TRAVEL - single special memory of a place you've been?

LibertyD, WELCOME to A2K. I hope you continue to travel with us on A2K, and share your subsequent trips of life with us. Nice to have you on board. c.i.

Seeing the Sacre Coeur(pardon my spelling), at night, from the ground.--Paris France 1993!

Thanks for the warm welcome, ci!

LibertyD - good yarn - and welcome (again) to the travel forum! We're suckers for any travel related yarns here! Tips, hints, warnings are also welcome!

Neoguin...do you want to tell us what you saw?

Of all of my travel memories, the one that always comes to mind as being the most dramatic was at Machu Picchu, Peru. I've been there several times, in the mid-1990s, as part of a team of scientists studying and surveying the ruins, see http://www.wrightwater.com/wpi/wpihome.html . I've spent a combined total of 6 weeks at the ruins, and have been there in every season and every time of day and night. I thought I had seen and experienced all of what Machu Picchu had to offer.

On one of our trips, the president of our company hired a professional photographer by the name of Grover to come along and document some of our activities. Grover was from Scotland and was full of mischief. :wink:

One night, we bribed one of the guards at the entrance gate to let us in, because typically, they don't allow people in at night. It was a full moon and approaching midnight. We decided to turn off our flashlights and navigate the ruins by moonlight. There were four of us, me, Grover, and 2 other technicians from work, and we each split up and went our seperate ways. The moonlight shadowy effects that enveloped me was enough to make me giddy. It's very hard to put into words the feeling that a person gets when wandering thru Machu Picchu. I'm not talking about when the tourist train unloads and people are crawling all over the place. IMHO, Machu Picchu is best experienced after the tourist train leaves for the day and there are only the people left that have a room at the hotel (which only has 23 rooms). It's very close to having all of the ruins entirely to yourself.

Anyway, I was sitting up near the Temple of the Sun watching the moonlight reflect off a rock and generally being entranced by all of the shadows. All of the sudden, Grover starts playing bagpipes on the other side of the ruins, several hundred yards away. The pipes echoed off of all of the rock walls and almost sounded like a chorous of bagpipes. Keep in mind, this is in the middle of the night in a place that is already somewhat mystic, and we're up there at a time when generally we're not supposed to be. Shivers went up my spine as the bagpipes broke the silence. I looked around quickly for someone to say "Wow!" to, but I was by myself, and the other 2 techs were probably off somewhere else in the ruins saying "Wow!" to themselves. As I began to enjoy the music, llamas began stepping out of all the various places that llamas hide in the ruins. They were as entranced with the music as I was with the shadows. It was almost like the Pied Piper story, and no less than a dozen llamas began hurrying all thru the ruins, trying to find the source of the music. It was really rather comical how they were drawn to it. Grover realized what was going on and, still playing his pipes, wandered out into the center field of the ruins. The llamas never attacked him, but just followed him around like a marching band following the conductor in a parade, all happening at around midnight with full-on moonlight in the middle of nowhere, south of the equator.

GSL - Wow! Weren't you fortunate!

Are you sure those llamas weren't just looking to see who was torturing the cats

hee hee hee

GSL

You may have gathered I'm not too fond of bagpipes!

I used to work in an office on the waterfront, underneath a big hill, which was a park, that jutted out into the harbour.

One morning, there was a particularly heavy fog, and this weird sound seemed to be all around. I was so fascinated by the sound, I actually left the office and walked up the hill to see if I could work out what on earth it was! There was a lone bagpiper, practising. The fog had distorted the sound, and made it travel further than usual. Very eery!

I sometimes see a lone (again) bagpiper, walking and practising, on a park near the harbour, on Saturday mornings. What is it about harbour parks and bagpipers? I guess practising the bagpipes is a pretty anti-social activity~

Margo,
You sure it's not some deep-seated distaste for the motherland (UK as a whole)?

Last time I was in New Zealand, our friends in Aukland said they can't wait until the Aussies rebel against the queen and beat back the false power (or collection agency) on the other side of the planet. It'll be a good excuse for them to follow, but they're not big enough to try it on their own!

Mr. Sulu, shields! Scotty, I'm gonna need warp power in three minutes...

:wink:

GSL
I'd guess my motherland - way back - is not UK, but that little island next door. But - there they play the uilleann pipes, so there's little escaping!

And, of course we should dice the UK, it's queen, it's mad royals, and get that bloody union jack off our flag. I mean, they can't even play cricket thatr well there any more!

I was quite distressed when all those loonies voted against becoming a republic. How could they?

I hope you're having some fun on A2K.

Ah, but I loved the llamas coming out for the bagpipes....

Yeah, there's a very wide range of topics here, which makes it quite a bit more social and chatty than the purely "motorcycle" forums that I'm accustomed to. Quite nice, actually. :wink:

Looks like I've got a lot of reading to do, "lurking" as they say, before posting much. Definitely a different demeanor here....

Cheers!

Nothing quite has stirred me as much as walking through the ruins of Pompeii.

I damn near cried -- and I am close to having tears in my eyes thinking about it while writing this paragraph.

And that happened way back in 1957.

Frank
What was it that moved you so much? (I've never been to Pompei)



GSL - plenty of lurking to be done, but jump right in and participate. My advice is alwaysto stay out of politics - that way madness lies!

Pompeii...ayyiyi, I would like to do that. I have been to Ostia Antica, the roman port town, and loved it...we were close to alone, perhaps three other people in the whole place, lovely, on an October day. Another place I need, need, need, I tell you, need to go is Tarquinia, where there are these bronze horses buried...

I was slapped upside the face with a gust of wind when I first landed in Rome, and my/ex and I clambered out of the subway station with our suitcases...that was the Circo Massimo station, as in Circus Maximus. I had been awake 36 hours and have never been the same since reaching the street, the Viale Aventino.....

I have come out of those station doors many other times in subsequent visits, and yep, it is always gusty at the doorway, which is down from the street. But once you hit the pavement at street level, there you are, there you are.

If you want to dive into wet heaven the Springs that are in Florida are the place. There is lots of springs and they are 70 degrees and clear and cold. Beauty at it's finest. I remember Blue Springs particularly well.

G'day Ruach and welcome to A2K - I hope you have some fun here.

I'm not sure I want to think about clear, cold springs right now - here in the middle of winter I'll wait until it warms up a bit.

I'm of Italian heritage -- and almost everyone of Italian heritage feels a close connection to ancient Rome. The connection made while walking through a Roman town as intact as is Pompeii is mind-boggling.

If you ever get the opporunity to visit that site, do so. You will not regret it for a second -- and more than likely will treasure it for the rest of your life.

(I really gotta do the pyramids one day before tossing off this mortal coil.)

It was in Lavorno, she was dark and she ooooooozed with whatever it is that makes men insane. She had a way of walking that stopped traffic as if it was not there. The grateful drivers would look and worship at her altar a long time after she had passed by and they had been cuffed about the ears at least a dozen times by their espoused.

Her name was Mystery, her fortune was her looks and her tenacity of purpose brought me to the the conclusion that this was Helen of Troy waiting to be re-born, Florence and Pisa were mere distractions, the journey was over the first time she opened her moouth.

aaaah, memories. i was eighteen, he was a poet, standing on the edge of a cliff, that also happened to be an ancient cemetery in the white stones and lavander region of Vercors in South-east France. I felt immortal and invincible.