Blautopf

Blue Monday is hosted by Sally.
( Wishing Sally a speedy recovery!)

This is the Blautopf (German for Bowl of the Blau, "blau" means blue) a spring  I visited last month in Southern Germany.  My picture is straight out of the camera, the intense blue on a sunny day is absolutely stunning and it is "the result of chemical properties of limestone densely distributed in the water".

More on this blue spring can be found here, interesting legends and description of the spring, much better told by the wiki than by me!

luna

Mellow Yellow - Blue Monday

The supermoon as seen last Satuday, it was the best show in town. Straight out of the camera.

Did you watch the perigean moon? The moon was at its closest point to Earth since March 

1993 . (Blogger is acting funny today...)

a touch of yellow and a touch of blue

Mellow Yellow Monday   ☂  Blue Monday

I recently came back from the Southern Hemisphere, a trip I planned to spend quality time with family and friends. I was seldom alone, I seldom looked for a chance to photograph subjects other than smiling faces. One morning, however, while at a friends' condo facing the Pacific Ocean, I took a short walk along the garden and found these blooms. And some other beauties which will be the subject of future posts.

message in a bottle

MacroMonday ~  ~     Mellow Yellow Monday  ~  ~     Blue Monday

This is a tiny bottle, which contains shells and sand from Hawaii, together with a wonderful message of friendship through blogging! You see the little bottle below in the middle of that t-shirt.

Yes, look, look, look what came with the mail: our wonderful  Quilly and Thom hosted the 12 days of Xmas, Island Style  last December and yours truly was one of the lucky winners !! Thanks so much for the goodies, Thom,  love every single item, the sticky notes are already in my purse, the clip magnet on my fridge, we haven't eaten the nuts nor the dried mango (yet!). It was Xmas in January for the first time in my life! 

Columbus Day

Blue skies for Blue Monday

Tomorrow is a national holiday in Spain, celebrating the anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the Americas, specifically the Bahamas, which occurred on October 12, 1492. Which makes the current one a wonderful short week!

This is the Columbus monument in Seville (see "1492" on top?), more precisely in the Murillo Gardens. A picture of the entire monument can be seen here. 

she came in through the bathroom window

And had a terrible time finding her way out...so Mr Mar got a ladder to pick the bird up, the poor little thing was exhausted and thirsty. But recovered very fast and left us, without even leaving a name...at least I had a second to have her picture taken, 

Mellow Yellow Monday    ۞    ۞  Blue Monday

bit of yellow, bit of blue, big puppy

This is Puppy, a 43-ft /13 m tall floral sculpture of a West Highland White Terrier puppy -executed in a variety of flowers on a steel substructure, with an internal irrigation system- by Jeff Koons , which I photographed  in front of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, two years ago. More about Puppy here.  I love this flower sculpture from my archives, it always makes me smile and that's why it is posted here again.

Blue Monday, Mellow Yellow Monday

these feet are made for dancing

Ball de bastons (Catalan for "stick dance") is the name of a ritual weapon dance spread throughout Europe and the rest of the Iberian area. English and Welsh Morris dances are well-known relatives to these traditions.  In the most common set, two opposite rows of dancers - who carry one or two sticks (bastons) , about 40-50 cm long and 5 cm thick- elaborate some patterns of stick-clashing. Info from the net. It all requires much coordination!! Find short videos ( 50 secs) of this kind of dance posted in the net here and here.

The occasion was last Tuesday's festival in my village.   I particularly like the ornaments, the little bells make an angel sound when the dancers move... and they are constantly moving, so getting the picture below was not an easy task! The canvas shoes are espadrilles.

Blue Monday              Mellow Yellow Monday

city blues

Blue Monday

La Pedrera or Casa Mila in Barcelona

blue apotropaic

Blue Monday

Attempts to ward off the curse of the evil eye has resulted in a number of talismans in many cultures. As a class, they are called "apotropaic" (Greek for "prophylactic" or "protective", literally: "turns away") talismans, meaning that they turn away or turn back harm. Source

This is the talisman seen all over in Turkey, in all sizes, as magnets, in jewelry, all manner of decoration, you name it!

from the street gallery

Blue Monday * Mellow Yellow Monday

"Peace to every living being on earth, look after everything which needs life ".  Painted for Lorenz, Luca, Livio, and for all children of the world, according to the bottom line. Excuse my free and unprofessional  translation, poetic words are not my strength!! This is one painting  - from  about 100 - from the East Side Gallery in Berlin, probably the largest open air gallery of the world :  After the Wall came down in 1989, hundreds of artists from all over the world gathered and transformed the eastside of the Wall that had been untouchable up to now, with their paintings, giving the Wall a new face in a new time. 

It is a fascinating place and an international memorial for freedom. More on the gallery here.  More images can be seen  here.

Day 3: the Moselle river

Day 3 of our 10-day Germany trip in September with a rental black M*ini (it wasn't pink, Horsoon!) found us  in Longuich, right by the Moselle river . This is the  first picture I took of the river (click to enlarge, see the sign?? Mosel) , from the bridge  during our short walk after breakfast, with vinyards in the background. And a nice statue, which I forgot to photograph more closely...

On our way to Bernkastel-Kues (next post!) we just had to stop to take a look inside the Festzelt (party tent).  Little did I know I was going to find huge yellow decorations there:

Mellow Yellow Monday

The banners hanging from the ceiling displayed quotes related to wine, and wine tasting,  the first one reads something like  "God didn't want the good wine to go to waste, that's why he gave us thirst "...oh, well, it rhymes in German!

And we also found a  cute little guy for  Blue Monday.

Day Two: A Bit of Trier...

Day Two of our 10-day Germany trip found us stopping for a little bit (pun intended!) in Bitburg (license plate pictured on the left), whose major company is the Bitburger Brauerei, one of the largest beer manufacturers in the world and home of the Bit beer. A detail of the entrance to the brewery pictured below is my blue and yellow (rather gold...) entry for both

Blue Monday ♬ ♬ Mellow Yellow Monday

Then we drove the rental M*ini Cooper to Trier, which happens to be the oldest city in Germany, founded in or before 16 BC ... which makes it the oldest city I have ever been to!.... A major landmark is the Porta Nigra (Black Gate), pictured below, which has been designated a World Heritage Site.



The Porta Nigra was built in grey sandstone between 186 and 200 AD...In Roman times, the Porta Nigra was part of a system of four city gates, one of which stood at each side of the roughly rectangular Roman city. The Porta Nigra guarded the northern entry to the Roman city, while the Porta Alba (White Gate) was built in the east, the Porta Media (Middle Gate) in the south, and the Porta Inclyta (Famous Gate) in the west, next to the Roman Bridge crossing the Moselle River. Source


Trier is also the birthplace of Karl Marx, as we learned there.

More to come, of course!

blue petals

Macro Monday ♬ ♬ Blue Monday

Please name this flower!! (see the update below!!) it decorates a central street where I live, it's beautiful to see the blue carpet next to the busy street.

Thankful Update: thanks to the wonderful quilly (I am forever grateful for her botanic help all the time!) I will now remember it is an Agapanthus


Thanks, Thom!!

napkin holder

Macro Monday ♬ ♬ Blue Monday

Update: seen at a small fish restaurant, therefore the pattern...