The Barnes Family

I had been to Moscow once, but the rest of the family had never been to any country that was once part of the USSR until our trip to Budapest. It’s an interesting mix. Still lots of Soviet-era buildings, but the people have removed all the statues reflecting the brutalist style of the Soviet years. The city is now being re-vitalized, with great shopping and restaurants.

Of course they have always had their own culture, based on their own language, music, and theatre.It’s a good city for walking - up to Buda with its castle and museums; down and along the banks of the Danube; through the tree-lined streets. And of course good restaurants and pleasant bars along the way for refreshments.

We found the people friendly and relaxed.

I didn’t take a lot of pictures, but here are a few.

It’s a long time ago now. When the boys were small, they attended a wonderful pre-school just up the hill from us in Los Gatos. The characteristics of the school were an outdoorsy, robust approach to life, with lovely nurturing staff.

But one of the main things was that it was all about parental participation. We would attend with our kids, and watch, learn, and join in with their activities which included cooking, digging, lots of art, walking and climbing, learning about the local plants and animals.

Every year we’d all go into the Sierra Nevada to a YMCA campsite around a lake, where we’d spend a long weekend together, sailing, fishing, cooking, reading and walking. These are a few pictures from the camp of 2002.

I have maintained a separate page and blog for my thoughts about digital photography, but it’s hard to keep more than a couple of sites active and interesting, so I’m going to incorporate my comments on photography in this blog. The first thing I’ll do is re-post the old articles here, and then in the future any thoughts I have on the subject of photography will be posted here as part of the normal flow.

I’ve also added a new topic labelled Photography, that you can use in the sidebar on the right to find all the photography-oriented posts (as opposed to posts about pictures and the photo gallery).

The old photo blog was published by blogger.com and was available from Blogspot at http://tim-photoblogs.blogspot.com. It will probably will stay up for a while.

I just posted the pictures of our visit to Cornwall. This was a birthday present from Marina - a big secret, well kept. We dropped the boys off with my parents, and took off westwards. It was a real thrill to find ourselves right out on the point of St. Andrews, finding our way down a narrow path on a windy night, and arriving at a beautiful lighthouse, with fantastic views out over Falmouth Harbour and towards Brittany.

We also spent time in Padstow (yes, we did eat at a couple of Rick Stein’s places, and in fact we stayed at a hotel he owns: the St. Petroc’s). We also visited the Eden Project, as well as spending a few hours enjoying a cup of coffee and a snack at an excellent coffee / antique shop in Exeter down by the river.

Marina found the lighthouse through Rural Retreats. If you haven’t stayed in a lighthouse and you love the sea - you must.

Just re-posted the pictures of my trip to China and Hong King in 1986, and our 2006 trip to France: Paris for the marathon and Disney World, and a taste of Brittany and Normandy - our first visit.

The trip to China took place just before I moved from England to California - it was part of a round-the-world trip that began in England, and continued to California, New Zealand, Japan, Hong Kong/China, and finally back to England.

I enjoyed Hong Kong - especially all the water, and the opportunity to explore some of the islands around Hong Kong. I really liked Lantau, but I am afraid it must be very much changed now that there’s a road bridge and of course the new airport on the west side.

So far I can’t find any pictures from that part of the trip. I have a lot of negatives and slides filed in boxes somewhere…

A spring trip to France, taking in the Paris Marathon, Euro-Disney (yuk!), and a few days exploring Brittany and Omaha Beach and Bayeux in Normandy.

Paris by Eurostar

I love Eurostar. It’s so much more convenient than flying. We can take the train in to Waterloo Station in London, and walk across to the Eurostar terminal in the same building. Through security, and then onto the train, which whisks us into the centre of Paris - the Gare du Nord - from where the Metro quickly takes us to our hotel. It’s not quite that easy - because we’re using public transport we end up with a taxi from home to the train, and then a bit of a walk between Gare du Nord and the Metro because of the line we’ve chosen - but still, we get it done with kids and luggage and no disasters. Read more

Africa and Scandinavia: I’ve finished the galleries for these two trips.

You can access them from the links at the top of the screen, or go there directly.Our trip to Scandinavia took place early in 2006, right in the middle of winter, and we expected everything to be very dark. In fact, we found that with the snow reflecting any bit of light there was, we could see quite well, even very late at night.

We especially enjoyed Oslo. It sits in a perfect location, well inland, but on the top of a fjord. Hills around, a safe harbour, and quick access to sailing, skiing, and tobogganing (in winter). The town centre is quite small and seemed friendly. I’d spend a lot of time there, but it is a very expensive place to visit.

You can find a lot of our pictures at this location.
I’ll be adding more. I’ve tried to categorize them and create a set of sub-galleries by subject.

You can also get to the pictures by clicking on one of the images in the sidebar on the right.

I should point out that many of the pictures posted here were taken with film over the years and scanned in - but in any case, if you find them interesting, here they are.

Posting photos on the web is problematic - you have to downsize them and compress them - neither practice is good for the image, but until we all have infinite bandwidth, I guess data compression is a fact of life.