Madrid's square life

Normally, the first thing I do when I arrived in a new city is head upwards.

I climb towers, cathedrals and columns to see the city laid out before me, seeing how the streets interlock and the buildings interconnect (or not).

Madrid doesn't have any obvious buildings to climb, so I stayed down, sitting in Puerta del Sol and Plaza Mayor watching life unfold all around. I saw:

• Street entertainers galore in Plaza Mayor:
• A grown man playing a baby, reacting with childish glee or annoyance every time someone walked past.
• Three men sat in a bin, only their heads visible.
• Person dressed as a very unusual creature, with a costume consisting of a wooden bird-beak / goat-like head and a body of long strips of glittery foil.
• Tourists turning the corner into the square, exclaiming, "well, now, look at all this art!"
• Glamourous grand dames of a certain age being ferried around in Porsches and Range Rovers whilst wearing huge sunglasses and perfectly coiffured hair.
• In Puerto del Sol, socialists, communists and anarchists all protesting against capitalism mixed with Mickey Mouse, Goofy, The Simpsons and Hello Kitty characters wandering around.

Madrid Architecture

I've recently come back from a trip to Madrid. The buildings there are a mix and styles and influences, reflecting different cultures and rulers - Moorish, Austrian, French, Spanish - mixing over the centuries.

The weather was not kind to me in Madrid, with cloudy, milky, grey-white skies almost throughout my stay.

I decided, then, to splash in some colour from the city's flowers (many of which were growing in the botanic garden) which contrast nicely with the pale, ice-cream colours of the ornate architecture.

Incidentally, I did something similar with these photos of Rome, taking out the sky and putting in the colours of the Italian flag.

The Souvenir Museum

When I'm travelling, I always make sure to look in souvenir shops.

I love them, seeing what sorts of random things by which cities and countries can be remembered. But I really don't buy very many souvenirs.

So I've set up a pinterest board to display my favourite souvenirs.

Norwegian Airlines posters ad campaign

I saw these posters when I was in the Stockholm metro. I did a double take, wondering why London events were being advertised to the Swedes.

Then, I noticed more posters - from Krakow, Riga and Berlin, and realised it was an ace ad campaign from Norwegian Airlines. Here's a little video about how it was made.

It's not only a great campaign, but I really love how the sense of the cities come through in the posters.

Stockholm Lights

Stockholm is a beautiful city by day with church spires, brightly coloured stone and wooden buildings and water reflecting the sunlight.

But I loved it even more at night when the Swedes do all they can to light up the dark nights.

From small features like candles and backlit doorbell panels to floodlight buildings and large neon signs, the city glows.

I guess this is needed in a city where for several months there is more dark than daylight.

This reminds me too of the Christmas stars I saw in Gothenburg. (I even saw a few in Stockholm still hanging in March.)

Stockholm Sunsets

If you're lucky enough to be in Stockholm on a clear day, head for somewhere to see amazing sunsets like these.

Two places I recommend are Monteliusvägen and Norra Riddarholmshamnen.

Sights in Brazil

My final post about Brazil - here are some of the other things I saw!

• A mouse scuttles out of a shop onto the footpath. Some girls shriek. A young man rushes out behind the mouse, chases it, stamps on it, and kicks it out into the road. "Ooh, couragi," coo the girls.
• A woman on the gay beach at Ipanema, determinedly chatting up every man she could find, with raucous laughter, coy glances and a huge bottle of wine.
• Muscle milk muscle growth supplement on the menu in a cafe. The Brazilians do take their muscles seriously...
• A bar playing only the hits of Toni Braxton.

Love in Brazil

In Brazil, passengers get on buses, say hello to the drivers and pay attendants before passing through little turnstiles.

At one stop in Rio de Janeiro, an older woman boarded. Most likely in her late 60s, she wore chunky jewellery and a long tight black dress - very Shirley Bassey in warm weather. She caused quite a kerfuffle at the turnstile, holding up other passengers while she searched amongst her many handbags for money.

Eventually, exasperated, she tossed several of the bags across the turnstile, hurtling them into an empty seat.

Gesticulating wildly, she seemed to be berating a younger, burly black man who was hovering behind her.

Once she'd paid - with a flurry of hands and dramatic utterances - and was through the turnstile, she turned to the man, embraced him, kissed him full on the mouth and then took her seat.

The man jumped off the bus, waving goodbye to the woman. She blew him a kiss through the window, as he made the "call me" hand-sign to her from the street.

Travel moments

I've just finished reading two books on the theme of travel and how you write about places you have visited and people you have met or seen: Paul Theroux's Tao of Travel and Jan Morris's Contact.

Both are full of short scenes from long travelling lives, particularly Jan Morris (some of which are also on this tumblr account).

Each scene or moment feels like it could be saying something profound, some kind of a metaphor for the city, country or people. But sometimes it just describes a moment or place in time, something random that happened, a one-off chance encounter.

I write about these sometimes (like in Istanbul, Monaco and Gibraltar - my favourite being my 'what I saw in New York' blog post) - and I'm going to share more.

Favela Rio

When in Rio, I decided to visit a favela. I wrestled with this - going to a favela felt a bit like going to point and stare. I decided not to go on a favela tour but instead go on a new cable car to Complexo do Alemão favela in the north of the city.

The cable car connects Complexo do Alemão wih Bonsucesso station, which is a short trip from Rio's Central Station.



The overall trip in the cable car is about 16 minutes, though longer if you get off at every stop along the way like I did.

It soars above a jumble of houses, electricity wires, satellite dishes, corrugated iron roofs and patched up streets.



I went on a Wednesday morning. All below the cable car was quiet, calm, hardly anyone to be seen. I had expected to see busy bustling streets, but these were mainly quiet residential areas. The only sound I heard was Britney Spears' I wanna go blasting out from a stereo.



At the top station, I got out and went for a small wander. A few small kiosks and shops were clustered near the cable car station, but no other amenities were to be seen.

I bought a drink from one shop-kiosk, freshly painted and seemingly newly installed.

The friendly guys behind the counter urged me to follow them on facebook. They seemed delighted to see visitors from other places, and with the long, complicated history of their neighbourhood hopefully now behind them, I wish them well with their new business.

Beautiful Brazil

I've recently been to Brazil, visiting Iguaçu Falls and Rio de Janeiro. It was a trip of superb landscapes and vistas.

Iguaçu Falls are vast, a huge grouping if massive waterfalls straddling the Brazil-Argentina border.

 

The view from Brazil is vast, showing their huge extent, their overall force and revealing rainbows. On the Argentina side, you can get closer, sensing their overwhelming power and speed.

In Rio, vistas are equally beautiful, showing all the  city's famous places: the beautiful beaches at Copacabana and Ipanema, Sugarloaf Mountain and everything in between.

 

Rio seems studded with forested hills, as though they recently sprouted up within the city (of course it was the other way round).

The Christ the Redeemer statue looks down on the city, not looming over it, more neatly perched like a parakeet.

Tasos' map of Cyprus

While I was in Budapest a few months ago, I started chatting to a guy who turned out to be from Cyprus.

I quickly asked Tasos to draw his map of Cyprus.

And so now I have collected maps of all but two European countries: Bosnia & Herzegovina and Moldova.

Impressive Istiklal, Istanbul

Istanbul is a vibrant, busy, buzzing city. This can be seen most of all on İstiklâl Caddesi (Independence Avenue), its three kilometre long main shopping street.

With more than 3 million people visit the street on a weekend day, it's never quiet. Even on weekdays, late into the evening, people were walking the street, visiting the shops and taking in the sights.

And what sights - İstiklâl Caddesi is full of amazing, wonderful sights, sounds and smells that make Istanbul a great city, such as:

• A man walking along with monkey on a leash.
• Ladies wearing full burqas, wearing headscarves slowly sauntering while other woman in bikini tops sashayed by.
• A man dressed as an Ottoman soldier, with nobody paying any notice
• Men walking down the street, holding hands, embracing, laughing, touching, all completely platonic.
• Men selling roasted chestnuts, with nutty smoke arising from each cart.
• Men selling mussels, with lemons strewn among the shells
• A tram clanging its way up and down the street; one time with a band blasting out funky rock music from an open air carriage.
• Busking men playing traditional Turkish instruments, the music from which mixed with the modern beats coming from he nightclubs on the upper floors of the buildings.

What's in Monaco

Monaco - a tiny country on the French Riviera - is more like a city state. Here's what I saw when I was there.

Monaco is a rich land; the glamour architecture buildings are either replete with gilt, flourishes, style and flair or sleek and smoothly modern.

Most of all, Monaco is a playground for the rich and gaudy, ideal for people watching. I saw:

• A young man with big, blonde hair and golden sunglasses clutching an older woman as they sashayed through the streets.
• A man accompanied by five woman complaining about where to get his shirts made.
• A young wife emerging from a designer store saying, "thank you, it was wonderful".
• A larger man wearing a bright purple polo shirt whilst driving a bright orange sports car.
• A young man wearing white shirt and khaki shorts fuming about "ultra-conservative countries that have no bearing on reality".
• A young woman sporting bright pink lipstick alongside bright green sunglasses.
• A glamorous Shirley Bassey-esque woman arguing with hot-headed taxi driver, then walking a few metres away and laughing "ha ha ha" whilst haughtily tossing one hand in the air.

Below, my favourite photograph I took in Monaco shows a woman wearing sunglasses, relaxing by a swimming pool, and not a single other person to be seen.

Filtered train photography.

Taking photos on a train can be tricky. First, you need to be fast, then you must avoid the trees and powerlines by the track which could obscure your view. And then the lights in the carriage might reflect on the window.

So instead of trying to avoid these things, I played up to them and used phone filter apps to make the most of them.

Take a look at these photos taken on trains in Germany, Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia.

My fave photo apps, by the way, are Cymera and Pixlr-o-matic.