Tuesday, October 27, 2015

It's fall!

It was a beautiful fall weekend ...


... so I took my camera and tried to catch the brilliant colors.


Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Lisbon

End of August I spent a wonderful week in Lisbon/Portugal and I just realized that I did not show any pictures of this fabolous city. So here we go:


Lisbon is a city that wants to be discovered. There are not to many sights in the traditional way but just a lot to discover when walking the steep up and downhill streets.

Lisbon lies at the mouth of the river Tejo almost at the Atlantic ocean. The river is really mighty here and you can see it from many places throughout the city.

One of the main attractions is the castello - a fortress founded in Roman times and still existing.


Here are some pictures from inside.






And then there is Belem. Not only famous for its pastries (yes - those yummy Portuguese cakes come from here) but also for its Torre de Belem - a watchtower at the end of the Tejo river which in former times was manned and alerted the king of enemies sailing up the river towards Lisbon.


From Belem many of the great Portuguese explorers embarked on their voyages of discovery: Prince Henry the Navigator and the first overseas expedition to conquer Morocco, Bartholomeu Dias to round the Cape of Good Hope, the first voyages of Ferdinand Magellan and Vasco da Gama to discover the sea route to India.

This is the monument of Prince Henry the Navigator - the emporer who stood at the beginning of Portugal's Golden Age.



On the other side of the Tejo river is the statue of Christo Rei. A cardinal of the Roman Church went to Rio de Janeiro, saw the Christo there and decided to build a similar one in Lisbon.


The ruins of Carmo Church are reminders of the devastation left by the 1755 earthquake. At the time of the earthquake it was the largest church in Lisbon but it was never rebuilt.




Here are some impressions of Lisbon:


Most of the streets have cobblestones with patterns in black stones. Beautiful to look at, a little tiring to walk.


Colours, ...

... flowers and ...

... olives everywhere.


Oceanarium is  a fascinating aquarium with about 25,000 fish, seabirds, and mammals. The main attraction is an enormous central tank that is the size of four Olympic-sized swimming pools with sharks, rays and 2 moonfish (mola mola).











And we spent a few hours at the coast of the Atlantic ocean. 




Saturday, September 19, 2015

Sunday, August 16, 2015

Augustbreak

Week 2 of Augustbreak (read more about it here)



This week's prompts were earth, talisman, edge, yellow, last year, favourite smell and art.

Wednesday, August 12, 2015

Loot!

I was at the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham (GB) and as usual it was a great show. See pictures of the quilts at www.quiltartnews.com.

But there was a very large vendor mall as well and I couldn't resist to buy some fabric.


These fat quarters of Kaffe Fassett fabric are supposed to go into my hexagon quilt (read about it here) and make it more sparkling.

And these neutral fabrics (together with a lot of others from my stash) will become a quilt for my mother - a gift for her 75th anniversary in November (but hush - don't tell her!).