Finally getting around to dealing with the rest of the pictures from our 2000 trip to Ireland. I was motivated to do this since friends are going to Ireland this summer. These are from Belfast and focus mainly on the part of Belfast where there is still conflict. We took a bus tour of this area and people seemed very friendly except the next day we heard that the tour bus was held up by masked men with machine guns. No one hurt but it wouldn't have been a pleasant experience. It doesn't seem like the "troubles" are completely over there yet. Belfast is really very beautiful and we liked it much better than Dublin; however, I notice I don't have any pix of Belfast other than of this area. I think it was pouring rain when we were seelng the rest of Belfast and I guess I didn't take pictures.


The famous "Peace Wall"...somehow I pictured a green hedge with flowers rather than a metal wall with barbed wire.


I did find some flowers along one part of the "wall".


While on the tour we were told that the surveillance towers would soon be a part of history as most had been taken down.

Shankill (Protestant area) and Falls (Catholic) Roads are famous for their partisian murals:

Books I've been reading lately.

"The Namesake" by Jhumpa Lahiri. A gifted new writer. I really enjoyed her short stories "Interpreter of Maladies". This is a novel about the immigrant experience. The protagonist is the son born in America to an Indian academic and his wife.

"Evening at Five" by Gail Godwin. A rather lightweight read on a heavy topic...the death of a spouse. Had something going for it.

"The Wailing Wind" by Tony Hillerman. My usual light mystery for reading on the plane. Hillerman always delivers a satisfying story.

"The Episode" by Graham Greene. This is Greene's first novel (unpublished) that just came available for scholars about a week before we were in Washington, D.C. (Georgetown University) so when we were there Jim had it zeroxed. It became available because Norman Sherry's last volumn of the biography was finally finished. Read it on the train and also on the plane home. Not really very good and lots of overwriting and purple prose but interesting because it was Greene writing and knowing I was one of probably fewer than five people in the world who had read it.

"One Hundred Million Hearts" by Kerri Sakamoto. Most interesting read and glad to see her out with a new novel. Been quite a while since "The Electrical Field". A story about a Japanese born Canadian girl who learns (after her father dies) that he went to Japan (he was also Canadian born) to be a kamikaze and that she has a half-sister in Japan. She goes to Japan to meet this sister and learn more about her father...then the plot thickens...

"The Five People You Meet in Heaven" by Mitch Albom. Picked this up on the Fast Read rack in the library as I had noticed it's been on the best seller list for quite a while. Yuck...what a pile of blithering sentimental nonsense. I gave up after 50 pages but don't think it would have got much better.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art...NYC



Outside the Met...rather like the bouquinistes along the Seine, n'est-ce pas?



Inside the Met....a good way to view the paintings and listen to the commentary.


And the final pix I'm going to post for NYC are of the absolute jewel of the city....Central Park.
Some of these pix almost have an impressionist painting quality and this is with no special effects..
.just the very specialness of the park.






And I loved this "cougar" in the park...

More pix from NYC.


That wonderful Chrysler building in the background.



The New York Public Library and one of its famous lions.



The Bryant Park Reading Room of the library...they even have carts of books you can borrow
to read while you're there.



Rockerfeller Centre



Little Italy on a balmy spring night.

This little table is my latest Oak Bay Dump conversion along with a footstool Mary gave me a while ago.

And more pix of NYC....


Lincoln Center



Art in the Metro



We noticed a lot of these what seem to be towers for water storage on a lot of apartment buildings.
I wonder if they were originally for fire protection?



And speaking of fires...this one was right by our apartment. The fire and police
department were right across from us so got to see them in action.



Jim and the Hudson River



Dog socialization area.



World Trade Center site



The "Winter Garden" in the World Financial Center across from the site.

More pix of NYC.


Cheese shop...yum...


Around Columbia University....could be Paris, n'est-ce pas?


The Guggenheim


Licorice exhibit at the Guggenheim. You were invited to take a piece...it was
part of the "art work"...however, taking pictures was forbidden but I managed to get one anyway...

Some pix of Washington, D.C. today. We really enjoyed being in Georgetown and it was very convenient for Jim since Georgetown University was right there. Very expensive real estate. John Kerry owns a home there worth 7 million US. Where JFK lived as a senator and when he was first married to Jackie before becoming president. Also where Jackie bought a home after his assassination but soon fled to NYC because of security concerns. I can see why they referred to the village as their "beloved Georgetown". Wonderful restaurants and shops...almost no chain stores.


Georgetown University. The only university on our travels where there were loads of empty computers with internet access.


Some colourful townhouses in Georgetown.


Some shops and restaurant fronts in Georgetown.


The house Jackie K. bought after the assassination.


Lincoln Memorial.


The great man himself...what a fabulous statue!


Don't imagine there's much joy in this building these days.

The hallowed halls of Princeton University


Quite the gift from the class of 1879.

I loved these no parking signs!

I was very impressed with this war memorial at Hampton Beachfor those residents lost at sea in the various wars. It is designed so that windblown sand collects around the bottom...really adds to the whole impression.

Lobster traps in Portland, Maine.



A great fish store. Portland, Maine.


The most photographed lighthouse in Maine.


This is around the area of the lighthouse. The weather here is very changeable and I can see there would be shipwrecks. Just a short time ago we were sitting by the docks in the sun with shirtsleeves eating fish and chips and suddenly the wind got up and the temperature dropped 20 degrees.

When I was in Boston I visited the main headquarters of the Christian Science Church. On our tour of Boston, the guide mentioned the famous "mapparium" (a 3 story stained glass globe you can walk into) and that intrigued me. Also, when we were poor students the Christian Science Reading Room people in Vancouver gave us a free subscription for years to their excellent newspaper and I was interested in seeing the where it was produced. They have quite a neat display for the newspaper. You can look into the offices and they have a computer program which allows you to track what is happening during the daily production in all the various areas. Plus you can create your own new story...it was all quite fun.

Take a look at the mappariumwebsite for pix.

Some other pix of the church building and reflecting pool.

And here's a site for more pix (professional ones!) of the Gehry building