Sri Lanka has hundreds of reclining Buddhas, but the 30-ft-long one at Isurumuni Temple in Anuradhapura, with its vibrant colours, really stands out.
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Best Buddha
Tag: photography
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Post-Soviet Spire
Strange to think that only five years before we toured the Baltic states, the spire of St. Olaf’s church — which ranks among the tallest in the world — was still used as a radio tower and surveillance point by the KGB in the Estonian capital.
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Stairway Song
“The stairways up to la Butte / Can make the wretched sigh / While windmill wings of the Moulin / Shelter you and I,” so goes the song. But if you ask me, going up the stairs to Montmartre can make anyone sigh.
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The Garden Of Europe
Keukenhof in the western Netherlands is one of the largest flower gardens in the world. I was there some 24 years after the garden first allowed visitors to admire its millions — yes, millions — of tulips, hyacinths, daffodils, orchids, roses, carnations, irises, lilies, etc.
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School’s Out
Once a quiet fishing village in northeast Malta, Sliema became the island’s first tourist resort. And with all the kids running around and playing on the promenade that day, it was easy to forget that Sliema means “peace” in Maltese.
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The Gift Of Music
My grandson has quite the collection of exotic instruments that I’ve brought to him from my travels. That includes this Chinese wind instrument called sheng, made of several reed pipes.
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Rainbow Houses
In Norse mythology, Bifröst is a rainbow bridge that connects the world to Asgard, the realm of the gods. Could the colored houses on the western coast of Norway be a modern-day nod to the country’s folk stories?
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How Do You Even Get There?
Bled Castle in northwestern Slovenia sure looks impregnable, perched as it is atop a steep cliff more than 100 meters above Lake Bled. From where I took this photo, it actually seemed unreachable.
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Quebec’s Bison
A 15 minute-drive from downtown Québec City, the Île d’Orléans on the Saint Lawrence River is simply stunning, with its hills, valleys and waterfalls — not to mention a couple of mighty bison.
LlanfairÂpwllgwyngyllÂgogeryÂchwyrnÂdrobwllÂllanÂtysilioÂgogoÂgoch — or Llanfairpwllgwyngyll, for “short.” What looks like an authentic Welsh name (it means “Saint Mary’s Church in the hollow of the white hazel near the rapid whirlpool and the Church of Saint Tysilio of the red cave”) is actually a 1860s publicity stunt meant to attract tourists to this village on the island […]
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Aesthetic Canon
My 4-year-old daughter and my father could not look more 1960s if they tried, posing by — and on — a cannon on the square in front of the Prince’s Palace of Monaco.
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Mauritian Melody
This group of Mauritian musicians were having a picnic on the beach, in the ocean breeze, to the sounds of the ravanne goatskin drum and the triangle — traditional instruments of the Séga genre.
On our way from Lima to the world’s highest navigable body of water, Lake Titicaca in the Andes, we stopped in Arequipa and enjoyed walking in the arcade beneath the Municipalidad, near the Plaza de Armas. We were advised to spend a day or two in the city before heading higher into the mountains so […]
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Portugal In China
In central China’s Xi’an, we spent a memorable evening at a fancy hotel listening to traditional Chinese music. (The lady in the foreground was playing the guzheng, the one in the back the pipa). But what I remember most had nothing to do with the music: We were sitting next to Portugal’s then-President Mario Soares, […]
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The Bishop’s Beard
I could never have been a Greek Orthodox bishop: True, the black cassock and the “chimney-pot” style hat look good — but I like to keeep my beard trimmed.
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Belem Lilies
In Belém, the gateway to the Amazon River in northern Brazil, we were able to admire impressive examples of the Victoria amazonica (or Victoria regia, as it used to be called) which grows mostly in this region. The largest water lily on Earth, we were told it could sustain the weight of a small dog.
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From A To M’Zab
Ghardaïa is “only” 1,700 kilometers (1050 miles) away from my house, as the crow flies. But 45 years ago, to get to the “the pearl of the oasis” in northern Sahara’s M’zab region, my wife and I first drove down to the port of Marseille in our Peugeot 404, took a ferry to Annaba, visited […]
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Dressed To Learn
Seven pairs of polished shoes, four cravats and two plus-fours trousers … In the 68 years since, the dress code for French 16-year-olds has changed just a bit. Here I was, right in the middle of this shot, with six friends from my Greek-Latin Première class.
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Water Over The Bridge
For 2,000 years, the Roman aqueduct of Segovia, in central Spain, has defied the passage of time. With the French Pont du Gard (of which I’ll show you a picture soon), it’s one of the best preserved examples of its kind.
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Forged In Roadside Fire
With only the most basic tools at his disposal, this roadside blacksmith in Jaisalmer, in the Indian state of Rajasthan, managed to forge very robust knives.
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Holy Merchandising
The village of Fatima in central Portugal became known worldwide in 1917, when three young shepherds said the Virgin Mary appeared to them. Since then, she appears in various forms and packaging to whoever steps into one of Fatima’s religious shops.
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Pilgrim And Painter
The plastered façades of the mudbrick houses in and around Luxor, in eastern Egypt, are decorated with memorable episodes in the life of their owners. On many of the houses, one can see a large space devoted to the representation of the owners’ pilgrimage to Mecca, or Hajj, one of the most important experiences in […]
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The Lion’s Claw
The paws are all that remain of the Sigiriya, the “Lion Rock” in central Sri Lanka. The giant sculpture was meant to guard the entrance to a now-destroyed palace — and judging only by the size of one of its claw (this is my wife sitting next to it), one can imagine it was doing […]
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Far From The War
The fishermen of Nazaré and their wives seemed far away from the turmoil their country was experiencing: A mere eight months before we visited the remote seaside village, the Guinea-Bissau War of Independence between Portugal and its colony broke out — an 11-year-long war during which thousands of soldiers and civilians on both sides would […]
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Back To New France
In the northeast of Canada“s New Brunswick province, the Village Historique Acadien depicts life as it was between the late 18th and early 20th century in Acadia, the area settled by French colonizers in North America. Dressed in period costumes, the village’s actors brought ancestral trades to life, allowing us to travel back through time, […]
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Mobile Crocodile
No, this Nile crocodile didn’t get lost all the way down in South Africa’s Kruger National Park. This scary predator can be found throughout much of the African continent, and is best photographed with a telephoto lens.
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Heart Of Stone
Many shapes hide in the pink ganite of the calanques de Piana, on the French island of Corsica. Given the right angle, you may see a monk, a lion, a devil’s head — or in this case, a heart.
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The Pyramids’ Potters
A stone’s throw from the Great Pyramids, these traditional potters used a peculiar, ancient technique: While we’re used to seeing the clay turn on a wheel, the man here used a kind of crank to carve the inside of his bowl.
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So Long Sarajevo
This one is for the History books: Sarajevo would be almost entirely destroyed during the Bosnian war some 20 years after I took this picture.
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Bamboo Orchestra
Having myself long been the conductor of a choir, it was only natural that I should snap a picture of this adorable orchestra of bamboo flutes in the Indonesian island of Sulawesi.
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Where The Sun Never Sets
As strange as it sounds, this daytime photo could very well have been taken at night: My wife and I were on our way back from Norway“s North Cape, where we watched the midnight sun go down, flirt with the horizon, and go back up.
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In The Name
If, like me, you believe in the truth of Latin roots, we can agree that the beautiful Corsican town of Bonifacio was aptly named: It means “well-fated.”
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Back On The Horse
Le petit-fils (grandson) is back from his vacation through seven states in the southeastern United States. He tells me that the horse head hitching posts I saw in New Orleans 23 years ago are still there — though they’re not used by the innumerable carriage tours that have now invaded the city’s French Quarter.
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Holiday Hiatus
My partner in crime, le petit-fils (grandson) Bertrand, is following in my footsteps and touring the Southeastern United States. During this hiatus, take a look back at all the places we’ve already been in My Grand-Père’s World …
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All Along The Watchtower
From the top of the cathedral’s towers, the Notre-Dame gargoyles — designed by genius Gothic Revival architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc — have been watching over the roofs of Paris, the Tour Saint-Jacques and the Sacré-Coeur since the 1840s.
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The Three Ages Of Spain
On a hot April day on the Plaza Mayor (Main Square) of Cuenca in central Spain, generations intermingle as activity resumes — after the compulsory afternoon siesta.
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The Oyster Is Your World
This is how they used to farm oysters on the Île d’Oléron in western France: using tiles as cultch for the mollusks to attach to. This kind of traditional method has since largely disappeared.
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Unforgettable Landmarks
Some landmarks are baffling. Why has the statue of a naked little boy urinating into a fountain’s basin become so popular? More than the Manneken Pis, I remember Brussels for the only sauerkraut with champagne I’ve eaten in my life. Now that is a landmark.
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Pineapple Express
In Brazil, you can buy delicious pineapples at roadside stalls pretty much everywhere. And we did.
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Familiar Parade
During the summer months, the Ceremonial Guard performs the “Changing of the Guard” ceremony on the lawns of Ottawa’s Parliament Hill. The uniforms are very similar to those of the British Queen’s Guards, and are just one feature of the Canadian capital that surprised me in how much it looked and felt like capitals back […]