grasswire

Number three on the way to our local bakery whose evening selling of fresh bread and other baked goodies is partly responsible for increased body weight of some of our neighborhood’s residents. As for PB, one of my favourite pastries are Chelsea buns – well, admittedly, I only ate a few of them but they are one of the nicer memories of Cambridge. If you are ever in Cambridge, there is this nice bakery on Trumpington street…

Now here is a curious pair of next door neighbours spotted on our Sunday walk. The two basketball “courts” are little over 10 meters apart.

I decided I’d start working on a new series of photographs called “Things as they are”. Since it won’t be concentrated work, it might take a while before images pile up, but here is a preview. Banana, as it is. Not the glamorous, advertising type, but its a real-life counterpart that has been laying-about on our the kitchen counter since breakfast.

As the refreshing storm started fading, a sudden splash of magical yellow light splashed through the window. Looking outside, I saw a beautiful back-lit tree with aureola of raindrops and as I got out my camera, I noticed that people in the opposite building were rushing to their balconies and windows. Soon, they would be grabbing their cameras too (never thought so many possessed digital cameras) and gazing in the direction behind my back. It must have been a marvelous rainbow back there. I just watched them gaze at something beautiful and could not help but ponder a little on the restrictiveness of our gazes and viewpoints. Enchanted by the rainbow, they of course remained oblivious to my tree. One couple even came out with glasses of white wine almost the colour of the sunrays.
Anyway, long live beautiful moments!
Long live photography that helps preserving them to our memory!
(well, if the above pic is not a celebration of popular photography, than I really don’t know which one is :)) )

The last of the photo catching up – some doorways from Rijeka and Cres.

Plus some more and less standard holliday pics.

- tough competition of hairdressers in Cres
- pure pleasure
- the ultimate kitsch (plastic tray with Christmas motif)
- working hours tell a story of special effort to attract crowds of tourists
- aesthetics of recycling known throughout Balkans
- all natural pest protection
- read this sign fast (for Serbo-Croatian or Slovene speakers only; it reminded me of that University of Cambridge language research on reading words)

It was so nice that we decided to stay a couple days more among the comforting shelter of the tiny village and our cozy stone house. We haven’t been at the sea side in years and it was a refreshing change. The only thing not really refreshing was the 45 minute walk to the beach down (and up!) a steep hill covered with wild oregano. Which is why we found another beach with a more gentle approach. Tamara was scared of the water at first but with much persuasion and play, she ended in the sea up to her knees. But she still preferred to crawl on the beach trying to eat stones. We did not wander much around the island of Cres and its narrow roads, tunneled between kilometers of stone walls, but we did go to the town of Cres.

There will be more pics up shortly.

Grasswire is off to Croatia, back on Monday.

However the true highlight of the day was a visit to National gallery which hosts an exhibition of Turkish kilims – its not an extensive one but exhibited kilims have really fabulous designs. It made us sigh and talk about going back to Turkey again.

…and we are off to seaside, which by the way is quite unusual for us. But this year I’m really looking forward to it. I actually got very holidayish yesterday when we spent the afternoon at Bled. The lake was so inviting, almost turquoise blue in the sparkling sunlight and I just wished I had my swimming suit with me (or at least my camera). Ate a kremšnita and a half before we headed back home :)
Today was much the same, early morning coffee in old Ljubljana and a stroll by the flea market, an afternoon stroll in Arboretum and an evening one closer to home. Plus a Friends marathon after Tamara fell asleep.
Here are some found still life pics from flea market – since it was the downtown flea market, we were not buying anything, just taking pictures, before the crazy sellers start charging for this as well. One guy wanted 80€ for a tin toy frog the size of two matchboxes.