postcard

On my way to Europe, the cheapest flight was transiting thru Istanbul. Yes, I know it’s a 2-hour slight detour when your final destination is Nice, France. But Turkish Airlines had great price and a free 7-day layover. I have always dreamed of Istanbul, the first European city (or the first Asian city depending on how you look at it). It’s the cradle of the European civilization, it used to be a Christian city and now it’s a Muslim one. We could only stay four days, so we picked an AirBnb in Sultanahmet’s neighborhood and we walked everywhere. Our first stop was the basilica cistern (Turkish: Yerebatan Sarayı). It is the only underground cistern that lie beneath the city of Istanbul (that is formerly Constantinople), Turkey. We went...

Did you see the full moon yesterday? This month, the moon was rising over the Coit Tower in San Francisco. The ideal point was between Lombart St. and Chestnut St. Unfortunately there is no open view between those two streets, buildings are lining up the streets and keeping the view for themselves. I got on top of Lombart right before sunset. The cable car stops right here, with the gold light of the sunset it was great, candid shot. Even the Coit tower was basked in warm light, but I was looking for a better location. I could not find any, so I went back to Lombart St. and found a spot that was the closest to buildings as possible, while still having a view. When the moon rose, it was on the left of the tower but too close to the tower. This confirmed what I...

At the beginning of the year, I spent a few days in Nice before going to Ethiopia (more on this in another post). I knew that Monaco has nice fireworks for the New Year celebration and I had enough knowledge where they would be fired from to pick a nice view from a higher elevation as I wanted to capture the harbor, the Monaco Castle and the fireworks. There are only a few places that are public accessible to catch that view. The next evening, I went to the Chateau de Nice (castle). From the Castle, there is only one tower left and the city made a park from the land where the Castle once was. The Castle was located on the closest hill from the sea, with the Old City at its feet. During Christmas time, a gigantic Ferris wheel is installed in nearby downtown. From...

If you don’t know, my family comes from the Pyrenees region. A small town on the road to the Tourmalet pass (for you cyclists). A couple weeks ago, I spent a week there to see my family and I took a couple pictures. I did not take that many pictures because I was, one, busy visiting my family and two, the weather was not cooperating and three my brother, who lives there and is a professional photographer, has better images anyway. Lourdes is a town known for the apparition of the Virgin Mary in 1858. Since that time, pilgrims comes to Lourdes to pray. One of the great moment, is the night time procession with candles. This year, one of the largest procession happened to coincide with the full moon. When the full moon was rising, I framed it...

This year was marked by weather perturbations. Twice during the building weeks, the city and construction were halted by rain and/or hail, creating delays in building the man or the temple. The man was finished Monday at 5pm and the Temple was opened Tuesday night or Wednesday morning. It’s not unusual to have the Man or the Temple unfinished by the time the city gate opens. A Monday morning rainstorm has shutdown the city once again but this time during the arrival. The rain transformed the city in a muddy pit and all traffic was suspended until it dried out. Several hundreds of people got stuck at the entrance for 24h. The luckiest of them got stopped in Reno, where they had still a bit of civilization. The unluckiest were stopped on the sandy access road...

Today is independence day and one fun thing to do on that day, beside pool parties and BBQs, is the fireworks show. I have heard that the shows at Disneyland, South Lake Tahoe and Ala Moana Beach Park are among the best. While waiting for the fireworks to start,  I leave you with a couple images from the New Year’s fireworks (above) and from the 75th anniversary of the Golden Gate bridge. If you want to know where to go in San Francisco for the fireworks (and where the top image was taken from), read this post. Be careful, the 4th of July fireworks is best viewed from Pier...