TPThursday: Do you ‘Capture the Colours’ or Clichés?

We’ve sometimes overlooked the ‘colors of  travel’. So often, I am trying to capture the memory of a particular travel moment, that I don’t notice the colors that contributed to it.

I traveled down a number of Memory Lanes to find photos that express each of the world’s primary colors: blue, yellow, red, green, and white for today’s post. I did so after Cathy Sweeney of Traveling with Sweeney and Vi at Short Travel Tips  tapped me for participation in a contest being sponsored by TravelSupermarket.  (I never win contests, but this was a great exercise - you should try it.)

The contest judges don’t want photo clichés: a blue sky, a red sunset or a yellow flower (like the sunflower photo here that I took in Stehekin, WA. It’s a great memory but cliché).

They want color in photos that give a sense of place, perhaps even ‘a splash’ of color.  Something that ‘captures a place so well that even if I’ve been there before, I think to myself, ‘Wow, I have to go there', ” says one judge.
 
With that in mind, here’s the travel palette of colors I chose:

White:

It was simply, a fairy tale. One of the most stunning road trips we’ve ever taken was high up into Spain’s Andalucian hillsides.  We lost track of the number of small hamlets – the famous White Towns – as we followed the winding road on that magical journey.

Red:

Sometimes the ambiance and charm are so intense that a place seems unreal, almost as if it were a movie set; one in which we are lucky enough to be among the cast members.  That was Gibraltar.  This pair of street musicians provided the movie’s soundtrack. Their melodies followed us for blocks in this little bit of England on the Iberian Peninsula.

Yellow:

Greek ferries. They come in every size, shape and color creating a rainbow in the harbor at Piraeus, the port city serving Athens. If I were recommending travel experiences you must have before you die; sailing a Greek ferry from this harbor is at the top of the list.



Green: 

I called it the Emerald Empire in an earlier post; The Palouse, that agricultural land that makes up the Eastern part of Washington State.



Blue: 


My take on blue is probably as cliché as it gets, but after years of dreaming about visiting Greece and then finally getting there, I couldn’t believe it was as picture perfect as we found it. And this time I did notice the colors because it made the travel moment unforgettable.

Have you been capturing the color or clichés?  On your next trip keep those primary colors in mind when you take aim with the camera – I will.

That’s it for this week’s Travel Photo Thursday. Hope you’ll head over to Budget Travelers Sandbox for more photos.

I’d also like to tap the following fellow bloggers to join in the Capture the Colour contest:
Dick’s Travel Tales from the Road
Keryn’s Walking on Travels
Heather’s Lost in Arles
Andi’s The Particular Traveler
Five American guys’  Travel Philosophy

The Rock of Gibraltar: A Gem of a Substitute!

My one regret of our Spanish travels was not having enough time during our Costa del Sol stay to visit Gibraltar. We’d decided it was just a bit too far down the road to tackle. . . not to mention the guidebook’s warning about length of time to cross the border from Spain into United Kingdom territory.

So when our captain announced  Tuesday evening that a Portuguese planned strike  would prevent us from going to Funchal, Madeira and we would be stopping in Gibraltar instead, I did a happy dance around the cabin.

American writer Paul Theroux, in his Pillars of Hercules says, “Gibraltar is just a conspicuous pile of limestone, to which distance adds enchantment.”

Maybe that has always been the case with me.  I’ve been enchanted by the place because it was so far from my world. . .I remember being introduced to ‘the rock’ in those Prudential Insurance advertisements during my childhood and it seemed light years from anything I’d ever visit. Of course, I’ve always wanted to see those famous apes who inhabit it. . .whatever the case, I’ve always loved the rock.

I was so excited about our visit that I was out on the deck by 6:30 a.m. – a time still so dark that the Big Dipper looked as if it were  sitting on our railing. The waterway was filled with brightly lit ferries and freighters. 


Our ship, already creeping in at a snail’s pace began a gradual turn to the right just as daylight was arriving and as we turned,  the The Rock of Gibraltar came into view.

It was magic, I tell you, pure, unadulterated travel magic!

We walked nearly 10 miles during our time in Gibraltar. We traveled the length of the town’s Main Street, with its colorful Christmas decorations and stores offering every product imaginable.  We were headed to the Botanical Garden and considering a ride up the cable car to see the apes when all of a sudden the little buggers appeared right on the street in front of us – saving us the time and effort to go up to visit them.

  The story  is that these apes,  Barbary macaques, were brought here by the Berbers from North Africa in the 1700’s. They were pets.

Spain ceded Gibraltar to Great Britain in the 1700’s and Sir Winston Churchill is quoted as saying of them, “As long as the apes remain, so will the British.”  It seems to be true as the apes continue to entertain tourists in this place that continues to be a British colony.

Leaving Gibraltar – sailing between The Pillars of Hercules at sunset– one on north Africa’s coast, the other being Gibraltar was as magical as our arrival.  I am already thinking I must return.

A Navigational Note:  It is Saturday morning and we’ve been on the ship for nearly a week.  We left Tenerife, in the Canary Islands last night and that was the last land we will see until next Saturday when we arrive in Fort Lauderdale, having crossed some 3,400+ nautical miles of ocean.  We’ve been advised we will have ‘slow or no’ internet access during the crossing at times, so I’ll write more when possible. 

The sea is smooth,  the temperatures a most welcome 73-degrees.  Today reminds us of why we love transatlantic cruises.  I took this photo this morning while having morning coffee on our deck – the sea and sunrise couldn’t have been better