We're Home Now ... at least for a while
Just arrived home yesterday afternoon on the flight from Amsterdam to Portland. This is a direct flight and it's a quick and easy way to get back and forth to Europe. There aren't that many direct international flights from Portland, so it's a bonus to get on the plane here and end up at your destination, or vice versa.
We were surprised to arrive home and find Oregon hot and dry. Well, we weren't' really surprised since we followed the weather on line, but this has to be one of the hottest stretches without rain in a long time. For May and June especially. And it's not just here, when we were in the UK they had their hottest July day in history - and their history goes waaaay back.
Unfortunately, that was not the day that we played combat underwater survival golf in Scotland (see this link You call this golf?)
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I wanted to share some interesting, if odd, pictures from the recent trip to Holland and Scotland.
Sometimes you just come across noteworthy or unusual scenes and I try to snap a picture when possible.
The captions are below each picture.
You can be the judge if they are weird or amusing, or both.
This is art, I guess. It was outside our hotel at the Amsterdam airport. It was about eight feet tall, you can see me in the reflection taking the picture. Stating the obvious, it was big and shiny and ... frankly, a little creepy.
This one is not art per se, but marketing. This was taken from a store window in Glasgow. There were hundreds of sewing machines, from a bygone era, wrapping all the way around the corner building. Must have taken somebody a long time to do this.
It was striking and pretty interesting and (appropriately), it was a fancy clothing store.
Gas mask anyone? I found it unusual that there would be a fairly major statue of a soldier in a gas mask outside the Glasgow Central Station train terminal. There was no plaque or explanation. It was solid cast iron and had been there a long time. It was apparently a tribute to all the men who lost their lives in World War I to the use of poisonous gas.
This is one of my favorite scenes
Do you suppose this is not a sign of great admiration for the soldier on the horse, or is someone just having fun? This was also in Glasgow, and was pretty funny. Story has it that if the cone is removed, it is replaced by merry makers really quick, so they just leave it there. And it's also like twenty-five feet in the air.
Is it just me or does the guy seem to be a little indignant at having a traffic cone on his head?
I tried to come up with a humorous caption and here are some attempts:
"Hey, was that a wild bachelor party last night or what?!"
"Does this hat make me look fat?"
"It's my birthday and I'll wear whatever I want!"
"Do you think my men will respect me more if I wear this hat? It would certainly make me more visible on the battle field!"
I would call this the grumpy statue picture. It looks like the guy and his colleague are stuck there holding up this building until the end of time. Pretty boring job if you ask me, and he looks pretty unhappy about it. In fact, it look like he's pouting ...
Talk about too little too late. It might be hard to tell from the picture, but the glass is badly shattered. They should have put this sign up BEFORE someone broke the window. Oh well, at least someone did a masterful job of taping the glass together. Would this pass health and safety regulations?
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