Have Fun Stormin' the Castle

Everyone has something in particular that they like to do when they travel. Some people get excited about the food; some get excited about the shopping. I get excited about the photographs that I can take.

When we planned a trip that would take us to Europe for a week, people asked, "What do you want to see?" At first, I just said, "Whatever is there." Then I started thinking, and we started buying things like train tickets, and I amended my answer; "I want to see a castle."

I've grown up in the American West; we get all excited if something is 100 or 150 years old. Our entire nation is just over 200. When my niece spent a year abroad in France, she lived in an ordinary neighborhood in an ordinary town, and her home was over 400 years old, with stone walls. The thought made me swoon.

At our first stop, Madeira, there was no castle. The island was gorgeous, and I didn't miss the opportunity to see a castle.

Our second stop was Gibralter. I was excited about the rock, the monkeys, the view across the channel to Africa. But there, sitting on the hill, was a castle.

See it? Don't worry, we got closer.

Technically, it's a medieval fortress. Still, on only my second day in Europe, I got to cross a "must do" off my list.

It became apparent that castles were not scarce the morning we arrived in Barcelona. This was the view from the deck of our ship:

Well, then!

This is Montjuic Castle, first built in 1640. We didn't go inside, but we did get a closer view.

 We saw plenty of palace-like buildings in Paris. Even if we hadn't, who cares? It's Paris!

We hit the castle jackpot in Germany.

After looking, exhaustively, at flights to take us home, we'd discovered that the least expensive flight left on a Thursday from Frankfurt, so we arranged to arrive in Frankfurt on Tuesday night. That left all of Wednesday for an adventure. We were without a car (we'd arrived by train), so we looked into tour companies, and settled on a tour that would pick us up from, and deliver us back to, our hotel. We were scheduled to go down the Rhine in a tour boat, on a stretch of river that was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and has the highest concentration of castles in Europe. We all charged our camera batteries in anticipation.

Unfortunately, the Rhine was flooding. It was the highest water level in over 300 years. Virtually all river traffic was halted.

This is a staircase that goes down to the waterfront sidewalk. The water levels were, if I recall, 15 to 20 feet above normal here.

Many of the docks were themselves underwater. Some peeked out, but you wouldn't want to dock there.

The tour company had a contingency plan. We would still get many of the usual elements of the tour - lunch at a cafe, a visit to a local monument, a ride down the mountainside in a chair lift reminiscent of a ski lift - but instead of sailing past numerous castles, we'd get to tour the grounds and interior of one.

It was an absolutely picture perfect example of a castle - suits of armor, a ballroom, towers... just gorgeous.

There's me and my husband.

Here's the view from across the river.

Isn't that storybook perfect?

What was more astonishing to me, though, were the number of other castles in the area, castles not included as part of the tour. They were just sitting there, a part of the normal scenery.

I mean, they're just everyday buildings. Here's another view from across the river, showing the next castle just a bend in the river away.

Do you see that? Here's a closer look.

They're within sight of each other, some of these castles. Holy cow! I mean, even if it was centuries ago, I could easily walk or ride between them!

So, we have a new plan on the back burner. Some day, we'll go back to Germany. We'll drive the Romantic Road, we'll float down the Rhine, and we'll photograph more castles.

It's a great plan.

Vacation Photos

It has been brought to my attention that, for a photographer, I have very few photos in my blog. I'll try to fix that.

We admit it - we're spoiled. We carry the big cameras on vacation - usually two or three of them. Yes, this is us at the beach this year. The camera taking the photo is pretty much the same as the one over my shoulder. We refer to these as "the heavy artillery."

My middle daughter looked at some of the photos taken by someone else on her brother's student ambassador trip, someone who'd taken only a camera phone, and said, "If those were the only photos Alex had, he'd cry."

It takes more than a nice camera, though. We're all pretty good at this because we love it.

In the last decade or so, the average person has gotten much better at photography for two reasons - they're taking far more photos, and cameras are becoming more and more foolproof. My parents may have shot a dozen photos of me between birth and age eight, on cameras that are horribly limited by today's standards. The average parent today shoots almost daily photos, with cameras that don't even require a flash.

Still, we often surprise or puzzle people. My son was 16 when he went to Europe. When he showed people his scrapbook, they said things like, "Did you buy postcards and scan them?" They seemed amazed when he said, "No. I took these."

When his leader saw this one, she couldn't get over it. "You shot this from the bus? How did you manage that? Nobody gets good photos from inside the bus!" This is exactly as he shot it.

He's been surprising people for years. When he was about 11 - but admittedly looked younger - we went to Six Flags Discovery Kingdom. In the butterfly house, we handed him the good camera, the one we use for business, with the same stipulation we always gave to our kids: Put the strap around your neck, and be careful. He quickly voiced displeasure - his dad had the new zoom lens.

He marched up to his father with vocal complaint. "You gave me the crappy lens! How am I supposed to shoot anything decent with this?" He was truly outraged. The man standing next to this scene was probably in his 40s, holding a little 4 inch wide, half inch thick point and shoot camera. He looked at my son, looked at the 6 inch long "crappy" lens, raised his eyebrows up into his hairline and slunk away.

I've taken photos that I truly love on little disposable cameras, but boy, do I love my good camera.

Traveling in a group is sometimes difficult for photographers. When my son went to Washington D.C. with his Scout troop, he spent a lot of time saying, "Wait up!" and they spent a lot of time saying, "Come ON, Alex! Are you shooting more pictures?"

Of course, once they got back home, everyone wanted copies of his photos. We burned discs to share.

As you can see, people are not his favorite subjects, and he rarely thinks to get photos of himself. I insisted, for that Scout trip, that he occasionally hand the camera to someone else and get in the photo. We have two photos with him in them, including this one (my favorite of the two).

(My kid's the good looking one in the tan uniform.)

He is not an enthusiastic model, but he is usually obedient.

Frequently, my kids get asked, "Where was this?" by people who were actually along on their trips. One girl asked so often while looking through his Europe scrapbook that I finally said, "Did you go to Europe?" "Well, yeah," she said, "but I didn't see any of this."

A year ago at Christmas, my oldest daughters went to Disneyland with a group of 20-somethings. One of their friends went in another group about the same time. When they got home, they compared photos.

"Where is this?" asked a friend who traveled with the other group.

"It's right before you head down Main Street, headed away from the castle," my daughter told her.

"I've never seen that, and I've been to Disneyland before," the girl said.

She had the same questions over and over. "Where is this? Where was that?"

Finally, she said, "Oh, well, we were only there for 3 days."

"We were only there for 3 days," my daughter said. "So not fair! I'm going with you next time!" her friend replied. (In all fairness, my daughter has lived in her current home for over 2 1/2 years, and I'm sure she knows Disneyland better than she knows her own back yard.)

Yes, we carry the big cameras through amusement parks. I want shots like these.

When we went to Oahu with my brother, a scenic and wildlife photographer, he remarked on how nice it was to travel with other photographers, people who were willing to just stop on the side of the road and wander.

We spent a couple of hours one day on a single beach, just shooting the waves as they came in.

"You're not supposed to be tourists!" someone once said to me, admonishing me to put the camera down. "Experience things."

I am experiencing them. So is my camera. So, vicariously, can everyone else.