Our next stop, Bath, photos of The Royal Crescent, a dog having a fun in the sun, and the flowers nearby

Found on the World Wide Web - Bath, England. In 2011, its population was 88,859. The city became a spa with the Latin name Aquae Sulis ("the waters of Sulis") c. AD 60 when the Romans built baths and a temple in the valley of the River Avon, although oral tradition suggests that the hot springs were known before then. It became popular as a spa town during the Georgian era, leaving a heritage of Georgian architecture crafted from Bath Stone.

Bath became a World Heritage Site in 1987. The city's theatres, museums and other cultural and sporting venues have helped to make it a major centre for tourism with more than one million staying visitors and 3.8 million day visitors to the city each year. The city has two universities and there are large service sector, information and communication technology and creative industries.



The Royal Crescent is a row of 30 terraced houses laid out in a sweeping crescent in the city of Bath, England. Designed by the architect John Wood the Younger and built between 1767 and 1774, it is among the greatest examples of Georgian architecture to be found in the United Kingdom and is a Grade I listed building. Although some changes have been made to the various interiors over the years, the Georgian stone façade remains much as it was when it was first built.

Many notable people have either lived or stayed in the Royal Crescent since it was first built over 230 years ago, and some are commemorated on special plaques attached to the relevant buildings.



The Royal Crescent now includes a hotel and a Georgian house museum, while some of the houses have been converted into flats and offices. It is a popular location for the makers of films and television programmes, and a major tourist attraction in its own right.

The Royal Crescent is close to Victoria Park. The street that is known today as "The Royal Crescent" was originally named "The Crescent." It is claimed that the adjective "Royal" was added at the end of the 18th century after Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany had stayed there.

John Wood designed the great curved façade with Ionic columns on a rusticated ground floor. The 114 columns are 30 inches (76 cm) in diameter reaching 47 feet (14.3 m), each with an entablature 5 feet (1.5 m) deep. The central house (now the Royal Crescent Hotel) boasts two sets of coupled columns.

Each original purchaser bought a length of the façade, and then employed their own architect to build a house behind the façade to their own specifications; hence what can appear to be two houses is occasionally just one. This system of town planning is betrayed at the rear and can be seen from the road behind the Crescent: while the front is uniform and symmetrical, the rear is a mixture of differing roof heights, juxtapositions and fenestration. This architecture, described as "Queen Anne fronts and Mary-Anne backs," occurs repeatedly in Bath.

In front of the Royal Crescent is a ha-ha, a ditch on which the inner side is vertical and faced with stone, with the outer face sloped and turfed, making an effective but invisible partition between the lower and upper lawns. The ha-ha is designed so as not to interrupt the view from Royal Victoria Park, and to be invisible until seen from close by. It is not known whether it was contemporary with the building of the Royal Crescent, however it is known that when it was first created it was deeper than it is at present. You can see the ha-ha in the two photos I've used above.


The railings between the crescent and the lawn are included in the Heritage at Risk Register produced by English Heritage and were restored in 2011. This dog and its people had a great time, enjoying our wonderful sunshine!



Bright, colorful plants and flowers nearby--between The Royal Crescent and the street. The Royal Crescent is to my left as I took this photo, beyond some trees.



The coach is parked on Royal Avenue--that's Tommy in the tie at the front of the coach. Victoria Park is across the street beyond the coach.




As I made my way back towards the coach, these red berries and green needles caught my eye--it's a yew tree, something I really, really wanted to see in the United Kingdom. Serendipity!

Quirky? Serendipity? Both.

I'm going to Powell's on West Burnside Thursday after work. That's where I found this quirky sight to photograph on June 7, 2013, in the women's restroom inside an entire-block-sized downtown business, a Portland icon, a must-see for book-lovers who visit the city, as well a every-day Portlanders who need to own books.



I'm not going to the store in search of something quirky. I'm going because Alafair Burke will be there for a book reading/signing in conjunction with her newest novel, All Day and a Night. Can't wait! I've been to several previous Alafair events--always a great time. Oh, I'll have my camera in my backpack, just in case serendipity rears its splendid head.

From the Powell's Events e-mail:In Alafair Burke's All Day and a Night (Harper), a new murder case with ties to a convicted serial killer leads Detective Ellie Hatcher into an investigation with explosive and deadly results. All Day and a Night is a superb mystery from "one of the finest young crime writers working today" (Dennis Lehane).

Rooftop Garden Friday, No. 3

Through the camera lens, I witnessed the wind's whimsy. Thankfully, I captured a split second of it to share with you, the blurred blossoms and the still blossoms alongside the sunlit buds on their impossibly slender and tall stems.

This rooftop garden is on the fifth floor of the six-story building where I work, the Multnomah County building. I found online that the garden covers 11,893 square feet as planted area, with a total square footage for the green roof that includes a patio and some raised beds of 15,420.

One more thing--this photo is straight out of the camera. Serendipity, brought to you by a Nikon D5100. Yea for me that it's mine to enjoy!

Along the west bank of the Willamette River, No. 7

Found another redhead in a gray hat enjoying the green grass and sunshine and cherry blossoms. The blurry white spots are petals in flight. Double serendipity, to get her and the falling petals in the same shot. I took this photo at 6:22 p.m. on Friday, March 21.

Along the west bank of the Willamette River, No. 6

Wait! There in the distance past the in-focus single Benson Bubbler I couldn't resist photographing because the plume of water resembled a giant cut diamond. Is that someone squatted beside the redhead in the gray hat?



Yep, he's checking out the screen on his phone. She's turned towards him. He photographed her at the same time I did, from a straight-on perspective, I imagine. He's wearing a darker gray hat and has a red fu manchu mustache and goatee. Serendipity!

HooDoo Antiques and Serendipity

Serendipity at its best! I saw the big, pressed paper rabbit head in the window and stopped to take a photo. I had noticed a man checking his parking position as I walked to a stop; I didn't see him get back into the car. Once I focused on the rabbit head, though, I noticed his station wagon's tail light, reflecting right there in the rabbit's mouth! Oh, boy! I showed it to the man when he got of the car and came around to check how close he was to the curb. He got a charge out of it, too!

City Daily Photo Theme Day: People on the Street

Click here to see Theme Day posts from around the world.

I've made a collage for Theme Day because I couldn't resist sharing with you the coincidence of movement, expression, and stance between these two people waiting at a bus shelter on a Portland street. I took these photos on February 28, 2009, five years and one day ago.

Here are the close-ups of each photo so that you can see for yourself what I find to be so interesting--their movement, expression, and stance. Then there's the rest of the serendipity all over the place, the similar mustardy yellows on his jacket, the folded-shut street barricade, and her leopard print skirt. Plus, several of the faces on her stockings have blonde hair. And her lace-up boots match the sidewalk's color.
 

They appear to be looking at each other.



They're both looking the opposite direction, at the same time.
    

They're both reaching up to the side of their heads, at the same time.
 

They looked down at the same time.

Love Spalding.

First, I'm standing there with my iPhone, making a video and talking about how the tracks I'd made a few hours earlier had disappeared in the latest snowfall. Then, my phone rang--my brother and sister-in-law in central Mississippi wondering how I was making it in the snowy conditions, laughing when I said that I was out walking in the snow for fun. Finally, I notice this lady skiing along the sidewalk across the street. By the time I asked my brother to hold on, found the camera on the phone and held it up to take a photo, she had turned left on NE 20th Avenue. My brother and I continued our conversation, said good-bye, and I continued my walk around the block. When I got around the corner, I found a spot out of the wind and beneath a small overhang at the front door of the Sandy Blvd. Clinic, cropped and uploaded the image to Facebook. I figured that would it for the serendipitous sighting of a skier on the snowy sidewalk. Oh, before I forget, more serendipity in the matching colors of the car, the band on the Musicians Union building and the compatibility of the color of the skier's jacket and the rest of the wall color on the building. I love it when unexpected color combinations reach out and grab me.
 

Later that evening, cabin fever appeared again--it had been coming and going since I got home from work on Friday. Anyway, I decided to walk downstairs and look out the window in the side door of my building. My reward, one more serendipitous sighting of ski accoutrement. Left to right: ski poles, ski pants, skis. The icing on the cake, so to speak, the LOVE hanging on the apartment door, put there no doubt for Valentine's Day. I'm guessing that the word describes very well how the two skiers felt about their outing, skiing the neighborhood and beyond. The green door to the left served as their portal to the winter wonderland that Portland had become, beginning on Thursday around noon and continuing until around 4 p.m. on Saturday when the only thing falling from the sky was either freezing rain or sleet or both.

Salvador Dali Ankle

At first, I thought I'd title this post Accidental Frame so that I could mention the serendipity of the juxtaposition of the pedestrian and the yellow metal framework near the bus door. However, as I looked at the photo in PicMonkey where I uploaded it for resizing, what appeared to be an unnaturally shaped and angled ankle, combined with the wavy curves of the calf, made a different decision for me. I would be remiss to miss out on the chance to compare the waviness I saw--brought about I believed by the perspective of the pedestrian's leg as photographed--with those wavy, melted watches of Salvador Dali.

When I clicked on the photo at its largest size, the actual reason became easy to see. A wide streak of sun-glare obliterates the outer half of her foot and washes out the outer half of her blue shoe. So, you can rest easy. This woman's right foot is regular and doing a good job helping her wait patiently for her own bus.

July 4, Waterfront Blues Fest - serendipitous bubbles and shadows

As I watched this young girl blowing bubbles from my shaded bench, I smiled, remembering fun times blowing bubbles with neighborhood girls on sunny summer days back home in Jackson, Mississippi. We were five elementary-school-aged girls whose houses made the corners of a right triangle, mine at the 90-degree corner. Certainly none of us wore lipstick while blowing bubbles, nor did we paint our fingernails periwinkle. She's very pretty, a young girl of the 21st century, complete with a brown scarf decorated with silver charms, tied around her hips. I imagine the vibrant colors decorating her left arm are the product of a lady I noticed sitting at her face-painting station over the four days of the festival. I wonder if the paint itched in the bright sun. Or if she ended up with a design in her tan.

Do you see the two circles to the right, one on her shoulder, one on her forearm? They are bubble shadows. Honest. No where in the other photos that I took of her do those circles appear. And you can see, if you look closely, a bubble there beside her right cheek which has made the shadow on her shoulder. I've looked and looked and cannot locate the other bubble. I wonder if it burst just as I snapped the photo?
 



No bubble shadows in the very next photo. I am thrilled with the serendipitous capture of those two shadows in the first photo in today's post. And I have to ask if anyone thinks that her fingernails are in the French manicure manner, complete with the periwinkle-colored polish? And do you love how her sunglasses are color-coordinated with her T-shirt and the umbrella?

Your perfect commute?

Click here for a trip to City Daily Photo, transporting you around the world every day.



Since I saw this good lookin' vintage pickup truck on my March 9, 2013, after-work commute, I have decided that there is someone out there who gets lucky twice a day, Monday through Friday. What I mean is that if you can't luck out and live on a bus line or a MAX line (and be able to afford the daily cost of a ticket) and therefore have the opportunity to use mass transit for your workday commute, I believe this would be the way to go. Feast your eyes on my serendipitous capture of a 1950s Chevrolet step-side on it's way south on NE 20th Avenue. Did you notice it's vivid blue matches the recycling bin on the sidewalk? That the red letters on its hubcaps that spell out Chevrolet match the red hand in the Don't Walk traffic signal? I don't have to ask if you realize just how happy I was to have my camera around my neck as I walked the block and half from my bus stop to my apartment door.

Please tell me the year of this truck. Thanks!