27 Sept 2007 - London Eye Reflection

With a full moon, I could not resist taking this photo of the London Eye reflection the lake in St. James Park last night. This was 30sec exposure.

I have been busy packing for our return flight on Saturday. When we arrived last February, we had four large checked bags, 2 roll on bags, and two backpacks. Returning we are limited to just 1 carry on bag each. Also Helen will have to put carry her purse inside the bag. I have packed our roll on bags and then put them into a larger checked bag. Hopefully, we will not be over the weight limit of 70lbs per bag.

19 Sept 2007 - Italy Day 4

Sept 7, 2007. After a wonderful nights sleep in our warm accomodations, we decided to go hiking on the opposite of the valley we were staying in. Driving over we spotted farmers cutting and stacking the hay to dry. They use these wooden rakes like devices to wrap their harvest and then let it dry out. We had seen these wooden devices on the side of barns earlier but did not know how they were used until today. Click here to see more photos of our hike.

We found a wonderful hike that started at about 1600m and ended at a Rifugio at 2236m. It was a very steep hike and covered about 14km round trip. We were amazed at the number of people hiking the trail that day and also the number of older people. When we arrived at the Rifugio there were people eating and drinking. All food and supplies are delivered to these Rigugios by helicopters.

Along the trail we encountered signs about a 17.5im mountain race that was planned for the weekend. It was hard enough just hiking it.

It was a Once again it was nice to start a hike and be able to have fantastic views the entire hike.

On the way out, we drove through a little village or town called Moos. It would have to win the "Best Flower" award for Italian cities. We were there during the peak of the flowers on buildings.

18 Sept 2007 - DNA Ethical Issues

I attended a half day seminar on "Ethical Issues of a DNA Database". The Nuffield Council on Bioethics released their findings and proposals in the use of DNA . Police powers to take and retain DNA samples have been steadily widened by Acts of Parliament. Today police of England and Wales have wider sampling powers than those of any other country and has proportionally , per head of population, the largest DNA database in the world with 4M (6% of the population) samples.

The Council goals were: To identify and define ethical questions raised by recent advances in DNA research in order to respond to, and to anticipate, public concerns. To promote public understanding and discussions in respect to public safety and human rights. Those values which they are concerned are: liberty, autonomy, privacy, informed consent and equality.

Taking and retention of samples was a main part of the discussions. Government wants to basically have DNA samples of everyone and retain the forever. There are crime scene samples and individual samples and the council proposals were mainly directed at the individuals human rights.

It was a very interesting and eye opening event for me. It will interesting to find out what we (USA) are doing in this area of human rights.

17 Sept 2007 - Italy Day 3

Yes, that is snow. Today was our travel day. We planned to drive further north and then head across a pass into Austria but because the weather looked like a white out was going to happen, we decided to drive east to the Northern Italian Dolomites. As we started up the pass, the weather continued to deteriorate until there was a whiteout at the top of the pass. So we pulled into another Rifugio to wait out the weather and have lunch. It was really nice sitting inside have a warm meal and watching it snow.


The drive up to the pass was wonderful and clear. We would cross over a pass and then down the other side to a valley and then back up to another pass and then another valley. In Summit County the forest are dead from beetle kill but here the forest are healthy and green. Almost no dead limbs on the floor of the forest. They cleaning them out, drag them down to the road side and stack them neatly.

Many years ago when I first visited Italy, I was amazed at the litter and trash all around. This time I am amazed by the lack of trash and litter. On our entire trip, we really did not see litter along side the roads. No plastic grocery bags floating across the road nor stuck in the fences.

After lunch we continued driving up and down S-curve passes and end up finding an complex that had a room with kitchen for 3 nights. We decided to stay this area just 11km south of Dobbiaco, Italy, which is the center of the Dolomiti di Sesto National Park.

Click here to view other photos of Day 3.

17 Sept 2007 - Italy Day 2

We woke up on our 2nd day and drove just 11km more and we were in the Brenta Dolomites. We should have driven the extra 11km yesterday as the views from here were much better than in Pinzolo. After breakfast, we headed out for a hike in the ski area in Madona di Campiglio. We were able to drive part way up and then started hiking. We kept hearing bells ringing and then as we came around corner, we spotted cows grazing and they each had a bell.

As we were driving to our hike we spotted several people with baskets in hands and wonder what they were doing. When we started our hike we determined that they were out looking for mushrooms. September must be the season as we continued to see them out almost every day as we continued around Northern Italy.

Hiking in Northern Italy is great. You started out and almost immediately you are above tree line and have fantastic views of the mountains. Also, most hiking trails have a Refugio at the top or along the way. These Refugio's have hot food and drinks and many have rooms if you wish to stay overnight.

Today's hike we stopped at Refugio Viviani Pradalago at 2082m. We started at 1500m. After having lunch we continued up and were going to hike to a top of a peak that was 2500m but it was very windy, the trail got very narrow, and the ridge about looked steep on both sides. We had also spotted a warning sign that indicated that you could clamp onto a cable. We had travelled all this way to view the mountains and decided it might be best to start back down and continue on our trip.

Click here to view more photos of the Brenta Dolomites.

17 Sept 2007 - The Black Image: 1500 - 2007

Yesterday, I attended a free screening of "The Black Image: 1500-2007" at the National Portrait Gallery. A very revealing film which showed how the image of African people has been deliberately altered by Europeans to show negativity. In the 15th century African people were portrayed in European art as noble, sophisticated and intelligent. While in Egypt last year we saw many evidents of this. With the rise of Empire these images were thrown out and replaced with demeaning stereotypes which still inform public opinion via children's books and Hollywood movies .

A portion of Bill Cosby's 1968 "Black History: Lost, Stolen, or Strayed" was shown. He discussed how blacks were portrayed in movie produced by white directors and even many times the actors were actually white. These images are many of the images that I have grown up with.

How often do you see an image of a black couple in love or a black family including the father?

How many people know that a black doctor, Daniel Hale Williams, was the first doctor to do open heart surgery?

This analysis of popular and world famous British art, museums and modern media by Moira Stuart, David Dabydeen and Richard Hart was both surprising and disturbing.

What images of black are you seeing?

16 Sept 2007 - Italy Day 1

We had to get up at 4:30AM and catch the 5:15AM Gatwick Express train from London's Victoria station. We had planned to carry our bags on to the plane until we were stopped going into security and they said that our bags were too large and that we must check them. We rushed back to Easy Jet and were able to quickly check our bags and get back into the security line. We made it in plenty of time to catch our direct flight to Venice at 7:50AM.

We made a choice to sit on the right hand side of the plane with hopes of getting some photos while flying into Venice. Correct choice for Venice but missed some photos flying over Switzerland, although Helen was still able to take some amazing photos of the mountains near Mt. Blanc from the right side of the plane.

We picked up our rental car at the airport and started to drive but ran into traffic. We also noticed that the car stuttered when driving in 2nd and 3rd. We elected to return the car which appears that last person put petrol in the diesel tank. We picked up another car and started out again.

We decided to take secondary roads instead of the autostrada, and headed north east towards Trento. After a couple hours we finally left the traffic and we driving in the beautiful valleys of wine and apple orchards. Along the way, we stopped for some grocery supplies and also bought apples from a local road vendor next to his orchards.

As you know we are both into recycling and continue to be amazed that other countries are way a head of the USA. We immediately noticed recycle bins in the small towns and also at the grocery store we stopped at. This continued for the entire trip in northern Italy.

We finally ended up in Penzolo, Italy and found a small hotel for the evening.

Click here to view additional photos from day 1.

14 Sept 2007 - Venice, Italy

On our final day in Italy, we drove back to the Venice airport, returned our car, put our bags in storage, and took the water taxi out to San Marcos section of Venice. We were fortunate that the water taxi was leaving within a few minutes because it only run every hour and we only had about 5 hours to tour Venice before returning to the airport to fly back to London. Although the ferry ride was over an hour, we were on our way. The weather was warm and the skies were "Colorado Blue". We immediately went to San Marco Piazza as did thousands of other people, to view the Clock Tower, Basilica of San Marco and the Bridge of Sighs. We then wondered the back canals and streets, had gelato, drank a bottle of wine with our lunch in a quite square, and walked to the other side of the island to catch our water taxi back to the airport. We had a wonderful time in our short visit to Venice and arrived back in London around 11:30PM.

Click here to view additional Venice photos.

13 Sept 2007 - Italian Dolomites

Just a quick post that we have returned safely to London from our holiday in the Italian Dolomite's . We had a fabulous time, excellent weather, food, and lots of hiking among these amazing mountains.

I am currently reviewing the photos we took and will post more photos on the web either later today or tomorrow.

1 Sept 2007 - Princess Di 10 yr Memorial

Yesterday I attended the memorial service for the 10 year anniversary of Princess Di's death which was held at Kensington Palace. This a photo from the 31 Aug 2007 London Paper afternoon addition. You can see me just left and back behind the Priest, Father Frank Gelli, performing the service.