The sun rose this morning a few minutes after 7am, but this is what the sky looked like about 8 minutes before. There was a glorious orange glow and the clouds were lit up from underneath by the sun coming around the globe and shining through the atmosphere.

A hand raised in greeting, with a smiling face, or is it a hand raised in anger? Luckily, it was the former, with the smiling face of a friendly man just out of the shot greeting his friend in the plaid hat.

If you don’t like crowds, you should avoid Valencia during the Fallas festival. I rarely saw any trouble. The crowds were almost always in good mood or, at the very least, resigned to not moving very fast. It appears that moving fast can be accomplished if you hire someone in a high-vis vest who will…

If you visit Valencia during the first 19 days of the month of March you’ll be bombarded by the loud bangs of bangers going off, and fireworks every day. You’ll also come across elaborate Falla, or statues, dotted around the city. In the past, they were built of papier mache, but these days the main…

Wikipedia says, “A mascletà (pronounced in Valencian: [maskleˈta]) is a pyrotechnic event characterized by the achievement of a noisy and rhythmic composition that features, particularly during daytime, in street festivities; it is typical of the Valencian Community (Spain). It gets its name from the masclets (very loud firecrackers) that are tied by a wick to…

A glass fronted building on Wilton Terrace is reflected in the waters of the canal in Dublin earlier this month. I thought it might be the Canadian Embassy, but Google Maps shows it’s a slightly different building.

I spotted this fascinating looking fungus growing out a dead tree trunk last weekend. I’d no idea what kind of fungi they were until an AI identified them as a Polypore. This is a good sign, for that small forest I found them in, just outside Kenmare: Polypores have been used as indicator species of…

Another one from that walk in Kenmare a few days ago. I spotted this couple walking by with their dog, and then they stopped a distance away with the dog exploring the shallows. I love silhouettes, so this photo came to be.

A small bench is nestled among the trees in Kenmare, on the shores of Kenmare Bay. What caught my eye immediately were the three trees surrounding it. They frame the bench in a pleasing way, the bare branches providing a skeletal, natural, surrounding to the man made bench.

I spotted this little fella down in Kenmare, County Kerry the other day. A Robin, bold as brass, perched right there on a dead branch, posing like he owned the place. He stayed there for a few minutes surveying the area, and let me get a little closer for a photo.

The bench here at the end of a spit of land near Kenmare, Co Kerry has a plaque that says: HE NEVER LOOKS FOR PRAISES HE WAS NEVER ONE TO BOAST HE JUST GOES ON QUIETLY WORKING FOR THOSE HE LOVES THE MOST OUR DAD The pillar has a plaque that has some writing I…

I think there might have been something special in that paper bag and that husky wanted it. 🙂