Tag Archives: doors

The Travel Years

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I began Meg Travels in August and this month is my fourth anniversary!  It has been so much fun sharing travel adventures from near and far.  When I look for themes over the years I can see that flowers and gardens are some of my favorites, along with doors, sunsets and signs.  I tend to travel in the spring and that is an ideal time to see fresh and colorful flowers.  Autumn is another beautiful season for watching the leaves change color, and it is still warm and sunny.

I will continue to travel so there will be plenty more adventures (with pictures) to share over the next year.  Here are some of the flowers, doorways and other souvenir pictures that I’ve taken over the past four years.

Monet’s Garden
Try new flavors
Portofino
Autumn in Williamsburg
Doorway in Avignon
fruit display
an important sign!
St Ives
Barcelona
Avignon
Lugano, Switzerland
St. Petersburg, Florida
Door to Monet’s house
Prince Edward Island

 

A Train Ride along the Cinque Terre

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When I was in Italy in May one of my favorite experiences was taking a train from La Spezia to see the villages of the Cinque Terre.  The first stop was the village of Riomaggiore.  It had been raining when I boarded the train in La Spezia but as the train pulled into the station at Riomaggiore the storm had ended and the clouds were transitioning to blue sky.  It was late morning and an ideal time for a walk, although it was challenging because the sidewalks were so steep.

Many levels of buildings
Follow this sign!
A door to…
The water
Steep steps

While walking I couldn’t decide whether to look at the buildings, some with laundry hanging from terraces, or do a little souvenir shopping.  Another thought was to look for a gelato shop and keep walking.  Since they were such interesting possibilities I decided to do all of them!

A little shopping
Laundry day
Non-gelato food choices
Lemon scented soap
Souvenir shop

Although this chair looked inviting for a little rest, I had a train schedule to follow to get to the other villages so eventually I had to walk back to the station to catch a train to Manarola, another village in the Cinque Terre.  I’ll tell you about that soon.

Italy

Travel theme: Doorways

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I am always looking for interesting doors when I travel.  For this theme I’m focusing on some of the doors that I admired in Orvieto, Italy.  There were so many different types of doors that I decided to take these pictures so I wouldn’t forget them.  Sometimes doors seem to tell a story and with a little imagination that story can become quite dramatic.  As you can see some are simple, some are decorative and I’ve included one that was important to me because it was the door to a gelato shop which is a favorite destination of mine while I’m in Italy!

 

Ornate door
An imposing door
Time for a gelato!
Carved door
A curved top

I also noticed this while I was walking in Orvieto.

Orvieto

To see more doors look here.

Travel theme: Yellow

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When I was in Provence last May it was sunny and bright.  In addition to the sun there were many examples of the color yellow that I noticed.  Here are some of my souvenir pictures from Provence.

Walking down the street..
Shopping in Avignon
Doorway in Avignon
I liked this sign…
A yellow building

A Door Within a Door

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One of my favorite things about traveling is how you see an everyday object in a new way.  It started when I was in Salamanca, Spain with the suggestion that I look for the hidden frog in the facade of the cathedral.  I didn’t see it right away.  But I did notice the massive doors into the cathedral.  Just when I was wondering how difficult it would be to open those doors, I saw that there was an ordinary, human sized door unobtrusively cut into the bigger one.  So probably one would use the regular sized door for everyday entry into the cathedral.

After that I made a point of noticing the small door within oversized ones in other cathedrals in other cities.  Then I started looking for other contexts and settings, such as castles, walls, houses, and shops. Continue reading →