I am keeping things simple today with a gallery of some of the beautiful flowers I photographed during our visit to the Philippines. I’m sharing these as a memorial for Cee, a special member of our blogging community whom we sadly lost last month.
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When we travel, we love to try the food of our destinations. Pasta in Italy (of course!), curry in India, kimchi in North Korea, even grasshoppers in Oaxaca. And on our latest trip to the Philippines we naturally enjoyed many local dishes, and like the Filipinos themselves ate rice with almost every meal.
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The people who live in some houses do literally ‘live in colour’. Blues, pinks, yellows, reds – or even all of them at once! While we do have some cheerfully painted houses in the UK, they tend to be the exception, and even then, pastel colours are usually preferred over brights. But in other parts of the world, it seems, the brighter the better.
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In the US they are store fronts and in the UK we call them shop fronts, but whatever you call them they can be attractive / bizarre / interesting / or most often, just dull. We barely notice the dull ones that we see every day, so when we come across one that isn’t it is bound to stand out. No wonder many of us stop to take a photo!
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Usually I like to choose a theme for my black and white galleries. Maybe a particular country, or a subject such as flowers or buildings. But sometimes it’s fun to mix it up a bit with an assortment of rather different shots.
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When Samuel Morse invented the Morse Code he wanted to assign the simplest codes to the most frequently used letters. To work out what those were he counted the number of letters in sets of printers' type. He found that the most commonly used letter was E, followed by T, then A.
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When Columbus arrived in Central and South America, to be followed by the Spanish conquistadors and other Europeans, they found a land rich in gold. But it wasn’t especially valued for its rarity or as a means of payment by the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Instead it held profound spiritual significance.
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Like many who travel a lot, I prefer to think of myself as more than just a tourist. But I’m never sure it’s as clear cut as that, and I don’t get too offended by the ‘tourist’ tag! I think the truth of the matter is, we are all both at times, depending on where we are and what we are doing.
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It’s August, so where better place to be than the English seaside? Although truth be told I like our coastal areas much more in the winter months and maybe even more so in spring and autumn.
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Hummingbirds are among the hardest of birds to photograph, I find. So even though it’s not perfect I was happy to get this shot of one in Costa Rica last year.
