Category Archives: Cityscapes

My Favorite Photos of France – Part 5

The Arc de Triomphe
The Arc de Triomphe

In my previous 4 posts, I have shown 71 photos from the first 9 ½ days on the French Waterways vacation that we went on last July. This post will show 20 more photos that were taken over the next 3 ½ days. All of these photos were taken within the city of Paris.

We arrived in Paris aboard the high speed train; the Train à Grande Vitesse (TGV). It was Saturday, July 26th, which was the day before the Tour de France bicycle ride would end near the Arc de Triomphe on the Champs-Élysées.

The opening photo was taken at that location The bicycle riders in my photo are not the racers, but are some of the bicycling enthusiasts that pay for the privilege of riding the entire distance of 3,664 km (2276 miles) of the course – one day ahead of the real racers.

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Barb and I walked from our hotel the 10 blocks or so to the Arc de Triomphe (with 2 other ladies who had signed up for the 3 day extension in Paris). This monument was completed in 1836, and its size is truly astonishing! It stands 164 feet high (50m), and the large vault is 95.8 feet high (29m).

At the Arc de Triomphe
At the Arc de Triomphe

After dinner that same evening, others in our Vantage Travel group thought it would be fun to strike out on our own to see if we could get to the Eiffel Tower and go on a river boat ride in the “City of Light”. That would involve using a subway system in a land where we didn’t know the language very well….

The Eiffel Tower at dusk
The Eiffel Tower at dusk

As we waited to board the boat, I managed to get a couple of photos during twilight.

The Eiffel Tower at dusk
The Eiffel Tower at dusk

Darkness quickly came upon us as we started up the Seine River.

Boat ride on the Seine River through downtown Paris
Boat ride on the Seine River through downtown Paris

The Palais Bourbon is where the French National Assembly sits, and is illuminated at night to look like the French Tricolor (flag of France).

Boat ride on the Seine River through downtown Paris
Boat ride on the Seine River through downtown Paris

I carried my tripod that evening. After the boat ride, I put it to good use.

The Eiffel Tower at night
The Eiffel Tower at night

It was late – very late – when we finally made our way back through the subway system to our hotel that night. We were up early the next morning, and on the bus for a City Tour of Paris.

The Eiffel Tower in the morning.
The Eiffel Tower in the morning.

We were let off the bus on the Champ de Mars for about 15 minutes to get some great photos of the Eiffel Tower.

The Eiffel Tower in the morning.
The Eiffel Tower in the morning.

About an hour later we were walking toward the Notre-Dame de Paris, and this was our view of it from across the Seine River (we were on the south shore).

Notre-Dame de Paris
Notre-Dame de Paris

Note the flying buttresses and those two large round stained glass windows. The bottom one is the south “rose window”.

We crossed the bridge over the Seine, and waited to enter the church from the west (left side in the photo above). This is some of the elaborate stone work above the entrance on the west side.

Notre-Dame de Paris
Notre-Dame de Paris

And here is a view of that south “rose window” that you saw earlier from the outside.

Notre-Dame de Paris
Notre-Dame de Paris

Since it was late Sunday morning, there was an actual Catholic church service going on while we were inside this spectacular building. (Our tour guide whispered into his microphone that we listened to over our radio receivers.)

Notre-Dame de Paris
Notre-Dame de Paris

Afterwards, as we waited outside, I took this photo of the archway above one of the two main entrances on the west side of the church.

Notre-Dame de Paris
Notre-Dame de Paris

About 3 hours later, we were walking around in the Montmartre area when I found this colorful display of cooking aprons that were for sale.

Walking and eating in the Montmartre area.
Walking and eating in the Montmartre area.

Montmartre is a hill in the north of Paris, primarily known for the white-domed Sacré-Cœur Basilica (Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Paris) on its summit and as a nightclub district.

The Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Paris
The Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Paris

From virtually the same location that I took that photo, I turned around and took this mini-panorama photo of Paris. (The Eiffel Tower is located further to the right.)

View of Paris from the base of  Sacré-Cœur Basilica
View of Paris from the base of Sacré-Cœur Basilica

The next day, we joined about 20,000 of our fellow man and went on a tour of the Musée du Louvre (Louvre Museum). There were so many people in that building, that the only photos that you could get without people in them were photos of the ceiling.

Artwork on the walls and ceiling at the Musée du Louvre
Artwork on the walls and ceiling at the Musée du Louvre

Fortunately, it was a beautiful ceiling!

Artwork on the walls and ceiling at the Musée du Louvre
Artwork on the walls and ceiling at the Musée du Louvre

On our last day of our 3 day stay in Paris, Barb and I went all by ourselves from our hotel, using the Paris Metro (subway), walking across the Tuileries Garden and over the Seine River to the Musée d’Orsay (Museum of Orsay). This art museum was originally a railway station.

The Musée d'Orsay behind the Grand Bassin Pond in the Tuileries Garden
The Musée d’Orsay behind the Grand Bassin Pond in the Tuileries Garden

We saw some incredible works of art at that museum, but unfortunately photography of the artwork was strictly prohibited.

OK, so now I’ve shared with you 91 of my favorite photos that I took while in France this past July. Although I showed them in chronological order, there are too many gaps between some of them to tell the full story. In my next blog post I intend to “fix that” for those who are interested in seeing a more complete story of this fabulous trip.

Thank you for visiting my blog.

My Favorite Photos of France – Part 2

Walking tour of the Medieval town of Viviers.
Walking tour of the Medieval town of Viviers.

In my previous post, I shared 19 photos of our first 3 days on the French Waterways vacation that we went on last July. This post will show 15 more photos that were taken over the next 2 days.

The opening photo and the next two were all taken after we hiked up from the Rhone River to the small walled city of Viviers.

Jana and Barb at scenic overlook in Viviers.
Jana and Barb at scenic overlook in Viviers.

This small town was built during the Medieval Ages. There were only one or two streets that a car could travel short distances on.

Rooftop of the buildings in the Medieval town of Viviers
Rooftop of the buildings in the Medieval town of Viviers

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Chandellier inside Medieval church in Viviers.
Chandellier inside Medieval church in Viviers.

The chandelier above was in the Viviers Cathedral, which construction was started on in the 11th century.

Nuclear power plants on the Rhone River, north of Viviers.
Nuclear power plants on the Rhone River, north of Viviers.

That afternoon, it drizzled and rained on us as we cruised further north up the Rhone River. About noon the next day we arrived in the city of Vienne.

From our docked river boat in Vienne.
From our docked river boat in Vienne.

While we were waiting to waiting to disembark on our walking tour of Vienne, I went up to the top of our boat. While I was there, this French gentleman cruised past us in his houseboat.

A houseboat passes by our docked river boat in Vienne.
A houseboat passes by our docked river boat in Vienne.

Now here is something that you just don’t see in the very often:

A Medieval house on the left, next to some Roman ruins in Vienne.
A Medieval house on the left, next to some Roman ruins in Vienne.

The house with the criss-cross timbers was built in the Medieval Ages, and they built it right next to the arched wall that the Romans had built!

We hiked up to the Chapelle Notre Dame de la Salette in the drizzle and light rain. It was worth the effort, as we were rewarded with this spectacular view of the Rhone River winding into town from the north.

Scenic view from above Vienne, France.
Scenic view from above Vienne, France.

While standing in the same place, but looking straight down, we had a great view of what remains of an ancient Roman amphitheater.

Roman amphitheatre in Vienne.
Roman amphitheatre in Vienne.

Since we had hiked up the hill to the Chapelle Notre Dame de la Salette, we went inside to get out of the rain.

Chapelle Notre Dame de la Salette, a medieval church above Vienne, France.
Chapelle Notre Dame de la Salette, a medieval church above Vienne, France.

If that looks somewhat odd, it is because it is a composite of two different exposures: one for the inside of the church, and one for the stained glass windows.

Jana and Barb on the walking tour of Vienne, France.
Jana and Barb on the walking tour of Vienne, France.

It was a good thing that my camera and lens are pretty much weatherproof, as I didn’t have an umbrella like Jana and Barb did.

When we got back down to the city, we got to see a still-standing Roman temple; the early Imperial temple of Augustus.

Roman temple in Vienne.
Roman temple in Vienne.

We also went inside of the Cathedral of St. Maurice, which was built over a long period of time; between 1052 and 1533.

Medieval church in Vienne.
Medieval church in Vienne.

I should mention that I only took one camera to France; an Olympus OM-D E-M1. Although I did take 5 lenses with me, I only used two of them, and ALL of the photos that I will share in this 5 Part series were taken with one single lens; the Olympus 12-40mm f/2.8 PRO.

In addition, every photo that I have shared up to this point was taken while hand-holding the camera. This next photo is different, as I used my travel tripod and the self-timer on the camera.

Group photo of our travel mates on this trip
Group photo of our travel mates on this trip

This photo of our entire group was taken at 9:20 PM, and since it was getting dark pretty fast, I bumped up the ISO to 400, but even with the aperture wide-open at f/2.8, the shutter was open 1/20th of a second. After all of the wine that we had consumed at dinner, it’s amazing that nobody wobbled into a blurred state….

Thank you for visiting my blog.

My Favorite Photos of France – Part 1

Boats on the Rhone River in Avignon, France
Boats on the Rhone River in Avignon, France

Last July Barb, her close friend Jana, and I joined 13 others on a French Waterways vacation. Barb and I also added on the optional 3-day extension to see the city of Paris.

I don’t want to tell any long, detailed stories about this fantastic vacation, but I do want to share some of my favorite photos that I took. I would say that I have 500 “favorites”. I obviously cannot, and do not want to post 500 photos into a web site formatted for blog posting! I have about 90 that I intend to post here over the next few weeks.

The photo above was taken from the opened window of our cabin on our first morning of the river cruise. We were on the Rhône River, on the western edge of Avignon, France.

The City Wall of Avignon
The City Wall of Avignon

The city wall around Avignon was built during the Medieval Ages.

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Before going through the entrance to that city wall, I turned around to take this photo of the giant Ferris Wheel.

Avignon Ferris Wheel
Avignon Ferris Wheel

Inside the city wall, the church on the left is Notre Dame des Doms, while the building on the right is the Palais des Papes (the Pope’s Palace).

Notre Dame des Doms behind the Pope's Palace in Avignon, France
Notre Dame des Doms behind the Pope’s Palace in Avignon, France

After our official guided tour of Avignon, Barb, Jana, and I went out again on our own to explore some of the other sites in Avignon.

We walked north from our boat upstream of the Rhône about ½ mile to see what is left of the Pont Saint-Bénézet (aka Pont d’Avignon).

Pont Saint-Bénézet (aka Pont d'Avignon)
Pont Saint-Bénézet (aka Pont d’Avignon)

We also went on a self-guided tour within the Pope’s Palace.

Inside the Pope's Palace in Avignon, France
Inside the Pope’s Palace in Avignon, France

The next day, we left the city of Avignon by bus, in order to visit a few other tourist attractions in the area. In the morning, we went to the Pont du Gard.

Pont du Gard aquaduct built by The Romans
Pont du Gard aquaduct built by The Romans

The Pont du Gard (literally: Gard Bridge) is an ancient Roman aqueduct bridge, built in the 1st century, that crosses the Gardon River, from which it takes its name.

Pont du Gard aquaduct built by The Romans
Pont du Gard aquaduct built by The Romans

In the afternoon we drove to the Medieval town of Les Baux-de-Provence, which sits high upon a very rocky hill.

View from Les Baux-de-Provence Medieval City
View from Les Baux-de-Provence Medieval City

In this ancient town, I found it visually ironic to find this guy engaged in a thoroughly modern activity….

Modern smartphone user in the Medieval town of Les Baux-de-Provence
Modern smartphone user in the Medieval town of Les Baux-de-Provence

On our third morning of our cruise, our boat left its dock in Avignon.

View of Avignon from the Rhone River
View of Avignon from the Rhone River

The boat, the ms River Discovery II, slowly passed the Pont Saint-Bénézet (aka Pont d’Avignon).

View of Pont Saint-Bénézet (aka Pont d'Avignon)
View of Pont Saint-Bénézet (aka Pont d’Avignon)

The boat then turned around and headed back towards Avignon, so that we could take the deeper fork of the Rhone River to the west.

View of Pont Saint-Bénézet (aka Pont d'Avignon)
View of Pont Saint-Bénézet (aka Pont d’Avignon)

Cruising relatively long distances on a river usually includes going through a system of locks. We came our first one, the Ecluse d’Avignon, just a few miles north of Avignon.

Rising with the water in the Ecluse d'Avignon lock on the Rhone River.
Rising with the water in the Ecluse d’Avignon lock on the Rhone River.

We were headed to the Châteauneuf-du-Pape wine region.

Grapes in the Châteauneuf-du-Pape wine region.
Grapes in the Châteauneuf-du-Pape wine region.

We rode along on very modern, air conditioned buses through some very rocky terrain for vineyards.

Tour of the Châteauneuf-du-Pape wine region.
Tour of the Châteauneuf-du-Pape wine region.

From very near the remnants of The Pope’s New Castle (Châteauneuf-du-Pape), we were presented with this very nice scenic overlook above the town also named Châteauneuf-du-Pape.

View over Châteauneuf-du-Pape, looking back down the Rhone River towards Avignon
View over Châteauneuf-du-Pape, looking back down the Rhone River towards Avignon

We walked down into the small, medieval town and spent about an hour investigating this charming little village.

Downtown Châteauneuf-du-Pape
Downtown Châteauneuf-du-Pape

The last photo that I want to show you from that 3rd day of our cruise was taken hand-held from our moving boat while our group was partying and drinking.

Sunset from the Rhone River north of Bollène.
Sunset from the Rhone River north of Bollène.

Besides just being another sunset photo, it does show 4 sources of electricity that we saw the French use: nuclear, wind, solar, and hydro.

I think that photo is a very fitting one to end part 1 of what I expect will be 5 part series to show my favorite 90 or so photos from this year’s vacation to France.

Thank you for visiting my (infrequent) blog.

Discovering My Long-Lost Time Capsule

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Last Sunday, I was rummaging around in one of our storage closets, where I had remembered seeing a box of old shorts that had become too big to wear. I was now tired of my size 36″ waist shorts being too tight, so I had succumbed to the disgusting reality that I now needed to get out those old size 38″ shorts again. After I got onto our short step ladder, I saw that there was a small box on top of the box labeled “Shorts – 38”, so I took that box down and opened the lid to see what the heck other useless junk we’d been saving around here.

What I found made me immediately start to tremble with excitement! This wasn’t a box of junk. This was a box I had been looking for for years. This was my box of 35mm slides!

After I put all of the “big boy” shorts into the washing machine, I sat down at the kitchen table and sorted out my new found treasure. Fortunately, inside the box I also had a GAF Pana-Vue 1 Lighted 2×2 Slide Viewer. Today, I am absolutely shocked to see that B&H still sells the exact same model that I have!

I was thankful that I never installed the size C batteries, as I was certain that they would have been corroded and ruin the electrical contacts. Instead, I just plugged in the AC adapter into the wall, pushed down on the light bar, and instant glow! The light bulb still worked, but man, was it ever dusty inside of this thing. A few blasts of air from my Rocket Blower, and I was all set to find out what sort of photos that I would find.

There was only one specific box of slides that I had been looking for, and it contained photos that I had taken inside of a famous local nightclub / concert hall just a few nights before it closed its doors forever. Those photos will definitely be used sometime soon for a blog post, as I am sure that they will be of interest to many other longtime Austinites!

That box of photos was plainly marked “AWHQ 12-27-80”, but only a few of the other 11 boxes were labeled in any way whatsoever. One said “Cats Jan. 1982”, one said “Fireworks Fujichrome 50”, and the others said “Zilker Gardens”, “Foreigner 4  1-17-1982, Cars 1-24-82”, “Lake Travis 3-81”, “Good Shots 1” and “Good Shots 2”.

Obviously, I didn’t know anything about proper library management of photos 30 years ago! Even after I went fully digital in 2004, and right up until sometime in mid-2008, everything, and I mean everything that was worth keeping, ended up in a photo album. There are about 20 of these behemoths on a couple of bookshelves in one of our spare bedrooms. I listed the range of dates inside the front cover for the time span that was contained within that album, but rarely did I write any descriptions about who was in the photo, or where it was taken.

I got my first “real camera” in 1980. It was a Canon AE-1, and I got it with a 50mm f/1.8 lens. A year or so later I bought two more used Canon FD lenses from and advertisement in the newspaper. One was a 100mm f/2.8 macro lens that came with an extension tube. The other was a 200mm f/2.8 that came with a 2x extender.

I mention that because I know for certain that this is all of the camera equipment that I had when all of the slides in this box were taken. Well, yes, I also had a Canon flash and an inexpensive Manfrotto tripod… And about 1987 or 1988 I replaced my camera body with a used Canon A-1 and also bought a 28mm lens. There wasn’t any Image Stabilzation back then – that’s what a tripod was for. The lenses were all manual focus back then, too. There weren’t any High ISO sensors, either. I am rather certain that the highest sensitivity slide film that I ever used was ASA (ISO) 64. (Now I also shot a lot of ASA 400 print film, but slides were slow. Very slow.)

So I sat at the kitchen table for nearly 3 hours last Sunday trying to figure out what I had. I got through 10 of the 12 boxes. I took yesterday off of work as a vacation day and used that time to go back through, from the beginning, and document what was in each box. 5 hours later, I had finished that task.

The photo above was the first slide in the box labeled “Zilker Park”, and so I can only say that this view of downtown Austin was taken from Zilker Park, or somewhere very near to there, like Barton Hills Dr. What I do know, is that this photo was taken in the spring of 1981, and I was using Ektachrome slide film, which I mailed to Kodak for development. I’d guess that it was ASA 64 film.

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The photo below was also taken during the spring or summer of 1981, also on Ektachrome. This was a few months after the Armadillo World Headquarters had closed its doors.

Yesterday evening was the very first time in my life that I have ever scanned a slide into my computer. I am using an Epson V500 scanner, with the Epson Scan software. I played around with the settings in the histogram area for several attempts before I got something close to what I could work with. I’m not sure exactly what Digital ICE does, but it does seem to remove most of the smaller dust spots. (I have cleaned the glass surfaces with a lens cleaner, and blown the dust away from the scanner and the slide using my Rocket Blower.) I can get a pretty decent TIFF file from the Epson software, but thank God that Lightroom 5 can take it from there. Add a little Exposure, a little Clarity, bring down the Blacks, and it’s pretty much done.

This next photo was the very next photo in Box #9 after the Armadillo sign photo. I must have gone about 1 block over to Auditorium shores and taken this photo of downtown Austin.

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I hope that these photos look decent enough when you view them from my blog post. I scanned them at 4800 dpi, and honestly, when I zoomed in for my first 100% pixel-peeping view, I was very surprised, and disappointed by all of the graininess that I saw. These photos are in some serious need of sharpening, but so far my attempts to do that only bring out the graininess even more. I have played around with the Luminance Noise Reduction slider, and that helps. I have also used the Masking slider for the Sharpening amount, and that helps some too. My inspection of these 1200 pixel wide JPGs that I am putting here look surprisingly good, considering what I saw on the full resolution versions. I’ve been at this for less than 24 hours so far, so hopefully I will get a better with some more practice!

This next photo should interest a few of you. This was taken on July 4th of 1981 (I think). I was on the north shore of Auditorium Shores along Town Lake (as it was known then), and the rounded top building behind the crowd on the south shore is the no-longer-existing Palmer Auditorium. This is the facility that my high school graduation took place in. That building was demolished years ago, and this is where the Long Center is located today!

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Even though I still have to use this very low-tech Pana-Vue slide viewer to see what “treasures” I have uncovered, I am very glad that I have a modern scanner, attached to a modern computer, running modern software that allows me to bring these photo to an acceptable digital state.

Contrast that to a photo that I took some time in late 1981 or very early 1982. I was still in electrical engineering school at The University of Texas here in Austin. This was my desk where I spent countless hours doing my studies. On the left was my “computer”.

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Oh, it was a real computer, alright. A Radio Shack Color Computer 2. The monitor was a 19″ Motorola Quasar TV. To the right of my monitor sits a little tape deck that was used for storage. That was before the 3.5″ floppy disk was widely accepted. This was about 3 years before I spent $2000 on the very first Apple Macintosh computer (in 1984)!

Maybe now you can realize what I realized as I viewed these 12 boxes of slides. It was like opening up a time capsule that I had buried more than half of my lifetime ago. Austin had changed. Technology has changed. I have changed!

Thank you for stopping by and visiting my blog today.

The Old and The New on Congress Avenue

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A couple of weekends ago, we had a lot of rain here in Austin. We were all constrained to indoor activities on Friday, Saturday, through Sunday morning, June 2nd, 2013. Nobody complained, as we are always grateful when it rains in Austin, especially in the summer months.

When the rain stopped, and the clouds had parted, I decided to head out and take some photos. I was somewhat tired of the macro photos of the flowers in my neighborhood, so I decided to head to downtown Austin. It was almost 2:00 PM when I parked my CR-V on Willie Nelson Blvd (2nd Street), just east of Congress Avenue.

That put me just south of the construction site of the J. W. Marriot luxury hotel, and 1 block east of The Austonian (seen in the opening photo, which is currently the tallest building in the City of Austin at 56 stories – 683 feet (208 m) tall.

I was travelling light. I brought only my Olympus OM-D E-M5 camera, with the Olympus 12-50mm f/3.5-6.3 lens, and my WhiBal card. No camera bag, no tripod, not even a spare battery. Absentmindedly, I left my hat in the car.

I crossed Congress Avenue to get to the west side of the street and started heading north.

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Now I must mention here that the photo above isn’t really how my camera captured the image. I used the new Upright feature in Lightroom 5’s Develop Module to remove most of the perspective distortion that you get when looking up with a wide angle lens. Not bad for a one-click correction!

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I was pleased to see that the overcast sky had pretty much dissipated into the partially cloudy sky.

Here is a photo looking up the side of The Frost Bank Tower, which is 33 stories – 515 feet (157 m) tall.

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I always find it interesting how the new architecture and the old architecture co-exist within this relatively small area.

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But “old” in Austin, Texas isn’t really very old, as compared to most large cities. Even though Austin is now the 11th most populous city in the United States, it did not even exist before 1839.

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Even the iconic Littlefield Building (see with the American flag on top) didn’t start construction until 1910, and was completed in 1912. This 8 story building became the financial center of Austin, and was the height of opulence when it opened.

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Here is the out-of-focus One American Center building behind an interesting business sign.

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At 6th and Congress, I paused to take this photo looking south.

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This is the only other photo that “straightened-up” by using the new Upright feature in Lightroom 5.

I continued heading north until I reached 8th Street, and then I turned around. Between 7th and 8th Streets, the historic Paramount Theatre (1915) sits just to the south (right) of the Stateside Theater (1935).

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There isn’t very much traffic in downtown Austin during the middle of a Sunday afternoon.

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I crossed over to the west side of Congress Avenue when I got to 7th Street.

At the corner of 6th Street, at the base of the Littlefield building, I had a nice view of the Austonian, 4 blocks to the south.

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I was standing at the same corner with this iconic clock.

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Looking across the street, I thought that this view of the base of One American Center was interesting enough to spend a minute to capture a few photos of it.

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Here’s another one of those “old meets new” images that seem to be everywhere along this stretch of Congress Avenue.

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At the entrance to The Frost Bank Tower, I noticed three or four of these large succulent plants.

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Now I know that this is not a particularly pretty picture, but I included it just to give you some context for the setting of the next photo, which is part of the same plant, just from the opposite side.

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It was getting pretty darn warm, and I had forgotten to bring my hat. I was glad that it was only a 2 block walk back to my car. As I got to the construction site of the new J. W. Marriot hotel, I couldn’t help but look up and take this photo of the three cranes.

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Thank you for visiting my blog!