Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Copenhagen - Top 5 Places


My brother is going to visit Copenhagen in this weekend and asked me which sights/places he can cover in 2/3 days. I have been there for much longer period and visited 7 out of the Top 10 places mentioned in the official website. I have not seen Tivoli (an amusement park), because I don’t like tough and exiting rides and never managed to see some museums in Copenhagen.

I really dont agree with the rating of these sites, like Little Mermaid (picture1) (picture2) which is the much hyped statue in miniature, with very little historical significance but heavily publicized tourist attraction. The official site describe it as “Hans Christian Andersen wrote a fairy tale about her, Disney produced the movie, and Copenhagen maintains a statue in her honour.” The interesting fact about this one is the head of the statue is replaced every year with a new one.
I have seen the The Viking Ship Museum (Genuine viking ships on display at the museum in Roskilde.), which was very ordinary one.

10 places can not be covered in a single weekend, so I have to make top 5 for him. I mean the list can vary with the choice of tourist, but if I had been given option to see five places I could have seen these one.

Kronborg Castle

1) Kronborg Castle, Helsingor(Denmark) – Helsingborg(Sweden) – Malmo(Sweden) – Copenhagen(Denmark) round trip. This is a must seen trip, if one is visiting Copenhagen. The Helsingor castle is very famous as “William Shakespeare's play Hamlet takes place at Kronborg Castle in Helsingør.” From Helsingor one can reach Helsingborg in 20 mins by boats. Helsinborg is a very old city with castle and ageold history. Malmo a small industrial town of Sweden, adjacent to Copenhagen seperated by Oresund Bridge. My visit to Malmo and Oresund Bridge was really wonderful.

Canal Tour

2)Canel cruise in small canals of Copenhagen: The fascinating view of different locations like old churches, Vesterport(old port), Opera house, little mermaid, royal ship etc can be seen in a 60 minute guided tour. This canal drive is really enjoying and highly recommended. One can see a large section of the city through this drive.

3)Town Hall - Walking street –Børsen (former Stock Exchange building) - Danish Parliament: Copenhagen's largest shopping area is the Europe's longest pedestrian shopping street, Strøget. There is an Erotica Museum also, unique of its kind. The walking street is quite crowded, and always full of activities, specially near the Town Hall. There is a booklet called “Copenhagen this week”, which contains all details of these activities.

4)Amalienborg Palace : This is the home of the Danish royal family , always patrolled by royal guard, the change of guard is something special for the tourists. A domed Marble Church can be seen behind the Royal Palace.

Frederiksberg Park(Left) and (Right) Shopping street, Strøget

5) I have a tie here with Frederiksberg Park and Frederiksborg Palace :
Frederiksberg Park, was close to my apartment and I have seen many different typical Danish festival here, so you can say I am somehow emotionally attached with it. But the Castle and Natural beauty is really beautiful in this park, the zoo is next to it.
Frederiksborg Palace in Hillerød is located on three small islands in the middle of Palace Lake and is adjoined by a large, baroque formal garden.

There are many more places I have seen like Rosenberg Palace(pic), Frederiksdal, (Pic), Copenhagen Zoo. The National Gallery, an Art museum situated in Copenhagen centre is also worth visiting. But its difficult to cover by in short trip.

Here goes some more picture link.

Sunday, May 27, 2007

Small Museums in Metro Stations

When I came in Greece, I noticed one peculiar thing. The price of one way metro ticket is normally 70 pence in Athens, but if taken from the centre metro stations (Syntagma, Omonia, Acropolis etc) the price is 80 pence. Well, initially I thought about the congestion, as lots of tourists come here, this extra 10 pence is surcharge. But the surcharge is taken for the maintenance of the stations, which is equipped with small museums in its walls.

For an example, I have just put up pics of two stations. Syntagma station (above) being the heart of Athens contains many archaeological substances, whereas acropolis metro station (below) is next to Acropolis, so it has also some prehistoric elements and pictures in the metro station.

These are free museums in miniature. Isn’t it amazing!! The picture above is of my brother, who came to Athens last month for a short trip.


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Friday, May 25, 2007

Weekend Photo Upload 1 - Olympic Stadium Athens


Olympic Stadium (Athens) - Hosted 2004 Olympic games

This was one of the happening weeks in Athens. Athens Olympic Stadium (Spiridon "Spiros" Louis Stadium) hosted Champions League Final yesterday between AC Milan and Liverpool. 45000 Brits and Italians came to jam the show, and it was a chaos everywhere, including Syntagma Square, with wild fans and their orchestra.

Unfortunately I could not manage to see the final game in this stadium, though its very near to my office, mainly because of unavailability of tickets. but have been to this stadium many times and taken few snaps.

Day before the match the tickets are sold in black market in 4500Euro (police arrested one guy who was selling), and just before the match it was 9000 euro; 30 times of the original price (original one was 300 euro - has been distributed few months back by lottery in Athens, Milan and Liverpool).

Nothing to say about the match, I watched the game in televation. Kaka was impressive as usual, Gerrald in first half and Injaghi is the man who helped Milan to clinch the trophy of most prestigious club cup.
I Have taken the following pic from Ovelikios Athens Daily Photo . See his pic post for the Champion's League final match. Thanks Ovelikios.

Again my shot of the Stadium in a sunny day. This picture is taken my a normal camera, though looking very nice because of the white blue and green contrast. Rate this one.


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Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Picasa Edit of Photos




This is the picture taken next to the earlier one, from closed window of my car, on the way to Delphi from Athens. Since it was from the car, the brightness is not very good. However, I think the Sun makes the basic difference of any picture. The picture in cloudy weather can be made better by filling light through Picasa, but the brightness can not be enhanced.



Coming back to the picture, I have edited this one in 3 Steps. First one is Normal (Original), Second one is Auto adjustment by the software (I am feeling lucky), and finally achieved the third one after little Saturations of colours . These are very basic edit I do. There are many special effects that can give complete different look to a picture.



Many of my friends like editing pictures, but some of them do not like it, because it distorts the originality. Well, I have some counter logic like why we paint house, decorate wedding hall, do make up before going out, put spices in cooking etc. Its mainly because we want better look and different taste. This is again relative choice, varies person to person. So, I appreciate the logic of the people who want to keep the pics as it is, but like to edit my pics to enrich them.


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Monday, May 21, 2007

Cultivation and Nature in Greece

I have thought many times about rating pictures, as David explained in his blog. In the current blogging system the visitors can only provide comments; but most of the viewers do not like to post any comment. In addition, it’s hard to make out precise ratings of the pictures from the comments.
It’s really nice that www.spotback.com came up with such a nice solution of this demand. Now the individual rating is possible and it calculates the cumulative average of all ratings. Thanks David for introducing me with this one.

So I am uploading one picture from Greece - to be rated by you :-)
This one is taken from the moving car on the way to Delphi from Athens.

Friday, May 18, 2007

International Museum Day

Today, Friday May the 18th, is the International date of Museums. This celebration day is established since 1977 and during this date the museums all over the country have a free entrance!This year, the Greek department of ICOM decided that the honored museum for 2007 will be the National sculpture dept. of the "National Gallery -Alexandrou Soutsou Museum".

Greece, particularly Athens is enriched with some historical musiums, as shown in the following picture.
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Monday, May 14, 2007

Two More Statues

The above statue is situated in the Victoria Memorial (London), placed at the centre of Queen's Gardens in front of Buckingham Palace. This statue symbolises the concept of royal female guard of the queen.

Every statue has its story. Like the following picture is taken in a small Danish city called Helsingør. This city is famous for setting of William Shakespeare's Hamlet ;the story of the Danish Prince "Hamlet",
In Helsingor port(Denmark) is still remembering their brave hero through this magestic sculpture.


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Friday, May 11, 2007

Couple of Statues

While going through some past travel photos I came across some good statues of different European cities. Thus decided to share couple of them in this blog. First one taken in Stockholm & second one was in Berlin; don't dare to click on the first one :-) Its dangerous.


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Thursday, May 10, 2007

Corinth Sea - Gulf of Corinth

These are two pictures of Gulf of Corinth which is in the arm of the Mediterranean Sea . I am amazed to see Mediterranean in its different views. This is something special to me because of its kaleidoscopic blue water with greenish touch. I have captured these two pictures standing in a same point in Corinth, a city close to Athens, Greece.
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Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Greek Faces

The typical Greek face varies totally from other European faces. The weather and Ottoman civilization have a deep influence on these Euro-Asian faces, taken in the country side of Greece. Both the pictures have taken in same place one after another, with their anxious look for some one. They were involved in same job. Now it’s the time to guess what they were doing and why they were anxious?

Small Clue: We were in a small Island very close to the mainland of Nafplio.

Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Ancient Corinth

Acrocorinth (Gr. Ακροκόρινθος), the acropolis of Corinth, is a monolithic rock overseeing the ancient city of Corinth, Greece. It was continuously occupied from archaic times to the early nineteenth century.

The city Corinth was founded in the Neolithic Age, circa 6000 BC. According to myth, the city was founded by Corinthos, a descendant of the god Helios (the Sun), while other myths suggest that it was founded by the goddess Ephyra, a daughter of the titan Oceanus, thus the ancient name of the city (also Ephyra). There is evidence that the city was destroyed around 2000 BC.We have been to Corinth on 29th April, Sunday. One and half hour drive from Athens on E94 highway next to the sea. The coastal areas are really beautiful and anyone can enjoy the drive. In the Driveway the landscape was fascinating as usual. The tough part is on the way to castle, it is stiff and exiting. The view from the castle is really beautiful. Once we reached the castle, we found it as it is somewhere in Middle-east, hot humid and full of ancient stones. The city is very ancient and the acropological ruins have been found in many place, like the ancient theater in the above picture। Natural beauty of Corinth is enchanting and majestic.

Three circuit walls formed the man-made defense of the hill. The highest peak on the site was home to a temple to Aphrodite which was Christianized as a church, and then became a mosque. The American School began excavations on it in 1929. Currently, Acrocorinth is one of the most important medieval castle sites of Greece.

I will rate this place very high in terms of archeology and ancient come natural beauties. If one is planning to visit Greece, this is a must seen place with a combined package of Sea, Canal, Hills, Castle, Museum and Acropolis.