Travel Theme: Meeting Places

Ailsa’s Travel Theme this week is Meeting Places.

Men meet and hangout outside the marketplace in Bamako, Mali. DSCN1058

In beautiful Siena, the Piazza Del Campo is a definite meeting place, where both locals and tourists converge to sit and talk, eat, or just admire the beauty of the place._DSC0643

Young people in Venice, Italy, get together by the water for a beer and some idle talk._DSC0509

In Brazil: A View From Above

I’m in Brazil visiting family and enjoying the 2014 World Cup. Here’s a taste of my hometown, Fortaleza, one of the host cities for the World Cup matches. This is the view from our condo.

And here’s a video prepared by FIFA about Fortaleza. Similar videos were prepared for all 12 hosting cities.

Travel Theme: World Cups

Ailsa’s Travel Theme this week is World Cups, so as one might expect, this Brazilian football fan immediately associated it with one of the greatest sports events in the world: FIFA’s World Cup. The tournament, which happens every four years in June/July, is being hosted by Brazil this time around, and I am here enjoying the excitement and agony of the thirty-two participating national teams and their adoring fans. As the tournament reaches its half point, sixteen teams have been eliminated and the remaining sixteen are going through the knockout phase, with nail-biting matches happening every day. The excitement is only beginning! So, what else could my take on the “World Cups” theme be?

And it is a rather biased one, I’m afraid!

Travel theme: World Cups

Weekly Photo Challenge: Contrasts

This week’s photo challenge is Contrasts. “Light and dark, tall and short, happy and sad — this week, share a shot that captures a contrast.”

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Contrasting buildings, New York City, NY.

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Contrasting attitudes, colors. Dogs in Siena, Italy.

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Contrasting lights. Muscle man, Venice Beach, Los Angeles, CA.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Between

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Siena, Tuscany. Italy, 2014.

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“Love locks” in Venice bridge. Italy, 2014.

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Dog in Venice, Italy.

For this week’s photo challenge, Between, we are asked to “capture something in the middle of two things. It can be a literal interpretation of something between other things, or a more figurative approach.” Well, I guess I’m taking a literal approach.