Budapest

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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.

Mountain School Family Camp

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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.

Integrating my photo blog

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.