Modern Brasília

I took a trip to Brasília on my recent holiday to Brazil.

Brasília is Brazil's capital city, deep in the interior of the country.

But Brasília is barely 50 years old, all built between 1957 and 1960.

The whole city is built in the superbly modern shape of an airplane. Its central fuselage is a long ceremonial boulevard surrounded by amazing modernist buildings like these in the photos.

Brazil's Humble Plastic Chair

One of my favourite things about Brazil is the way they use humble plastic chairs. I see it as very Brazilian.

 To us, they're simple garden furniture. In Brazil, these plastic chairs come in all sorts of colours, sometimes branded with company logos.

They're at bars, restaurants, a party can be pitched up anywhere. They're arranged haphazardly. It's not important to be neat, to be formal, what matters is somewhere to sit, to eat, to drink, to talk, to joke, to see what's going on around you, to be together with friends or family.

So for all the wonderful symbols of Brazil - landmarks, caipirinhas, flags, flora and fauna -  the simple plastic chair looms large for me.

London to New York from above

You don't see much land on a flight from London to New York (especially if it's a cloudy day in the UK Ireland) - otherwise, it's the Atlantic Ocean all the way.

But, as you descend along the eastern seaboard of Canada and the USA, there are lovely views of islands, coasts and cities like these.




(This is Plum Island - I saw this on my last flight to New York too.)

Above Africa

A year ago today, I flew to Rio de Janeiro. At the time, I didn't share these aerial photographs taken as we flew above Africa.

I've never been to Africa, so it was a wonderful sight for me to see the desert dunes and mountains and valleys stretching away for miles and miles.

I was excited too to see structures - houses and maybe a mine? - in the middle of the desert.

Later, we flew over some coastal towns and cities including Agadir and Guelmin.

Mountains in the south of Morocco.

Valley in south of Morocco.

More Moroccan mountains

Agadir from above

Guelmin from above

River and meander to the south of Guelmin.

My next task is to see if I can work out where these are exactly. Africa is a big place, and most of the flight-tracker sites show London - Rio flights not actually flying over it, so it might be a tricky task. Updated with locations on 2/01/2014.

What's in 'S-Hertogenbosch

While in Belgium, I took a day detour to a city in the Netherlands called 'S-Hertogenbosch.

I went there on a curious whim; I love the name (which can be shortened to Den Bosch) and wanted to see what was there (just like my trips to Andorra, Gibraltar, Monaco and San Marino).

So what did I see there?

A huge cathedral, towering outside and in. The interior was particularly light, impressive and I felt it was unique.

Some delightful old shop fronts have been saved and re-purposed.

As it's in the Netherlands, there are lots of lovely canals. Some of the canals in 'S-Hertogenbosch go underground - it's possible to take tours of these (just not in November!).

A Golden Dragon

There are lots of brick buildings in Den Bosch, including the oldest brick building in the Netherlands.

Perhaps the city's greatest claim to fame is as the home of 15th century artist Hieronymus Bosch.

An art centre in the town shows copies of his many paintings: filled with chaotic, overwhelmingly detailed scenes from the Bible, and full of surreal, weird, wonderful and fantastical characters. Though I quite like the idea that Hieronymus the man was very plain, kind of dull - but when he painted, his imagination went wild.

His paintings are a joy to pore over. I took my favourites and put them in a collage.

Pretty Ostend

Ostend (or Ostende or Oostende) is a seaside town in the north of Belgium, a north-facing resort.

All the guidebooks I read made a point of how grey and depressing Ostend can be, with concrete façades and bulky buildings along the seafront.

However with a bit of searching it is possible to find the remnants of a different, prettier Ostend.

Trackside London

From time to time, as I travel on trains in and out of London, I see things that I want to find and photograph.

This has led me into some fruitless forays such as wandering along several trackside streets looking for one large lavender bush - but never finding it.

But occasionally, I do find and see something interesting such as these.

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.

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.

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.

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.