The first plan was to start driving from Zion at 4 AM to see sunrise at Bryce. By majority vote (everyone except me that is), this plan was vetoed, torpedoed and buried faster than I could explain. So we left at 6:30 AM and drove to Bryce. It was a beautiful drive with the windows down for the most part.
We parked our car at the store and started hiking from there. The trail to sunrise point is close by. We went through sunrise point, the Navajo trail to Queen Victoria, then came back through the Two Bridges, a little steep but shorter. We ended up at sunset point. From there we walked to the Bryce lodge and had a nice lunch. We were the second group waiting in line to be seated. We had to wait for 15 minutes and they opened promptly at 11:30. We had finished lunch and were out of the gift store by 12:30. There was still time to add one more stop to our trip and still make it to Las Vegas airport in time. So we walked fast from the lodge to the store and I made a dash for the next stop.
This is is pretty much everything we got from the morning at Bryce.. the memories of the smiling faces.. priceless!
Portait format photos.. I clicked a lot more but these are the highlights.. as for why I am smiling so much, Angels landing. has been on the bucket list for a long long long time. So I was just feeling so happy!
Yes.. this is part of a missed series of blog posts on the 25th wedding anniversary trip.. that trip itself is nearing its anniversary.. so I better write about it before it becomes murky.
We flew from Prague to Lisbon first thing in the morning. The previous post in this series is here..
We took a Taxi from the airport that dropped us off in the Baixa area (cars were not allowed inside this main road that leads to the gate. Had to roll our carry on suitcases on the cobblestones for a good 20 minutes and reached our hotel. It was cute and cozy. Bepoet was the name. We put our things in the room and promptly came down to see as many things as we could for the rest of the evening and night. Given how crazy we are when it comes to covering points on city tours, have to break this into multiple posts..
We got a map and finally decided to walk to the first stop, the cathedral. I did impress a bunch of church goers with my backbending ability while holding an iPhone steady to take this almost 270 degree pano shot.
After we walked around the cathedral up a slope, there was a bus that could take us around all the spots. We decided to help a local girl with her tuk tuk business and had her take us around the city. First we went up to the vista point on the local hill, and from there we made it to Belem. Sangeetha has already been to Lisbon before and she also turned into a tourguide. I was getting a stereophonic guided tour at some point. On the way we saw the replica of the golden gate bridge, a replica of the Jesus from Rio.
Once at Belem we visited the Vasco de Gama monument, the Belem tower and a church. We only caught the museum from a distance as there was no time to visit the museum. The lady was on the clock and the museum was closing. After this we were going to stop to eat something special. Both the guide and San hyped this up to no end.. that on the next post..
but before that.. a video highlights reel of our start to seeing Lisbon!
at first glance, Lisbon is a city like no other city we have visited before!
This day was going to be a busy one. We had been warned. There were three things to cover as part of the tour and two things we added to the list before being dropped at the airport.
We woke up at 4:30 and got ready. Our bags were packed and the porters got it to the van. The amount of offering to the porters was predetermined just like the offerings to various gods during temple visits. We complied. The porter gods smiled on us. The suitcase with the broken wheel had made it this far.
It was a special day. One of two days the sunrise is smack dab in the middle of the square hole in Karnak temple. This used to be a big festival in olden days. The Egyptian locals made it a festival again for tourist purposes. We made it in through security and the German language tour was still wrapping up.
there were a few hundred people blocking our view and I had no chance. Still held my camera up to take a timelapse and was hit in the ribs a few times by jostling tourists. Did what I could..(you can see it in the video)
The sun did its glorious thing without making a fuss. We started walking through the temple once it was up.
Had to increase the shadow lighting to get this image. those stories on the walls with the sun rising between them is marketing genius. Makes it look like the Sun is approving the story!
The night tour with the sound and light show did not do justice to the magnificence of the temple. They also did not cover enough about Queen Hatshepsut and how she rebuilt this place and started lighting up the temple, brought the two gold tipped obelisks to Luxor, etc. etc.
This women had done more good for Egypt's people than all those Pharoh's before her put together. It was not about the kings and gods.. It was about improving the lives of citizens. She got that!
However her step son who later became king worked hard to erase her from Egyptian memory. A female ruler blessed by Egyptian gods did not fit their narrative. So within a generation, it was erased in mainstream media of the time. However thanks to shifting sands and the Romans and others who didn't care who ruled what when, some of her legacy has been preserved.
Walid took us to a special spot where the sunbeams come down in a dark chamber..it was scary to walk to the center as we didn't know where the ground was. Should have been challenging for folks to build the place!
A candid shot of us trying to stop the photographer from continuous clicking. Walid was filling up my memory by taking 25 shots a minute!
This temple at Karnak used to be all color. There is still some color on the pillars that has survived millenia and it is just amazing. When we imagine non faded colors on pillars and ceilings this size, one can only wonder!
As a Mylapore kid who was awestuck by Kapaleeshwar temple when my mom or grandpa would take me there, it still holds a special place in my heart after 50 years. Now imagine what a walk through this temple in all its colored glory would have meant to kids in those days!
Maybe the Egyptian government should think about restoring at least a small section of this temple to the original colors (if they can figure out what pigments were used and how to color them in the past!) and let us get a true sense of this awesomeness!
This is yet another place that has to be seen to be believed. If you are making plans to visit Luxor, try to be there on the Winter solstice and watch the sunrise at Karnak! It is true the sun rises every day and keeps moving, but a temple built thousands of years ago to align the sunrise to the solitice is worth watchng! A lot of science and engineering went into this!
Granite is not an easy stone to carve or carry!
A few HDR shots..
A video highlight of the Karnak temple visit..
The grand finale from the night's sound and light show was a focus on the statue around which people would walk counter clockwise 7 times for luck..
We enjoyed this temple complex thoroughly. After this on our way out we got some tea/ coffee at a restaurant / gift shop which was very nice.
Then we went back out to the van. It was time for the next stop which was supposed to be yet another highlight!
