Photo of the Week - Street Art Along the River

It has been a good while since I did a photo of the week post and after flicking through my recentish photos saw some (hopefully) good ones to put up.

While we were in Gloucester we took a boat trip up and down the river and we saw this bit of street art. There is an actual photo of Albert Einstein doing this and written on the wall is "It`s all relative".

It is nearly the weekend, only 2 work days left, reason enough to celebrate!!

Oslo Waterfront

My building

Captain Rutherford

Reminded us of Berlin

In Oslo during the spring holiday we spent a couple of hours exploring the waterfront area Aker Brygge. We were all very impressed, there are plenty of restaurants, bars, cafes and shops to keep the visitors very busy. We were looking for lunch but the prices in this area proved to be a bit to much for us.

There is a museum Astrup Fearnley right at the end of walkway, we never went to it, but the building itself looks interesting. It apparently opens up to a pebble beach but we did not see that. There is lots of great architecture and design in this area and I could have just walked around looking at the different buildings.

This area is full of flats and offices, I just loved the purple patterned building with blue tiles (7th photo), also the long windows at the top look amazing. You can just image the wonderful view. Well I am quite sure they will be extremely expensive to buy or rent.

You can definitely pass away hours here and along the other side of the waterfront where the Akerhus Castle is situated.

Views of the Bosphorus

Ciragan Palace Kempinski

Ortakoy Mosque

Maiden Tower

Blue Mosque

During our trip to Istanbul we took a boat trip along part of the Bosphorus. It is one of the best ways to see Istanbul and how large of a city it is. We passed a number of very posh hotels well out of our league, but still great to look at, we also saw many palaces, mosques, gardens and villas.

The Bosphorus strait is 32km long and connects the Sea of Marmara to the Black sea, there were some boats that went right to the Black sea and I was secretly hoping ours would but it did not. It is an extremely busy waterway, with many ships from passenger boats to oil tankers. It also separates the two continents Europe and Asia.

There are two bridges over the straits one is the Bosphorus Bridge and the other the Mehmet the Conqueror Bridge. Our boat trip took 90mins but there are longer or shorters ones, or you can take the ferries to the Asian side which would be much cheaper.

No matter what boat trip you make, it is worth well the effort!!

Street Parade 2014

Saturday 2nd August was Street Parade! It was lots of fun! Here are some of the photos, it was fun stopping people and asking to take their photo. This is the result!!

Enjoy!!

A Day in Bath

Roman Baths

Bath Abbey

The Circus

The Royal Crecsent

River Avon

Pulteney Bridge

During our week long stay in England, we had a day in Bath. Bath is a very beautiful city and we all enjoyed our day here. The first place we visited was the Roman Baths which is a World Heritage Site since 1987. Once you are inside the complex you see The Great Bath which is quite amazing, surrounded by lots of Roman statues. Inside there is the museum with many of the finds from the Baths. You are also given an audio guide which gives more information and there is also one for children which helped Alessio to enjoy the Baths much more than just walking around.

The other part of Bath that we wanted to see was to do with Jane Austen, there is a centre but we did not visit it. The Royal Crescent is a magnificent row of 30 terraced houses designed by the architect John Wood. It is a fine example of Georgian architecture and in front of is Victoria Park, when we were there is was packed with people relaxing. Some scenes from the TV film Persuasion by Jane Austen was filmed here and also the film The Duchess.

Finally we walked down to the river Avon, over the Pulteney bridge and along the banks also very busy as it was such a lovely day. We were on a mission to find a playground for Alessio which we managed in the end much to Alessio`s happiness.