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La Cuesta Encantada – The Grand Rooms

La Cuesta Encantada – The Grand Rooms

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“This must be a new experience for you to see the grand home of rich people”, I said to the British family joining us on our first tour.

Hearst imagined The Enchanted Hill not as a house or even a single structure. His model was a small Spanish town with

La Cuesta Encantada – The Visitor Center

La Cuesta Encantada – The Visitor Center

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Most folks call this monument to tasteful pillaging Hearst Castle but its given name is La Cuesta Encantada, which means The Enchanted Hill. I’m here to tell you that when you sprinkle the fairy dust of money on ranch land, you conjure up a whole boatload ‘o enchanted architecture.
Itty Bitty Inn

Itty Bitty Inn

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Meet Rik, creator and proprietor of the Itty Bitty Inn in North Bend, Oregon. Although the motel was built in 1950, you can bet it didn’t look like this in the early days. Rik took over about 1980 and began the transformation into the whacky place you see today.
moh-tuh-vey-shuhn

moh-tuh-vey-shuhn

Why the funny name for this post? If you live nearby, I’m hoping to motivate you to visit SAM and see Giacometti’s works for yourself.

This is a small taste of what’s on display. There are sketches, paintings, many more sculptures and a short film showing the

Canada D’eh

Canada D’eh

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God, it’s nice to visit a country where half the population doesn’t uncritically believe everything a power-mad narcissist says.

Sorry, just had to get that off my chest.

In late June, we made a kind of mini-tour of British Columbia to catch up with Mary Anne’s relatives,

Glass!

Glass!

This post is a test. I moved my blog to a new cloud server and want to make sure that posting, including the email notification sent out, still works.

As long as I was testing, I figured I might as well include some pretty photos of glass work from the

Random, Arizona

Random, Arizona

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Theres no story to be told this time, just a few photos of things i thought you might like to see.

Well, maybe one little story…

Some of you, my most perceptive and tasteful of readers, have said nice things about a few of my photos. That got me thinking.

Sevilla Leftovers

Sevilla Leftovers

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It’s been a while since we were able to get together with our friends Andy and Danielle so it was great that we were able to see them for four days in Sevilla.

Andy and I go way back. Back to about 1982 when he was living in Hong

The Alhambra

The Alhambra

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“Do not weep like a woman for what you could not defend as a man.”

Abu Abdallah’s mother

Ouch!

In 1492, besides Columbus sailing the ocean blue, the Moorish king Abu Abdallah surrendered the Alhambra to the Christian forces of Ferdinand and Isabella. As he cast a last backwards

The Alcázar of Sevilla

The Alcázar of Sevilla

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As you may have noticed, my post on the Alhambra has yet to appear. That’s because I know it’s going to be long and so I’m waiting for the haze induced by nine hours of timezone shift to clear before tackling it.

So, I thought, I’ll

Seville Cathedral

Seville Cathedral

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Santa Maria de la Sede is shaped like a square. This is unusual for a cathedral as most tend to form a cross. But the builders had an extra requirement when laying out this structure: to cover the footprint of the 160,000 square foot mosque that formerly occupied the
A Wet Visit to Cádiz

A Wet Visit to Cádiz

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Whilst on holiday in Sevilla, we decided to hire a motor and nip down to Cádiz for the day.

Sorry. Because we were in Sevilla with British friends, I slipped into speaking like a character from Downton Abbey. From here on, I’m back to ‘mericun enlish.

Cádiz is an

Granada Leftovers

Granada Leftovers

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I love T-Mobile Thanks to free cellular data worldwide, I’m writing this post while zipping along on the train to Sevilla.

I was tempted to title this ”Mary Anne Eats” because I found that I have several food photos. Let’s starts with them.

On the way to the

Head for the Hills

Head for the Hills

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Do you know that the word Gypsy comes from the word Egypt? For a long time nobody knew or cared where gypsies came from, but there was speculation that they were Egyptian. Turns out they migrated from India in the 14th century.

I suppose this implies that Gyp is derived

Not the Alhambra

Not the Alhambra

Here’s the thing: the Alhambra is huge. Huge both in size and in detail. A proper treatment of our visit is going to have to wait until I’m home and able to sort through the over 100 photos I took today.

In the meantime, allow me to distract