Travelin' About

Our tour began on a Monday at the Zurich train station where we boarded a first class train to St. Moritz.  The scenery that we passed was spectacular, however very challenging to photograph since we dealt with windows and speed.  The group of us, 15 photographers including spouses, ran from window to window, enjoying the charming European landscape.  Someone located a half raised window and someone else found a car that seemed to be meant for photographers since you could manage the windows more easily, but we still had the speed of the train to contend with, not to mention constant posts we passed and, although things looked beautiful to our eyes, there remained a lot of power lines that were disappointing to see on our images.  And one of our group lost her cell phone as the train sped by. We were excited to see the many clocktowers and church steeples and every now and then the strain stopped for a minute or two and we were able to grab a nice shot. Looking back ...

My husband and I recently had the opportunity to join a group of photographers, led by Joe Brady and his wife, Diane Bollen , to visit five different cities in Switzerland - Zurich, St. Moritz, Zermatt, Grindelwald and Lucern.  Despite never hearing of these places before now, we had such an enjoyable trip that I want to share this experience with you. I plan to write 5 blogs, one for each city, to show some of the beauty we encountered and remember this wonderful trip. We arrived in Zurich very early on a Saturday morning in June. We chose to go straight to sleep in an airport hotel, to ward off jet lag. When we woke in early afternoon, we were right near the trains which were in a giant "mall" building with all kinds of shops. We asked which stop we needed to get off, and proceeded to navigate the train system to see some of Zurich's sites.  The streets were festive with vendors and people shopping.  After walking around and trying to figure out where we needed to meet...

I started this blog a very long time ago.  My intent was to share photography tips and travel information.  Through the years I did write about both local places to visit while living in Austin, Texas and some great big trips I got to enjoy - France, Cuba, Italy, Ireland, Scotland, America's National Parks and more. The archives are here if anyone at all is interested. If nothing else, it has served as a journal for me.  I certainly don't believe anyone else is reading this. This year has been bizarre with Covid 19 taking over our everyday lives.  No travel...not even to local places that would be so cool to explore.  We moved to Columbia, Maryland this year and I still haven't ventured to see Washington, DC. I believe my last post was about exploring Annapolis which is 35 min. away and my daughter and I just stayed 90 minutes and had to get back to our safe zone (where there were bathrooms we could use).  I would never have believed you if you had predicte...

Between Covid 19 and moving from Texas to Maryland, I really haven't seen much of the world this year and that is hard on this travel-loving girl.  Here I am living an hour away from Baltimore and Washington, DC and we are stuck in an unending state of quarantine.  I needed to break out so I asked my daughter if she'd take an early morning trip to Annapolis with me. "How early?" she wanted to know. She is not normally a photographer and, with two young children, unaccustomed to our "pre-dawn" starts.  "As early as you can," I tried and she and the kids showed up slightly after 7 am.  Popsie stayed with the kids who grumbled that they just wanted to go back to sleep, but Nova was game for a new adventure and we happily drove 35 minute southeast to the beautiful city of Annapolis.  Court house showed some signs of life. Mask covered guards stood at the door. Maryland's capital city, located on the Chesapeake Bay is a lovely, his...

Whew. This has been some year. Not only are we all dealing with Covid 19 which has forced us indoors, but we made a cross-country move in May from Austin, Texas to Columbia, Maryland.  As a friend reminded me, we were lucky that we were so all-consumed by the move and didn't obsess on the world's problems.  But as a photographer who loves traveling and documenting the beautiful world around us, I was getting extremely antsy. So, last week I woke up early and took a trip to beautiful downtown historic Ellicott City.  I had actually lived in this same neck of the woods 40 years ago and I knew that Old Ellicott City had a charm that includes history, art and architecture, nature and food.  The streets are hilly but you never know what kind of cool shop you'll stumble upon. I am just dying to explore this cool, old Fireman's museum.  There is also the oldest surviving train station that I'm dying to share with my grandsons.  And oh, I had forgotten...