No matter where you go in the world, there is always one thing that you always take with you. Regardless of who you are, you take with you your own past experiences, values, beliefs, and preconceptions. We should all try to have an open mind and understand the culture, which is truly a good thing, but it isn’t always as easy as it sounds. One of the first things that you learn about cultural anthropology, where people attempt to study a culture without changing the culture, is that just by observing people, you can change their behavior. Is it really possible to travel to a place that is truly foreign to you without viewing it through the filters of your own life? This week’s Daily Post Photo Challenge is Scale, which is really just a matter of perspective.
Smokestack in Downtown DenverPikes Peak from Garden of the GodsBalancing Rock in Mahabalipuram, IndiaVirgin of Quito in Ecuador
One of the things that we often do is to take photos from our hotel room whenever we visit a new city. It is partially about capturing our first experience as we arrive someplace, but there are times when it is simply that there can be great views from hotel rooms. Obviously we don’t spend a lot of time in our hotel room as we want to spend as much time actually visiting the city, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t enjoy the time that we do spend in our room. We will often start our day and end our day by looking out of the window to see the weather, enjoy the view, our sometimes see a sunset. The views can be vastly different based upon the places that you are visiting, whether it is a beach, major city, or rural location. For this week’s Daily Post Photo Challenge, Windows, we are sharing some of the varieties of views we have seen during our recent journeys. Do you take photos out of the windows of the places that you stay?
Water Towers and Skyscrapers from Hotel in New YorkView from Our Room in Nuremburg, GermanyFountain at Night from Our Room in RomeCourtyard Outside of Our Hotel in Brasov, RomaniaView of Lake Titicaca in Copacabana, Bolivia
There are very few man-made structures that come to symbolize a city or country. The Statue of Liberty, the Sphinx, and the Eiffel Tower all invoke images of the countries where they reside. We have yet to visit Egypt, but we have gone to the Statue of Liberty in New York as well as gone to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Not surprisingly, you can find replicas of all of these in Las Vegas, but clearly that isn’t the same thing as seeing the real thing. Seeing the Eiffel Tower for the first time almost a decade ago is definitely one of our favorite travel moments. There is something special about the Eiffel Tower, whether it is its raw architecture with the exposed beams or its graceful curvature as it reaches skyward. Clearly it is the most photographed landmark in Paris and every souvenir vendor has miniature replicas galore. We have seen it in autumn with brightly colored trees in the foreground, at night from the Seine, as well as on a cold, wet, winter day. The time of year doesn’t seem to matter, when you see the Eiffel Tower you get a sense that you looking more at a symbol of the French people than a tower constructed to be the entrance of the world fair in 1889. For this week’s Daily Post Photo Challenge, Structure, we have chosen a variety of photos that we have taken of the Eiffel Tower.
Eiffel Tower from the SeineView of the Eiffel Tower from the Top of the Arc de TriompheCrossing the Bridge towards the Eiffel TowerEiffel Tower in AutumnEiffel Tower Lit Up at NightInteresting ViewEiffel Tower against Autumn SkyEiffel Tower on a Cold Winter Day
