H-Bomb’s Friday Photo

H-Bomb’s Friday Photo, Week 18: Montreal’s Notre-Dame

Posted on February 8, 2013 by H-Bomb

As I write this, a blizzard is pounding the northeastern United States, including my home city of New York. Perfect weather to sit indoors at my computer to bring you my latest Friday photo! Today’s image comes from the cosmopolitan city of Montreal in the Canadian province of Quebec. It’s a view of that city’s Notre-Dame Basilica (Basilique Notre-Dame de Montréal).

notre

This church has nothing to do with its namesake cathedral in Paris, to which it bears a slight resemblance. It is, however, a beautiful and historically significant building in its own right. Dedicated in 1829, it’s an outstanding example of Gothic Revival architecture.

This photo was taken during my visit to Montreal in August 2010. During that thoroughly enjoyable weekend jaunt, Canada became the 18th country on my World Karaoke Tour. But that’s ancient history, because I’m now up to 27 countries in which I’ve sung karaoke! Incidentally, my second Canadian singing appearance will come this June in Toronto; I’ll be in town for this year’s North American conference of the Travel Blog Exchange (TBEX). If you’ll be at TBEX Toronto, I hope you’ll join me for a night of H-Bomb karaoke!

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H-Bomb’s Friday Photo, week 17: mischievous monkeys in Gibraltar

Posted on February 1, 2013 by H-Bomb

Hello and happy Friday. Tomorrow is Groundhog Day, during which we’ll find out just how much more of winter is in store for us this year. And perhaps by the time nature is in full bloom, I’ll be regularly posting articles again, rather than just weekly photos. 🙂

This week’s featured image comes from the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar, at the southern tip of the Iberian peninsula. When most people think of Gibraltar, they probably think of its most salient geographic feature: the Rock of Gibraltar, the 1,398-foot-high limestone promontory that stands guard over the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea. The Rock of Gibraltar, in turn, is famous for its resident population of macaque monkeys, also known as Barbary apes. Shown here, a pair of those macaques has wandered onto a cannon outside the Great Siege Tunnels on the Rock of Gibraltar.

Cliffside monkeys on the Rock of Gibraltar

This photo was taken during my visit to Gibraltar in February 2011. (That was the same trip during which my World Karaoke Tour reached its sixth continent via an appearance in Casablanca, Morocco!) Photoshopping assistance was provided by my friend Erica Doubet-Tootikian; that assistance was limited to adjustment of the levels to tweak the colours and contrast.

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H-Bomb’s Friday Photo, Week 16: Istanbul’s Spice Bazaar

Posted on January 25, 2013 by H-Bomb

TGIF! I hope you had a good week. And now it’s time for me to share another featured image with you! Today’s photo comes from my recent visit to Istanbul, during which Turkey became the 27th country on my World Karaoke Tour. The photo takes you inside the Spice Bazaar, also known as the Egyptian Market.

spice spice baby

The Spice Bazaar is a gigantic indoor emporium in which you’ll find dozens of shops offering a dizzying array of spices. You’ll also find other products such as fruit and flower teas; Turkish Delight (a popular dessert confection); and even Turkish Viagra. This marketplace can be found in the Eminönü neighborhood, just south of the waterway known as the Golden Horn.

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H-Bomb’s Friday Photo, Week 15: a creepy abandoned house in Maryland

Posted on January 18, 2013 by H-Bomb

Another happy Friday to you! Later this weekend I’ll be headed to the great state of Maryland, to visit friends in the Baltimore area. I’ll be taking advantage of a promotion from Megabus that’s enabling me to get from New York City to White Marsh, Maryland for zero dollars round-trip (plus a fifty-cent service charge). In honour of that trip, this week’s featured photo comes from one of my many previous visits to Maryland (I did my undergraduate university studies at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, so I’ve spent quite a bit of time in that state). The image is of an abandoned house in the town of Sudlersville, on Maryland’s Eastern shore:

Chia house

As you can see, this erstwhile residence is heavily overgrown with ivy, and generally has that “life after people” look about it.

This photo was taken in September 2005. So the house is probably even more decrepit now!

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H-Bomb’s Friday Photo, Week 14: a lesser-known Sphinx in Egypt

Posted on January 11, 2013 by H-Bomb

We’ve made it through another week. And that means it’s time for our latest featured photo! Today’s image comes from Memphis, the second capital of Egypt (it held that status from roughly 2950 B.C. to 2180 B.C.). The Great Sphinx at Giza, which I also visited, is justly world-renowned; but there’s another sphinx in Memphis that has also endured through the ages.

the alabaster sphinx in Memphis

It’s not nearly as large as the one at Giza (it’s only about 26 feet long and 13 feet high, in contrast to the Great Sphinx at Giza which is 241 feet long); and it’s quite a bit younger (it’s believed to have been chiseled sometime between 1700 BC and 1400 BC, which means that the Memphis sphinx may have been built over a thousand years later than its Gizan counterpart). It’s been dubbed the Alabaster Sphinx, although it’s actually made out of calcite, a mineral that’s merely similar to alabaster.

This photo was taken during my trip to Egypt in September 2012.

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H-Bomb’s Friday Photo, Week 13: Australia’s Three Sisters

Posted on January 4, 2013 by H-Bomb

Hey there. Last week I missed a Friday in this weekly photo series, on account of I was on the road in Istanbul. But now I’m back, and it’s time to once again relive a moment from my past travels!

Today’s featured image comes from the Blue Mountains in the Australian state of New South Wales. (The Blue Mountains start about 50 kilometres west of Sydney.) The photo is of a rock formation known as the Three Sisters:

The Three Sisters

Each member of the Three Sisters tops out at over 900 metres above the Jamison Valley below.

This photo was taken during my visit to Australia in January 2010.

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H-Bomb’s Friday Photo, Week 12: an endless gateway in Kyoto

Posted on December 21, 2012 by H-Bomb

Happy last day of the world to you! Today’s featured photo comes from Kyoto, a former imperial capital of Japan. Pictured here is an avenue of contiguous torii (ceremonial, vermillion-coloured gates) at the Fushimi Inari shrine in Kyoto.

Torii! Torii! Torii!

This photo was taken during my visit to Japan in April 2008.

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H-Bomb’s Friday Photo, Week 11: stairway to a giant Buddha in Hong Kong

Posted on December 14, 2012 by H-Bomb

Just one week to go until the Mayan apocalypse. So this might be the second-to-last H-Bomb’s Friday Photo ever!

The subject of today’s featured image comes from Hong Kong. Here we can see the staircase to the 85-foot Tian Tan Buddha on the Ngong Ping plateau on Lantau island. The road to enlightenment starts with a single step!

journey begins with a single step

This gigantic bronze Buddha was completed in 1993.

To get to Ngong Ping I took a scary 3.5-mile cable car ride over water. Afterwards, to return to the station from which I would catch my train back to the city, I took the bus even though that was a much slower mode of transportation than the cable car. Plus, a man sitting in front of me on the bus vomited, so I had to deal with that stench for much of the ride . . .

This photo was taken during my visit to Hong Kong that took place from December 2009 to January 2010. (Yes, that’s where I was on New Year’s Eve to usher in 2010!)

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H-Bomb’s Friday Photo, week 10: Niemeyer’s UFO in Brazil

Posted on December 7, 2012 by H-Bomb

Happy Friday! It’s time for the first Friday Photo of this blog’s second year. Yep, in case you missed it, I celebrated my first blogoversary a few days ago!

This week saw the passing of the great Brazilian architect, Oscar Niemeyer, at age 104. One of my favourite Niemeyer buildings (and one of the few that I’ve been fortunate enough to see in person thus far) is the Contemporary Art Museum (Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Niterói, or MAC) in Niteroi, Brazil.

The Contemporary Art Museum in Niteroi, and Sugarloaf Mountain in Rio de Janeiro.

Completed in 1996, the MAC is known for its UFO-like appearance. Niteroi is a charming city just across Guanabara Bay from Rio de Janeiro; the view from the ferry that I took across the bay was spectacular.

In this photo, the MAC is on the right; at left is the distinctively-shaped Sugarloaf Mountain (Pão de Açúcar) in Rio de Janeiro. If you look closely you can see the cable cars that take visitors to the top of the mountain.

This photo was taken during my visit to Brazil in September 2010. That was the same trip during which South America became the fifth continent on my World Karaoke Tour when I sang in Rio. 🙂

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H-Bomb’s Friday Photo, week 9: a postmodern pyramid in Paris

Posted on November 30, 2012 by H-Bomb

Another Happy Friday to you, as the holiday season is now upon us.

Today’s featured photo comes from Paris, the City of Lights. Fittingly enough, it’s an image created after dark. The subject is the I.M. Pei-designed entrance pyramid at the Musée du Louvre.

pei pyramid 2

This week, of course, has been all about pyramids here at H-Bomb’s Worldwide Karaoke! Unlike the ones in Giza, which were built with limestone bricks, the pyramid at the Louvre is comprised of 673 panes of glass in a metallic framework. (An urban legend, repeated in a certain low-quality Dan Brown novel whose name I won’t even bother mentioning, claims incorrectly that the Louvre’s pyramid contains 666 panes of glass and therefore draws power from the number of the Beast.) Completed in 1989, Pei’s structure contrasts dramatically with the Baroque architecture of the rest of the museum.

This photo was taken during my visit to Paris in the fall of 2005. When I took it, rain had just fallen, which made for some nice reflections.

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H-Bomb’s Friday photo, week 8: decomposing neon in Las Vegas

Posted on November 23, 2012 by H-Bomb

Okay, so I’m a little late with last week’s Friday photo. 🙂 But thanks to the magic of backdating, this post will still appear in my archives as a Friday entry!

The Boneyard is a junkyard of discarded neon signs in downtown Las Vegas. The signs date as far back as the 1930s. Public tours of the Boneyard are offered by the Neon Museum, which opened a brand-new Visitors’ Center last month.

My favourite section of the Boneyard is what I call Fast Food Gulch: a grouping of signs from some of Sin City’s more healthy dining alternatives.

fast food gulch

This photo was taken during my visit to Las Vegas in March 2009. It came at a price: after I wandered away from the tour to photograph these fast food signs (which were tucked away in the back of the lot), I accidentally got locked in to the Boneyard. Luckily the Neon Museum folks hadn’t wandered too far from the gate by the time I noticed that they were gone, and they quickly unlocked the gate and let me out. 🙂

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H-Bomb’s Friday Photo, Week 7: a tablecloth in Cape Town

Posted on November 16, 2012 by H-Bomb

Hey everyone! I hope you’re finishing up an outstanding week. This week’s featured image comes from Cape Town, South Africa. When a cloud rolls in over iconic Table Mountain, locals call the effect a “tablecloth.” Here, you can see such a phenomenon in action.

The view here is looking towards Table Mountain from the Victoria & Albert Waterfront. The Lego-like sculpture of a man in the right foreground is made entirely of Coca-Cola crates; entitled “Crate Fan,” it was built for the World Cup in 2010 and is still there. The artist who created it is Porky Hefer (I swear, I’m not making that up, that’s really his name).

This photo was taken during my visit to South Africa in September 2011.

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H-Bomb’s Friday Photo, week 6: Man over New Zealand

Posted on November 9, 2012 by H-Bomb

Hello again as we get ready to kick off the weekend. Today’s featured photo is of a man doing the “Sky Jump” from atop the Sky Tower in Auckland, New Zealand.

The Sky Jump works as follows: first, you’re suspended for about 10 seconds outside the Sky Tower’s observation deck, so that people inside, such as myself, can photograph you. Then you’re lowered to the ground, 184 metres below, in what has been described as a controlled free fall. (Your descent is regulated via the cables to which you’re harnessed; this makes it different from a bungee jump.) Needless to say, I wanted no part of the Sky Jump. It was scary enough just to watch other people doing it. 🙂

Measuring 328 metres to the top of its mast, the Sky Tower is the tallest free-standing structure in the Southern Hemisphere (although the Sydney Tower in Sydney, Australia has a higher observation deck).

This photo was taken during my visit to New Zealand in January 2010.

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H-Bomb’s Friday Photo, week 5: horsin’ around on Easter Island

Posted on November 2, 2012 by H-Bomb

Happy Friday everyone! Today’s featured photo comes from the South Pacific paradise of Easter Island, also known by its native name of Rapa Nui. Easter Island is universally known for its moai, the giant stone statues that were carved by a society that lacked complex tools or technology. Less heralded are the roughly 6,000 wild horses that roam the island. And just like everyone else, those equines enjoy having their picture taken in front of the moai.

This photo was taken during my visit to Easter Island in September 2010.

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H-Bomb’s Friday Photo, week 4: skulls and bones in the Czech Republic

Posted on October 26, 2012 by H-Bomb

Today we have a special Halloween edition of our weekly photo series! Our featured picture is a chilling scene from the Czech Republic. Sedlec ossuary, in Kutná Hora (an easy day-trip from Prague), is a chapel that features the bones from some 40,000 people, arranged in decorative patterns. (For that reason, Sedlec Ossuary is also known as the Church of Bones.) Let’s take a look inside that chapel, where some of those skulls and bones form a very eerie tunnel:

Whatever you do, don’t go toward the light! 🙂 This spine-tingling photo was taken during my visit to the Czech Republic in June 2006. Incidentally, the historical town centre of Kutná Hora is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, so the town is well worth a visit; there’s a lot more to it than just the spooky ossuary seen here.

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