The Beginning

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As my first post to this blog, and as a means to test the mapping functions, I have elected to begin with the trip I took last summer. The first leg took me From Seattle, WA to Washington, DC and Norfolk, VA where I met up with my friend B. From there I flew to London, UK and enjoyed a short trip to Brighton with my friend Ryan and his fiance, Sarah. My grandmother's sister guided me along a nice walk up the Thames. We started the morning in Trafalgar Square and ended the day in Greenwich from which we took a boat back toward where we began. Following this brief stay in London, I flew to Moscow, Russia at the invitation of my friend Yuri and his family. My time in Russia was spent mainly in Moscow, but included a day trip to a town called Kolumna, where I had the very interesting opportunity to tour a paint factory. While in Moscow, I saw Lenin one day and spent another in the Kremlin. There were a few churches I would have gone in but for the fact that I never seemed to be wearing long pants at the right time (the Russian Orthodox church forbids the wearing of shorts by men, and pants by women when inside the churches). The Tretyakov Gallery boasted some exceptional artwork along with several other museums I visited. My favorite piece of art from everything I saw ended up being painted by Ukranian artist Arkhip Kuinji (1842 - 1910) and was entitled Moonlight Night on Dneper (1880). The effect of moonlight that is accomplished in the painting is what made it my favorite. I have never seen an image of this painting that does this justice, so I will refrain from including one here. Anyway, after Russia I flew back to the UK to catch my connecting flight to DC. Upon ariving in DC, I had about 10 hours before my flight for Seattle left. Never try to sleep in the Dulles airport. My extensive use of this facility during this trip has earned in the title of my least-favorite-airport-in-the-world. But Dulles could eat up another post all its own. From DC I flew to Seattle via Houston. I was very glad to be home, having not slept in my own bed for about a month. There are many details and rich experiences that mad this trip wonderful, but I hope this all-too-brief synopsis lends itself to some insight into what a wonderful juant it was. Please enjoy the photos. There may be one or two where either my weakness as a photographer or the limitations of the camera I used then make the picture less than it could be, but I do believe they represent well some of the things I saw.

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