The first place we stopped on our cruise was St. Martin. We took a tour that took us through both the Dutch and the French sides of the Island and these are some of the pictures. Our port was on the Dutch side of the island, and this is from the ship looking in.
On the tour we drove along the coast and this is a view of the South Shore of the Island
Thuis is another view of the South Shore,
This is a view of the capital of the French side of the Island, Marigot.
Our first night at sea, we went to the show. Normally they do not allow any photography in the show but this time they said photography was allowed as long as no flash was used. So, got my camera and got these pictures of the performance.
We took another cruise from Ft. Lauderdale a week ago. This one went to St. Martin, St. Kitts, San Juan and Grand Turks. We stayed the night before in a Hyatt Regency in Ft. Lauderdale. We went to dinner on the Marina, and I got this shot coming back from dinner that night.
They had a tower that overlooked the resort and Ft. Lauderdale. In the morning, I took some pictures including this one of the two ships docked in the cruise port.
We went to visit my mother last week. While we were in Chicago, we decided to go downtown and take a hop on – hop off bus tour. Although it was cold, I got some really good pictures of Chicago.
This was one of the first ones I took. It is looking West over the Chicago River at Clark St. You can see a great mixture of old and new architecture along the river.
One of the landmarks of Chicago is The Chicago Theater.
Another landmark is the Picasso statue at City Hall. I remember when it was first installed and people complained about it being just a bunch of rusty metal. It has really aged well.
Chicago’s skyline is dominated by the Willis (Sears) Tower and the Hancock Building, but the building(s) i remember most were the Marina Towers.
One of the places in Galveston that I have wanted to get good pictures of is Star Drug Store. This is one of the oldest drug stores int he state of Texas, but, there are always cars parked in front of it making it a hard place to get good pictures of. I went downtown on a Monday morning, hoping there would not be cars parked in front of it, but I was wrong. So, I just worked around the cars.
Since I could not get a picture straight on, I decided to get one from each side.
And this was from the other side. While doing Art Walk the Saturday before, I noticed how cool the old windows on O’Malley’s Pub looked and I walked up Post office street to get a good picture of them. The glass looks like it was really old and it is impossible to count the number of coats of paint that must have been applied to those windows.
The AMCA Annual Meeting was in Savannah, GA. We got there late in the afternoon, and I had a feeling that the low sun might make a really nice pic on Bay St.
One afternoon, as the sun was setting, I was in a reception and looked out over the river and saw the colors were really strong.
While walking around the city, I was struck by the texture of the old buildings. This was on Congress St.
When coming back tot he ferry, I noticed the contrast between the color of this red ladder and the grey of the buildings.
As always, we went to Galveston for Mardi Gras weekend. I spent Saturday morning on the West Side looking for birds. Here is a group of Sandhill Canes I found.
Out there, I noticed a small creek and saw there was a skeleton in it. It looked to be too small to be a cow, so I think it might have been a coyote. You can see it on the bottom right of this picture.
We did go to Mardi Gras, and I kind of liked the way this picture of one of the participants on a float turned out.
We decided to take a cruise for New Years. We sailed on the Carnival Freedom out of Galveston and went to Falmouth, Jamaica, Grand Cayman Islands, and Cozumel Mexico. This first image is a black and white version of Galveston from the deck of the ship.
Our first stop was Falmouth Jamaica. We had stopped there before, and decided this time we would just take a tour trolley that left from the cruise port. It took us around the town and eventually out to a small beach area. When I looked out, on the water, there was a man approaching in a small boat with a sail.
Next we stopped at Grand Cayman Island. We thought we would dock outside of Georgetown, but we docked well outside of town. We did a tour that went to San Pedro, Hell, and the beach. The third stop was Cozumel. As always, we just took a cab into town and walked around.
This was outside of Los Cinco Sols looking back towards the ships. That night, as we left, there was a pretty good sunset.
We went to San Antonio last week. We haven’t been there in many years, and not at Christmas in a very long time. The Riverwalk is always pretty, but they go all out for Christmas. As we were walking along in the late afternoon, I looked up to see the sun shining through the cedar trees and almost making them glow.
But, of course, the real show is in the evening. There are lights all over. They have a luminary every evening, and there are lights hanging from the trees. With the water reflecting them, they are really effective.
Last Weekend was Dickens on The Strand. As before, since we are members of the Galveston Historical Society, we were able to use the VIP room they have. This allowed us to view the parade from a balcony, and I could get some better pictures of the parade. The “Queen’s Parade” is always Saturday afternoon, and, of course, features “The Queen.” I am not sure who this woman really is, but she portray’s Queen Elizabeth every year.
They encourage people to come in costumes, and there are always lots of steampunk costumes and lots of pirates. This was a nice street image I got of one of the pirates meeting a small boy.
