Calton Hill
Edinburgh from Calton Hill
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Posts tagged buildings
Castlehill
Tolbooth Kirk from Castlehill (Edinburgh, Scotland – July 2021)
Kuks hospital
Kuks Hospital (Czech Republic)
“Magic every day on my summer adventures” is what I tell people who ask how Europe was. Today’s photo is one such example. Here is the story in a nutshell…
I needed a place to stay for Josefstadt as I’m too old to camp, and I didn’t have any camping equipment with me anyway. For Brutal Assault in 2019 I stayed in a hotel that had a shuttle bus service to the festival. I didn’t really like waiting around for the shuttle, and the hotel was 30+ minutes from the festival. So, for 2021, since I was going to have a rental car in Czech anyway, I looked for a place on my own. The closest place I could find was in a small town called Kuks, just 15 minutes from the festival. I booked the place without doing any more research or giving it much thought.
On the day I was moving from Prague to Kuks I put the place in Google maps for directions and noticed a little castle icon next to my lodgings. I still imagined that my lodgings would just be a guest room or something on a farm since the town was so small. Instead, I arrived to find that I have a view of “the castle” from my room! The castle isn’t really a castle; it was a hospital (an extraordinarily opulent Baroque hospital). But the place is gorgeous, and it is lit up at night. Czech tourists show up during the day to check the place out, but at night you couldn’t hear a sound, and it was wonderful.
More on this magical place later…
Smolny Cathedral Dome Interior
Smolny Cathedral interior looking straight up (Saint Petersburg, Russia) August 2019
This is my only decent photo of the Smolny Cathedral interior. There are two reasons for this. One is that construction was going on, and the other is the hoards of tourists.
That was one of the nicest things about traveling in 2021–the lack of crowds. I probably entered 20+ churches this summer, and I don’t remember ever seeing more than one or two other people in those churches at the same time.
Poznan blue hour
Poznan, Poland
Farewell to Europe for another year
Prague’s Old Town from the Klementinum Astronomical Tower
Today I fly home after a couple of months in Denmark, Poland, the Faroe Islands, Scotland, and the Czech Republic. Even with limited festivals and music opportunities, I think this was the best summer in Europe for me yet. I hope to do it all again in 2022.