Photos

At Bay to Breakers, Claudia and I dressed up as little kids, with huge lollypops and a big wheel. I also wore a propeller-head beanie. Claudia had a wig and a little girl dress. We met up with some kickball friends dressed as the runaway bride's maids and their groomsmen. The big wheel was a big hit on the second half of the race (after the Hayes hill).

Veronica's birthday was over memorial day, which we mostly spent on the beach at Tahoe. Only Jay and Chuck actually braved the water, which was, uh, refreshing.

When we arrived in Malta after a fairly rough crossing on a catamaran ferry from Sicily the weather was changing from the balmy warmth we had thus far in the trip. Dark clouds, wind, and cool temperatures were paving the way for thunderstorms and rain. This was the view from the deck of our hotel in Xaghrah toward Victoria. You can see the silhouette of Victoria's citadel on the left.


At Oleander, where we celebrated Kari's Birthday, Observed, there was an inexplicable stuffed chicken keeping an eye on the diners from a barred alcove high on the wall.


Our final day on Gozo, the smaller of Malta's two islands, was spent snorkeling at Dwejra, on the west coast. There's a sea arch here known as the Azure Window.


Dwejra Bay is a collapsed sea cave that opens to the Mediterranean on either side of Fungus Rock, so named due to an odd parasitic plant (Cynomorium coccineus) that lives on it's surface. It has no leaves, and was thus mistaken for a fungus. The plant was used medicinally by the Saracens and the Knights of St. John, who built a tower to protect Fungus Rock, as it is the only location in Europe where Cynomorium coccineus is found, and therefore commanded a high price on the open market. Fungus Rock is the large rock towards the right of the picture.





Valletta was built by the Knights after the Turkish siege of the late 16th century, and was the first planned city in Europe. The buildings were tall and the streets narrow to help keep the city shaded, and a sewer system was built that was flushed with sea water twice a day. The Knights also mandated that the residents put statues of saints at every corner.


This isn't that great of a picture ultimately, but I wanted to get the weird colors of this plant in the upper Barraka gardens against the ochre walls, and happily got the form of a pigeon flying away.


The night view from our hotel room across Grand Harbour to Fort St. Angelo.


Another view from our hotel room, this one up Triq San Gwann. The church on the right was having a wedding at the time.


This one should be of interest to anybody who has read Thomas Pynchon's V. This is Strada Stretta, or Straight Street, or (properly) Triq id-Dejqa. I'm the blur in the center-left of the photo, wearing a horizontally striped shirt and khakis, and Kari is the black blur to my right. We're holding hands and running down toward Fort St. Elmo at the end of the peninsula, and the Mediterranean beyond. A silly lark on my part.


This is Hagar Qim, one of the better preserved megalithic sites on Malta/Gozo. It's from roughly 3600-3000 BCE, predating the pyramids of Egypt by a half millenium. They've found female statues here that suggest that the island's culture was matriarchal.


Another sea window on the southeast coast looking toward the uninhabited island of Fifla. Our guidebook spoke of a path leading from Hagar Qim and Mnajdra to the harbor at Wied iz-Zurrieq, which we thought we found. Unfortunately, it went through hunting grounds before ending high above the narrow harbor, with no way of crossing. We had to hike all the way back to the temples, scrambling over rocks and through dense, dry, prickly macchia.

On to Sicily.

Erice is a small town that sits high above Trapani in western Sicily. The streets are winding, and the houses and courtyards are quite pretty. The old church clings to the side of a cliff.


The Doric temple at Segesta is remarkably well preserved, probably due to it never having a roof. After seeing the temple, we walked a few kilometers to the top of the hill to see the Acropolis and the theater. The hike up was rather surreal due to the sun-baked snail shells covering most of the dry shrubs of the macchia. Thousands upon thousands of snails clearly met their demise after being lured out, and I can only guess that a sudden heat wave followed a damp period.


We then headed to the south coast, and the Greek temples at Selinunte. The temple above is Temple E, reconstructed in 1958 and mostly complete. Selinunte is situated on a low bluff overlooking the Mediterranean, and there are over a dozen ruins and temples in the complex.


The Vallei di Templi just outside Agrigento is another impressive ancient Greek site, and includes the Temple of Concord pictured here.



The mosaics at the Roman villa at Casale are incredible, and delightfully perverse. I especially enjoyed the depictions of the animals, including a parody of the villa's mosaic scene of Rome's Circus Maximus, with small boys piloting chariots driven by ducks and other fowl.



At Siracusa, there's a enormous Greek amphitheater, and an enormous man-made cave in the shape of a human ear called the Ear of Dionisios, so named due to a legend that it was built by the eponymous tyrant (not the god) to surreptitiously listen in on the prisoners working in the quarry nearby. The Lonely Planet guide suggests it was more likely some sort of sounding station for the amphitheater.

Continuing from the previous post, here's some context on the Sardinia photos.

There are many ancient nuraghic sites on Sardinia, including this one at Nur Albucciu, and the following picture shows Coddu Vecchiu.




We rented a boat and cruised the Golfo di Orosei from Santa Maria Navarese to near Cala Gonone, snorkeling, swimming, and sunbathing at various spots along the way.




After Santa Maria Navarese, we headed to Cagliari, and there are a bunch of pictures of the large citadel there.




On a wall to the side of the Regio Arsenale was this graffito.




I've always found logos and packaging depicting a food product consuming itself or it's own kind amusing, and I discovered my new favorite, Hausbrandt's logo. Hausbrandt is a coffee roaster from Trieste. I'm going to have to try to find some espresso cups like these for myself.




The Sardinian flag and coat of arms depicts four Moors who are either blindfolded or wearing a headband. The traditional rendition has the Moors blindfolded, a warning to the Saracens from days gone by. I'd say about 30-40% of all the flags/symbols had the Moors blindfolded. It's quite similar to the Corsican flag, with a single Moor wearing a headband. Corsica moved away from the blindfolded Moor a long time ago, and have largely identified themselves with the Moor head. According to my Lonely Planet, General Ghjuvan Petru Gaffori was the first person to make the bandana a headband, which he did before attacking the Genoese at Bastia in 1745. Gaffori and Corsica's hero Pascal Paoli found the Moor's newfound ability to see as symbolic of Corsica's independence.

The photos from the trip are available here.

Some them need some explanation, so here goes. I'll start with Corsica.

There's an (incorrect) local legend in Calvi that Christopher Columbus was born and raised here, and on the outside of the citadel is this monument to him.




The Calanques, near Piana, are a bunch of weird pink and gray granite formations that rise steeply from the Golfe de Porto. At the end of a trail to an overlook of the Golfe de Porto and the Calanques, people have left hundreds of stacks of stones, pictured here at sunset.




The monoliths at Filitosa, near Propriano, have simple faces and other features carved into them. They're also extremely phallic, though it's hard to tell how intentional that is. The site also has many stone structures.




After Filatosa, we went to the south coast of Corsica, to Bonifacio. Bonifacio is a port city hidden in the tall chalk cliffs that mark the Corsican side of the Bouches de Bonifacio. The citadel, pictured here, rises above the port on a peninsula.

Chuck and Elisha have posted their Belize pictures, including some really cool underwater shots while they were scuba diving. I also like the pics of the minivan with Minnesota plates/old Volvo with Oregon plates they found down there.

Pictures from Torin's MBA celebration are up. The theme was tropical R&B, whatever that is, so Jay, John, and I got some mad bling.

Boogie on over to the photos section for massive updates to the photos section, including ones from my trip to Thailand and Cambodia last spring, and Colorado and Utah last July.

I should probably point out that for this album I hate the Anaheim Mighty Ducks, who almost won the Stanley Cup last year.

I went to the Bumbershoot festival up in Seattle over Labor Day, and snapped a few pictures.

Greg and I wanted to do a little fishing, so we headed down to Rhett's place to try to catch some runners in the Wharf To Wharf. Greg bought some donuts, and we tied donuts to the end of his fishing pole. From Rhett's balcony he waved them in front of the runners as they ran by. We had some nibbles, but couldn't land the big one. This one that got away, though, was HUGE, but it grabbed the bait and took off.

My friend Jay just bought a new mountain bike last week. A couple days after he bought it, he left town for the weekend, an opportunity too ripe with possibilities for my housemate Greg and I to pass up.

We made a few enhancements to the stock parts of the bike. Check out the damage.

Ghetto masterpiece is a dish of macaroni and cheese covered with tater tots and topped with grated cheese, and baked. I learned it from my friend Jacob, who learned it from another friend Chia-hua. To put a dent in the massive amount of Pabst that we bought for my housemate Greg in Portland, we decided to live the low life and make ghetto masterpiece and drink Pabst, and then watch a couple of movies: Victory (a horrible movie about a WWII P.O.W. camp and--no joke--soccer, staring Sylvester Stallone, Michael Caine, and...Pele, the Brazilian soccer hero of the '70s), and Caddyshack. There's a few pictures from the festivities.

Pictures from my sister's birthday down in Los Cabos, at the tip of Baja California, are up at the usual place.

I spent my birthday (July 4th) up in Portland with my friends Jay, Kate, Jake, Chia-hua, Jen, and a cast of thousands. The photos are up.

I've caught up with my photos, so new photos of drinking Thunderbird, and Bret and Jay's birthdays.