Dundas Valley Images

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A few more photos from the workshop

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The first photo here is taken at a garden near where we were staying.

The second and third were part of my assignment -"seen from a gazebo" - both were taken from inside one of three gazebos near our inn.

Number two was made in the evening while I was standing in the gazebo near the beach trying to find something of interest. As the fog and heavy overcast began to lift and the sky brightened people I had not noticed before seemed to appear from nowhere and began strolling down the beach toward and along the water. People enjoying the beach and water in the brightening evening seemed like a wonderful New Brunswick scene to me and worth photographing.

Number three - the lupins - was made from the gazebo about 75 feet from the Inn.

Number four was taken on a beach where we spent the morning of day 4.

There were two covered bridges withing walking distance from the inn - I was standing close to one of them when I took this photo of the other bridge.

Some photos from the Freeman Patterson/André Gallant New Brunswick Workshop

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These are a few of my photos taken at the Freeman Patterson/André Gallant workshop I attended last week in New Brunswick.

We stayed in a lovely inn in St. Martins on the Bay of Fundy.

Three of these photos are from areas very close to the inn - two are taken at Freeman's home on Shamper's Bluff about an hour from the inn.

The first and fourth are close-ups of plants in Freeman's garden.

The second, also taken at Freeman's home, looks out over his property to the St. John river. The lupins in the foreground are just a few of the ones on his property and they seem to grow virtually everywhere in this part of New Brunswick.

Photo three is an attempt to capture the fog moving in on the land in the distance, The "beach" area in the foreground will be under water at high tide.

The fifth photo is taken at a fishing boat docking area near the inn. The tide is out so the mud bottom and residual water is visible in the foreground. The upper part of the photo shows the breakwater and a glimpse of the gap in the breakwater where the boats enter and leave when the tide is in. Any boats at the warf when this photo was take are sitting on the bottom, about 10 or 15 feet (my estimate) below where they will be when the tide is in.

More beach - the last post from Portugal

Since the beach is a main attraction in Albufeira, we spend as much time as is feasible there. Consequently, there are lots of beach scenes, many good ones.

So here are some more:

Small boy
Soccer on the beach
Wave on rock
Boy with dog
Last day

Lionel - the stone scuptor

We visited our stone carver friend, Lionel, once again and asked him to make another small sculpture for us. When we went to pick up the final version he had not yet placed the eyes in the dolphin so we spent 45 minutes watching him work and learned about how he started stone carving.

He had done wood carving in the past, but in 1999 he and a friend, a painter and sculptor, spent a summer on the beach near Albufeira where he learned stone sculpting from his friend. Because he loves it, he has been doing it ever since. He gathers the rocks from the beach at low tide and carts them home (John and I saw him by chance one morning on his way home with a large stone in a yellow plastic bag).

As he earns little from it he supplements his income doing house painting jobs in the area.

More beach

Second set of beach photos.
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The beach

As always, click on any photo to see a larger image.

A few photos of some beach scenes in this and the next post.
The first set is children with or without parent; the second set in the next post is just, well, beach stuff.

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What we do

We spend our days with very limited objectives. We walk a lot, usually 8 to 10 kilometers a day but sometimes as much as 15 or more. We have no car so we walk pretty much wherever we go. As we have little food storage facilities in refrigerator or cupboards, we shop for groceries every couple of days or more. It is about 3.5 to 4 kilometers to the supermarket and back. We buy our bread and wonderful Portuguese treats at a separate bakery about 10 minutes from our rooms, and the wine store and the internet cafe are a 20 minute round trip walk.

I have been getting up around 7 am when I do a bit of organizing of photos and blog preps. Then I spend a bit of time trying to learn some Portuguese. John and I walk every morning from 8:30 to about 9:30; then we have breakfast. Ruth and I have been walking the beach to "old town" mid morning, depending on the tide, where we just stroll around or go to the post office, pharmacy or do a bit of shopping for our grand children (or ourselves), have a fresh squeezed orange juice, coffee or beer at Sir Harry's bar or elsewhere and return home when we feel like it.

The afternoons are time for some photo shoots, water colour painting, reading, naps and general relaxing. Drinks down by the water may happen around 4 or so. Again, depending on the tides, we have been walking the beach again before supper.

In the last few of days Ruth and I have visited a couple of art exhibits in "old town" and at the public library.

Over the next few days we are more heavily scheduled. Tonight we are going out for dinner to one of the nearby large apartment-hotels. On Saturday we are off to the town of Loule, about 40 minutes away by bus, to do the Loule farmers' market, then to a concert at the Municipal auditorium in Albufeira in the evening. Sunday we are going for lunch and music at a local Saxophone Bistro about 5 minutes from our rooms and Sunday evening another concert at the Municipal auditorium.

Plans are developing for a visit to Faro, the capital city of the Algarve province, about 50 minutes away by bus.

The photos are:
1. We walk,
2. We eat or drink,
3. We walk,
4. We eat or drink,
5. We shop.

But we also read, paint, take photos, visit art galleries, the library and the used book store and we go to a concert or two.

It's tough work but we are handling it well and the days too easily slip away.

Albufeira

The next couple of posts will deal with the mundane - first, something about the town where we are staying. Someone asked us what we do here for a month so, in the next posting, a bit about what we do to pass the time here when we are not on a trip to Spain, for example.

Albufeira was once a fishing village but is now essentially a seaside tourist area with a winter population of about 20,000 people and a summer population of perhaps 100,000. Tourist related development is rampant in the area but there are still lovely beaches backed by low level cliffs and the scenic old town spreading up the hillside. And in March the beaches are definitely not crowded. They say that the name Albufeira derives from the Arabic al-buhera meaning castle by the sea, but in Portuguese it means "lagoon" or "dam".

Visitors, especially at this time of year, are predominantly from the UK but there are many from Holland, Germany and Canada. The "old town" retains some of the character of the old village with narrow winding streets, low white buildings, fisherman's beach (a couple of years ago there were colourful Portuguese fishing boats pulled up on the beach, but unfortunately, no longer - they are now hidden in an area enclosed by man made breakwaters) and some excellent walkways and restaurants overlooking the ocean. We have also learned that there are some charming bed and breakfast places to be discovered in unexpected places along the narrow streets on the hillside above the town square. The businesses in the old area are essentially eating places, bars and stores pretty much geared to the tourists.

The photos are:
1. Old town square. On all sides are shops, restaurants, bars and, on the far side of this photo, a very nice little art gallery.
2. Old town, including the square, from a balcony of a charming bed and breakfast place we looked at.
3. Ruth and John on a characteristic narrow street bound for a restaurant for a drink.
4. One of my favorite gates to a Mediterranean style house overlooking the ocean.
5. Characteristic tile roof tops.

More Cordoba

As I mentioned in the previous post about Cordoba, in part of the 14th century Jews, Christians and Muslim apparently lived in peace and harmony in Cordoba during that part of the reign of the Moors. There remains in the city an area of narrow streets with grilled windows and doorways that open onto whitewashed patios and gardens; this street is called "Callo de los Judios" in what was the Jewish neighbourhood during the 14th century. On this street there are also the remains of a very small Jewish bath and Synagogue.

Cordoba was also the birthplace of the philosopher, physician and humanitarian, Moises Ben Maimon, better known as Maimonides. There are at least two statues of Cordoba's famous citizen in the area that we visited.

On our way from Granada to Cordoba we traveled through the largest olive growing area of Spain (the triangle created by Sevilla, Granada and Cordoba) where there are seemingly endless fields of olive trees. We were told that the olives are harvested by placing large sheets of material, now plastic, under the trees then shaking the tree. In earlier times and still on the smaller "farms" the trees were shaken "by hand" with sticks (hard to imagine this process with so many trees); larger growers now use a motorized tree shaker. One reason that some of the smaller growers use the old method is that studies have shown the the mechanized method shortens significantly the life of the trees which, under the old methods of harvesting, live for centuries.

There are in this post another photo of the mosque/cathedral (this one at the junction of the transept and the nave - these arches are likely not of the original mosque), the Synagogue, a couple of the Hebrew neighbourhood we walked through and one of the fields of olive trees.

After a few hours in Cordoba we started on the long bus ride back to Albufeira, Portugal.

Cordoba, Spain

The main focus of our visit to Cordoba was the very large mosque in the middle of the city.
Cordoba is an ancient city settled well before the birth of Christ but with an official "birth" around 152 BCE. The Romans conquered the city in 575 AD, followed by the Visigoths for period before the Moors took over in 711. During a period of 100 to 200 years the city, ruled by the Muslims, Muslims Christians and Jews lived peacefully while the city prospered and grew.

In 785 the Muslims began construction of a mosque on a site that is thought to have the location of a Roman temple then a Visigoth church. In any case, the mosque they created on this site, and apparently the only mosque that remains in Spain, is extremely large, the biggest in the world it is said. The size quoted is 175 meters by 128 meters (22,400 square meters) or about as big as two Canadian football fields.

It is considered by some to the "most important Muslim monument in the western world, though there are those who say the same about The Alhambra.

In 1236 the city was taken by the Christians and the mosque was declared a Christian monument called Cathedral do Santa Marie Madre de Dios. But the new Archbishop was apparently not happy with the Muslim style temple so ordered the construction of a more traditional Christian cathedral inside the mosque. This created a bit of a stir with some very opposed to such serious modification of this unparalleled structure. In spite of the opposition the Archbishop pressed on with the approval of the Christian King, who had not yet seen the mosque. After the Christian cathedral was well under construction, or possibly completed, the King finally decided to see for himself. When he saw the mosque and what had been done he was apparently not pleased and is quoted to have said, "You have destroyed what cannot be found anywhere else and built something that can be seen anywhere".

Inside, the mosque is overwhelming in size with red and white arches seemingly everywhere. It is so huge that the cathedral, while not unnoticed, occupies only a portion of the mosque. A great deal of effort seems to have been made to integrate/merge the two very different decorative characteristics, some of which I have attempted to show in some of the photos. A note about the photos - it is very dark and the lighting patterns vary so, without a tripod it is difficult to get clear and accurate photographs. Hence the variation in color and light.

The photos are the wall around the mosque including the Tower for calling the faithful to pray, the Christian cathedral inside the mosque, the arches inside the mosque and a couple showing the integration of Muslim and Christian architecture.

As I mentioned in an earlier posting, if you have seen the documentary, "When the Moors Ruled Europe", you will have seen and heard much more about this mosque.

It is very impressive, but for my taste, does not match the Alhambra.

There is a bit more about the visit to Cordoba in a future post.