblog » cultural photos

Quebec City and its surroundings

admin — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 07:42:40 +0000

I’ve always been fascinated by Canada and it’s nature: big rivers, green valleys, great lakes, and so on. But I never actually saw anything about the towns, the architecture, and so on.
Yesterday, while I was looking up for a friend some informations about Canada, I stumbled upon lots of sites describing all the various cities and in particular the region of Quebec and its omonymous town.

First of all it’s a very populated town, second largest one after Montreal. Then, I discovered about Château Frontenac, a historic hotel which dominates the city skyline and it’s really a wonderful piece of architecture!

Also, I didn’t really know but the Montmorency Falls are actually about 30m higher than the more famous Niagara Falls! they’re located very close to Quebec city itself, and from the pictures I saw around the net they are really a marvelous place to visit. I surely will be booking myself a room in one of the Quebec City Hotels Canada to view personally all those wonders… it’s really worth it!

The scary picture!

admin — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 10:14:33 +0000

Today’s picture is a bit scary… it is a photo from my trip to Dozza, you can find my blog entry here. The fortress once was a prison, and there are several scary rooms with instruments of torture. I don’t like particularly this kind of stuff, however from the historical point of view can be interesting. If you look carefully on the walls, you can even see some carved texts or numbers on them, made by the prisoners.

Beside that, remember that the region around is well-known for good wines and food, so don’t be too much impressed by the photo!

Curious church entrance

admin — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 18:34:16 +0000

Took this picture while I was on a short trip in the natural park of “Cinque Terre”, in the italian region of Liguria. It is at the same time quite fun and bizarre, because of the skull in center of the icon above what is a church entrance! yes exactly, that is a closeup of a church entrance in a small town (I forgot the name, not sure if was Monterosso or Manarola).

I don’t know latin well but from what I can understand the text says something like “guild of prayers and deaths”! very scary…!

Lost in time…

admin — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 17:06:25 +0000

Nearby “Passo Colla”, 1000m of height on sea level, past 4km of rough road you can find an old abandoned small village called “Dugara”. Some houses are completely broken, only the walls left with some ivy growing on them. Others are still in good conditions, only waiting for someone to come there and open their windows again, to gain a new life.

All around, nature and a weird silence. You can only hear the sound of a nearby water fountain. Some birds, the wind that moves leaves. Apart for that nothing but silence.

The life goes on, and the bells of the small church located in village’s entrance are ready to sing again.

the small chapel nearby village entrance

closeup of an ivy climbing on the old walls

a group of wrecks

Old town of Pontremoli

admin — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 15:43:01 +0000

Pontremoli is a nice old town in the “Lunigiana”, a zone of Tuscany. It is not far from the famous “Cinque Terre” national park, and also near many other interesting places like Lucca, Viareggio, and so on.

It is also close to where we live now, so a sunday of december we decided to take a short trip there. We arrived and the feeble winter sun was lighting the town in a wonderful way. We walked up to a hill where you can see the whole town, and someone had hang up some clothes to dry them. I decided to take a picture of it, the one you can see above.

I like the result very much. It has a sort of “old feeling” on it, typical of the 1960-70 years. Old houses, the climate of desperation and poverty after the world war, where everyone had to restart their lives from zero.