KBev Photography : Travel : Europe Travel

Europe Travel Galleries

Streets of Spain (Madrid, Barcelona, and Valencia) (Jul 11) : I had an opportunity to travel to Spain for the first time and spent 10 days seeing 4 different cities - Madrid, Valencia, Toledo and Barcelona. From a photographer's standpoint, Barcelona is non-stop. La Rambla is packed with photo ops and it has "plazas" at either end where you can people-watch for hours. Madrid was nice, but a bit more industrial/ corporate to me. Valencia was the biggest surprise in that there was such variety between the old town, the market, and the museum campus. Toledo was straight out of the video game Assassin's Creed. If it hadn't been so hot out, it would have been perfect to spend a few days shooting.

*** Loosely speaking, I'll order this: people, street scenes, places, and signs... It's a pretty good mix.

Here are a bunch of my favorite shots from my wandering during that trip. Enjoy.

Streets of Spain (Madrid, Barcelona, and Valencia) (Jul 11)

Sights in Spain (Madrid, Barcelona, Toledo, and Valencia) (Jul 11) : Like normal, I separate the street photography from the sightseeing photography. If you find yourself in Spain with a tour book, you'll probably see a lot of these. Lots of churches to see, lots of neat buildings and statues. Did I mention lots of churches? By the end, we were all churched out and didn't even go to one of the most famous. The over-the-topness of it all was too much after a while.

There are, however, some really neat modern buildings in Valencia at the museum campus. I don't usually getgood shots of buildings, but these were OK.

Gallery is roughly in this order: Madrid, Toledo, Valencia, Barcelona, Madrid

In any case, here are some "pics a tourist would see" in Spain's Big three (plus Toledo).

Peace

Sights in Spain (Madrid, Barcelona, Toledo, and Valencia) (Jul 11)

Food and Markets of Spain (Jul 11) : the food is Spain gets a lot of rave reviews. It did live up to its billing, although the exchange rate was brutal. The Paella was very good, but oily in some places. They were very particular about how they made it too. We made the mistake of asking for a mix of ingredients that "we don't do" and thought we were in trouble! The tapas were very good too, but some of them were a bit more eccentric than my taste. Although I didn't try the rabbit, it is a fixture on many menus.

Here are a few shots of the food we ate and the food we saw in the markets. Both Valencia (great) and Barcelona (pretty good) had markets with all kidns of meat, fruit, and fish. It you want to spend a day shooting, I highly recommend Valencia's market.

I didn't play too much with the order here. it's a short gallery and worth a spin through all of it. Enjoy.

Food and Markets of Spain (Jul 11)

Budapest Sights (May 11) : Budapest is an awesome city. Period.

During our two full days there, we tried to see it all. The street photography is awesome and the sights (for sightseeing) were also great. Here's the gallery of sights. The street scenes are in the other gallery.

Lots of churches, buildings and statues. I tried to caption them as accurately as possible. This gallery also contains my best hand-held multi-photo panoric to date. I'm getting better at this... Enjoy.

Budapest Sights (May 11)

Rome Streets and Sights (May 11) : On the way to Prague, we decided to stop for a day in Rome. After an 8 hour, overnight flight from CHI, we hopped in a car and started 10 hours of sightseeing and walking! We spent the first 2 hours riding around with our guide, Suzi, who was awesome and very knowledgeable. The we walked around the Vatican for a few hours before walking back to our hotel. This gallery is some of my favorite shots from around Rome - both the sights and the streets. My graf is in another gallery - Rome had graffiti everywhere. I also have a separate gallery of photos from the Vatican.

Here it is... Rome in 24 hours....

Rome Streets and Sights (May 11)

Budapest Street Scenes (May 11) : As always, this gallery has my favorites first. We have 2 full days to wander around Budapest and made the most of it with 6-8 hours or walking each day. It is a photographers fantasyland with interesting buildings/ statues and very friendly people that don't mind a photo. In this gallery, i tried to group the photos into a few major sections: Favorites, Weddings, A massive rain downpour, People we saw/ met on the street, Skaters, and more. The downpour was my first time shooting in the rain. It was great.

Budapest Street Scenes (May 11)

Vatican (May 11) : An afternoon walking around the Vatican was a perfect way to spend our limited time in Rome. Our Guide, Suzi Bono, helped us get oriented and avoid the lines (using a guide at the Vatican is money well spent, using it on Suzi was money that was EXTREMELY well spent).

The Vatican was nice, and even though we didn't have a guide showing us around the museum, it was interesting (and I HIGHLY recommend it). That said, to me, it was "over the top". The paintings, the statues and the overall opulence were a bit much. I'm sure that, throughout history, this is why people tithe... so that the Pope and his boys could build themselves the ancient equivalent to Michael Jackson's Neverland ranch. No offense intended, but as I saw the amazing grandeur of the Vatican that thought was going through my mind so I thought i'd share it here.

Enjoy the photos. They are not ordered too much, but it is certainly worth taking the time to go through all of them.

Vatican (May 11)

Prague Streets and Scenes (May 11) : In the two half days I had free in Prague, I managed to get out and shoot some of the city. It was a very nice city, although on weekdays, there were a lot of people on the streets doing much. There were, however, tons of tour groups. Here are some of my favorite shots from my wanderings...

Prague Streets and Scenes (May 11)

London (May 07) : On a trip to London I took two evenings and wadering for miles (or kilometers, I suppose). Anyway, here's some of the photos I thought were worth sharing.

London (May 07)

Amsterdam (May 07) : On my second trip to Amsterdam, I had a few evenings to wander with the D70. Here are some shots from around the city.

Amsterdam (May 07)

Edinburgh Street Scenes (Apr 07) : Another work trip and more photos. During a week in Edinburgh, Scotland, I took hundreds of photos. Here are some edited scenes from around the city. Tourist scenes are in the "Sites and Scenery" gallery

Edinburgh Street Scenes (Apr 07)

Edinburgh Sites and Scenery (Apr 07) : During a trip to Scotland, I took photos around Edinburgh everyday. These are the sites and scenes from the City. My "Street" photos are in a separate gallery. Enjoy.

Edinburgh Sites and Scenery (Apr 07)

Food of Budapest (May 11) : Here are a bunch of food photos from our few days around Budapest. The ice cream (not shown) was probably our favorite part. On our last day we stopped three times. We stumbled across a Fois Grad Festival and they had lots of good looking food to shoot. Enjoy the pics!

Food of Budapest (May 11)

Paris Catacombs, Streets, and Sights (Sep 11) : I had the opportunity to play soccer at a tourney in Paris for a weekend, so I tacked a day onto the front and back to go shoot. Unfortunately, I got hurt on Day 1 of the tourney, so my second day shooting was a bit challenging. Luckily, i saw a lot of the city on my first day - especially the catacombs which was the only thing I wanted to make sure I saw (Shout out to Lisa M. who was an awesome tour guide and company for the afternoon - much appreciated). Since I didn't shoot a ton of stuff, I will put everything in one gallery (except a small graf gallery under hip hop). The batting order:

First, as always, my favorite 5-8 photos from the whole trip, then:
Catacombs --> Street Scenes --> photos from a daily memorial service for the Unknown soldier --> Sights

The catacombs were unlike anything I had ever seen before. Lots of bones, mostly the same types: skulls and legs. I wonder where all the ribs, hands and feet went. Anyway, it was worth checking out. You don't see something like that everyday. The line wasn't too bad.

The street scenes were really nice. People do hang out an awful lot and if you have the time, you can walk and shoot for hours.

The memorial service I saw takes place every evening at the Arc de Triomphe. Different towns from around France send an official and they do the service. This night, the town was Poissy.

The sights were nice, but I'm not a big fan of fancy buildings. Over course, the Tower has to be in here. It was much larger than I expected. The people in St. Louis show photos of this huge Arch, but it's really small in person. The Eiffel Tower was no joke. Well done, French folks.

I'll get back to Paris eventually. More shooting next time. Peace.

Paris Catacombs, Streets, and Sights (Sep 11)

I had the opportunity to play soccer at a tourney in Paris for a weeke ...

Updated: Sep 25, 2011 5:27am PST

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