Follow love, and let love follow you.
Let go, and remember to forgive,
Give thanks, and love the life you live.
~ Jim Lesses (Love The Life You Live)
"Tourists don't know where they've been, travellers don't know where they're going." ~ Paul Theroux
Image: Part of the massive main building that is the
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If you ever needed to be convinced that revolutions – even violent revolutions – are necessary, just visit the
The Palace of Versailles is a royal château in
The
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Image: The massive Hall of Battles at
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In room after room, luxury and indulgence seemed to be trying to outdo each other. Just when you think the fittings and decorations, the massive paintings adorning walls and ceilings couldn’t get bigger or better, they do. When you think nothing could top the massive Hall Of Battles (see photo above) and the 33 huge paintings located there depicting scenes from some of France’s greatest victories, and which also includes 82 busts of various military leaders who died in action in many of the battles depicted in the paintings; just when you think nothing can top that you walk into the equally massive Great Hall of Mirrors.
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The Great Hall of Mirrors,
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Ceiling view of the Hall of Mirrors,
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The French painter Charles Le Brun, is responsible for decorating the ceilings in the Hall of Mirrors (Galerie des Glaces), with a series of stunning paintings only equaled by his other works at Versailles in the Halls of War and Peace (Salons de la Guerreand de la Paix), and the Ambassadors' Staircase. It was not for nothing that Louis XIV declared Le Brun "the greatest French artist of all time".
The dimensions of the Hall of Mirrors' are 73.0m × 10.5m × 12.3m (239.5ft × 34.4ft × 40.4ft). The ceiling decoration is dedicated to the political policies and military victories of Louis XIV. The central panel of the ceiling, Le roi governe par lui-même (The king governs alone) alludes to the establishment of the personal reign of Louis XIV in 1661. Other panels represent the military victories of the king beginning with the Treaty of the
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Image: Part of just one of the many wonderful ceiling paintings at
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Images of King Louis XIV swanning his way down long passageways and through vast rooms, flash through my head. Look! Here he comes now, closely followed by a retinue of handlers, hangers-on, and assorted family members, while courtiers, foreign visitors and gawkers wait and watch to catch a glimpse of his supreme eminence.
Does he pause to admire the monumental work of Veronese called, The Feast in The House of Simon – a gift of the Viennese court? As he enters the cavernous Chapel to attend Mass (where years later, Marie-Antoinette married Louis XVI), does he stop to chat with one or two of the lesser leaders of the day, who are here to curry favor and bask in his attention – no matter how brief or cursory?
I suspect he barely gives them more than a passing glance. It is enough to know they are there, and that he has created a building large enough to house monumental works of art, as well as draw sycophants and other toady’s to his palatial home far from the
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Ceiling decorations in the Royal Chapel at
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I am not sure if we will ever see buildings like
Statues and friezes, fountains and gilded furnishings, landscaped gardens, manicured lawns, broad mile-long pathways and secluded alcoves. Was there anything not included in the scope and design of
Sadly, I can’t think of any modern political leaders who wouldn’t love to be able to bask in the glory and opulence of a
It is exactly for this reason that places like that
Having toured through the Palace, you can either leave
Image: Gustave Eiffel’s gift to the people of France and tourists the world over
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On my recent trip to
Way back in the early 1970s, when I was in my mid-20s I passed through
My memory is hazy now about the exact details, but I do remember that I considered myself to be too ‘cool’ to do the standard tourist thing and actually go up the Tower. After all, it seemed such a clichéd thing to do, and even back then I was not interested in following the crowd. Of course, I was happy enough doing that other clichéd tourist activity – posing inanely before Gustave Eiffel’s Tower and getting my, “This is me in front of …” picture (a practice by the way, that I try to steer clear of now).
But then, over the years, somewhere along the way, I began to regret my decision. After all, on that 1970s trip I remember my travel companions and I did visit the Louvre, and we did go and see the Mona Lisa, and wasn’t that as much a cliché as visiting the
Why do we travel anyway, if not to see and experience as fully as possible the cities and locations we have chosen to visit? Going to the Louvre just to see the Mona Lisa would be a complete waste of time and money, given the effort one has to go through to actually see the painting. There are thousands of other reasons to visit the Louvre (namely the other paintings, sculptures, displays, etc), and personally I think most of them are more interesting and exciting to examine than the Mona Lisa’s whimsical smile.
The same reasoning can be used regarding the
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Image: The bird’s-eye view from the top of the
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Image: The
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Gustave Eiffel was writing the book when his company designed and built the tower that honours his name, not working out of someone else’s book of instructions.
Eiffel was born in
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Image: Gustave Eiffel ‘s metallic structure for the Statue of Liberty
Image courtesy of the
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In 1884, answering a bid to mark the centenary of the 1889 French Revolution, Gustave Eiffel, together with his associates Emile Nouguier and Maurice Koechlin, pitch their idea for the construction of the Tower.
Construction involved over 5,300 drawings, and a team of 120 workers to fit together more than 18,000 parts, weighing over 10,000 tons, using 2.5 million rivets, over a period of two years. Despite the fact that the men were working hundreds of metres above the ground, only one man died during the construction of the Tower, and that accident occurred outside of regular working hours.
As you might imagine, almost immediately after its completion, the 324 metre (1,063 ft) Tower began to attract a motley collection of adventurers and thrill seekers intent on trying to be the first to set a range of records associated with the structure. These include Santos-Dumont who, in 1901, won a prize for flying higher than the Tower in an airship, and the Count de Lambert who flew over
Sadly, in 1912, a tailor nicknamed “the bird man”, died when he jumped from the first floor using a parachute of his own design and construction, and in 1926, Léon Collot, also died when he tried to fly under the
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Image: Some of the intricate steel lacing and support work at the first level
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And so it continues. A veritable circus of stair climbers and runners, motocross and mountain bike riders, wheelchair users, and yes, Ripley, believe it or not, even a circus elephant (which climbed the stairs to the first floor) have used the
For my money, none of those noted above are a patch on Victor Lustig who in 1925 ‘sold’ the Eiffel Tower to a scrap metal merchant after convincing him that the Tower was going to be demolished. And why not? Originally, the Tower was meant to stand for just 20 years, after which it would be pulled down. The fact that it is still around 120 years later is a testament to the design and construction skills of Gustave Eiffel and his team of workers.
Today, the
For all these and more reasons, I wanted finally, to visit the
More information
Image: Illustration of turbulence, courtesy of Webskite…
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Turbulence [-noun]
1. A state or condition of confusion, movement, or agitation; violent disorder or commotion.
Well you can’t expect things to go right all the time, can you? If you travel often and far enough, some things are bound to go wrong from time to time, and this past week, following my return to
The above definition of the word, turbulence, is a good summation of the current political situation in
For months the people of
What all this turbulence is doing to the country’s tourist industry is anyone’s guess.
Like I said, after nine very pleasant days in Paris, I flew into this “…state or condition of confusion,” etc, on Monday afternoon, and within thirty minutes of checking into my hotel I received the news that the flight I had booked to take me from Athens to Ikaria the next day (Tuesday) had been cancelled due to planned industrial action by airport workers. Taking the news in my stride, I arranged with Olympic Air to fly to the island on Wednesday.
Unfortunately, while airport workers were back on the job on Wednesday, the train and bus drivers were not. So early Wednesday morning I caught a cab for the fifty minute drive from
It didn’t take long for the thirty or so passengers to settle into their seats for the 40 minute flight to the island, and within an hour or so of my arrival at the airport, we took off into an overcast sky. It was at this point that we ran into another kind of turbulence:
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Image: A De Havilland
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Turbulence [-noun]
1. Irregular motion of the atmosphere, as that indicated by gusts and lulls in the wind.
“…Gusts and lulls in the wind,” my eye! Within minutes of take off, the small, twin prop Olympic Air DHC-8-400 (see image) hit enough turbulence to keep the cabin crew on their toes, and the passengers strapped to their seats. After a quick snack we prepared to land at
We were met at
Yeah, right.
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Image: Ground crew and engineers rush to examine our plane on landing
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Image: Airport fire trucks after our unspecified mechanical problem
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We disembarked and went back to the terminal to wait for a second plane which would take us back to
Apart from the inconvenience, and the stress of all the travel and bouncing around in the air, I was certainly happy to be back on the ground. I’m even happier after reading one online report while researching information about air turbulence which stated that, "Of all weather-related commercial aircraft incidents, 65% can be attributed to turbulence."
Which brings to mind the old adage: It’s better to be safe than sorry. To which I can only add, Amen to that! Sadly, it didn’t take long before the turbulence in the air was again swapped for turbulence on the ground.
There was chaos at the taxi rank as hundreds of passengers lined up for cabs into
Nearly an hour and 50 euros later we reach
It was then I realised that I had been scammed by the Greek guy who had offered to share the cost of the taxi with me. With the cabbie refusing to give me any part of my fifty euros back, since as he said, that was the fare anyway, and the other passenger ignoring my request for even ten euros as part of his contribution to the fare, I had no choice but to walk away, chastened by the experience but a lot wiser than when I got into the cab.
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Image: [Hell] This just about sums up my day!
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It isn’t the fifty euros that bothers me. Money comes in through one hand and goes out via the other one all the time. It was the fact that both driver and passenger took advantage of me. It is also a sad reflection on how far the Greeks and Greece have fallen as a people and as a country. That the other passenger could sit there and knowingly screw me over like that is the thing that hurts the most. I was quite happy to share the cost of the cab, and even would have paid more than half my share, but I would never consider screwing someone else over like this man did.
For all I know he got out a hundred yards further down the road, and paid nothing for his ride. If I had been quick enough to think of that, I could have refused to get out of the cab and said, drop this man off first, and me after. That way the tables would have been turned against the other passenger, and he would have had to pay the bulk of the fare. But it was too late for that, and I had no choice but to suck it up and go on my way.
However, every cloud has a silver lining, as the saying goes. Since I was walking past a travel outlet, I went in and bought a ticket for the Nissos Mykonos, the regular ferry that services
My mood improved even more after I rang Olympic Air and cancelled my rescheduled, rescheduled flight and was told I would receive a full refund on the plane ticket.
So there I was, at the end of a long, tiring and stressful day, back at the Delfini Hotel in
It had indeed been a turbulent day.
Click here... to read probably more than you've ever wanted to know about turbulence and air travel.
Image: View of apartment blocks taken from the Pompidou Centre
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Mark Greenberg began playing drums at age 14. In the year 2000, he formed his own band, Pimp The Cat, which performs in the same vein as The Grateful Dead, Phish, and The Allman Brothers Band with which he has toured.
Image: Dave Fields
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I don’t know if Delmar Brown can hit those high notes anymore, but I do know he has a voice that is so powerful and dynamic it could stop a runaway freight train in its tracks! And you can quote me on that. You will find numerous videos through YouTube of Delmar performing, simply by searching his name. The man deserves wider recognition in his own right, and I’m happy to help that happen.