Palma de Mallorca

I flew on Ryanair from Edinburgh to Palma, my first experience with European low-cost airlines. It was a cool experience: they pack the planes tight and turn them around almost instantly. Super cheap and well worth it.

An early-morning view of the beach in front of our hotel. Pretty nice. Shortly hereafter, this beach -- and all of the others along the Palma strip -- will have been packed wall-to-wall with overweight, naked Germans. Yuck.

We went on a bike ride to find a less crowded place to swim, and found this one across the bay. Our hotel is somewhere on the endless strip that you can see along the far shore. The north side of the island -- which you can see in the background -- is mountainous, less densely populated and apparently breathtakingly beautiful; if we were to come back to Mallorca, we would probably go there. As you can see, though, there isn't really a bad spot on the island.

Megan is blocking the nude bathers, who are not welcome on this blog.

It was really nice.

North Berwick

North Berwick (pronounced barrack) is a seaside resort town at the mouth of the Firth of Forth in East Lothian. I caught a Saturday-morning train here from Waverley Station in Edinburgh. I'm here to go castle-hunting.

The North Berwick Law is a volcanic hill overlooking the town, "law" being a Scots term for a hill that rises incongruously from the surrounding area. I'd say it's a safe bet that I make it up there at some point today.

Note to Dad: they have boats here. Note to Mom: they also have golf.

But first to business. I am told there is a castle down this road somewhere...

I spy a castle. I just have to cross somebody's cornfield to get to it.

Aha! Tantallon Castle is a 14th-century fortress perched on a cliff overlooking the North Sea. The main defensive wall has been well restored, so you can climb up on it for great views in every direction.

Castle-y photograph

Looking west over the countryside from the castle. North Berwick is about four miles away, on the other side of the Law.

Just offshore from Tantallon Castle, the Bass Rock has held chapels, military garrisons and prisons in the past. The only things there now are a lighthouse and a lot of birds. This is the view from the castle ramparts.

Northwest across the Firth of Forth.

And of course I climbed the North Berwick Law on the way back. This is the view from the summit, looking northeast onto the North Sea. You can see the castle along the shoreline at center, and the Bass Rock just offshore. Sidenote: "hillwalking" is quickly becoming a favorite hobby of mine.

Westward view over North Berwick and the mouth of the Firth. The structure in the foreground is what remains of a Napoleonic-era lookout post.

Ending the day with fish 'n chips on the North Berwick quay.

Arthur's Seat

My first full day in Edinburgh was actually quite beautiful (you could see the sky!), so I figured the timing was perfect for a run to the top of Arthur's Seat, an imposing volcanic hill just east of the city center. Arthur's Seat is the center of Holyrood Park and it's highest point, and I figured it would give me some great views of Edinburgh and the rest of Central Scotland. Needless to say, I was not disappointed.

The trail, from about halfway up.

Running up may have been a bit overly ambitious.

Looking west over Edinburgh from the summit. In the foreground are the Salisbury Crags, a set of cliffs that hang directly over the city. People tend to refer to the crags as Arthur's Seat as well, though they have their own name (which I had to google to find). Edinburgh Castle is visible on Castle Rock, just over the end of the cliffs. My flat is in Fountainbridge, west of the center city, in the upper left of the photo.

Looking north from the summit. You can see the trail I took up along the lower left. Beyond the Firth of Forth (the inlet that runs from the center of Scotland into the North Sea), you can just make out the mountains of the Highlands in the distance.

Looking northeast over Leith and the Firth of Forth. You see out into the North Sea through the opening in the horizon at right.

I went down by a different route, this one of the southwest side of the hill, and got this great profile view of the Salisbury Crags cast against the sunset.

One last shot of the sunset and then back to my flat.

Madrid

On September 7, the International Olympic Committee had their final vote to determine the host city of the 2020 Summer
Olympics, and Madrid -- along with Istanbul and Tokyo -- was a finalist. The streets in central Madrid were shut down for the announcement, and this stage set up in front of the Puerta de Alcala in the Plaza de la Independencia. By the time we showed up, Madrid had already been eliminated by a first-round vote (Tokyo would go on to win) and a crew was at work taking down the stage, but the streets were still shut down and a large crowd still milling around.

The Palacio de Cibeles, taken from the street in the middle of the Plaza de Cibeles. It can be hard to get a
good look at the Plaza during the day because it is one of the busiest traffic thoroughfares in Madrid,
so the street closures made for some cool photo opportunities.

Then they cleared the streets. This is looking north up Paseo de Recoletos, one of the
busiest streets in central Madrid. Kind of eerie.

Toledo

A view of the Royal City taken on the walk from the train station. The Alcantara bridge on the left, originally built by the Romans, is our entrance into the city. You can see the Alcazar fortress just over the bridge at the highest point in the city. Also check out the topography; the hill is really steep. Toledo really isn't very far from Madrid -- about 70 km or a 30-minute ride on the commuter train from Atocha station. We went to Toledo on a Friday morning, and spent about 3 hours walking around the city. It's quite small relatively, and we were able to see almost everything in that much time.

Northern view from the Alcantara bridge. The modern city is on the left at the foot of the hill and the train station just out of view on the right.

A random street in the Royal City. With a few exceptions, the streets are this narrow, though the locals still manage to drive cars on many of them. Notice the steep grade; the city is essentially built into a hill. You can also see the Cathedral tower in the upper background.

A closer view of the Cathedral tower.

The main facade of the Toledo Cathedral. I thought this was a lot more impressive than the Almudena Cathedral in Madrid.

A Panoramic shot I took looking west over the countryside. The rolling hills around Toledo are gorgeous (get it, gorgeous), and a welcome break from the cramped cityscape of Madrid.

Preface (or My First and Only Apology for Making a Study Abroad Blog)

That I have decided to make a study abroad photoblog may come as a surprise to some of you, and that's perfectly reasonable. I don't like study-abroad blogs, and have remarked to many of you in the past that they are cliche and presumptuous. I also hardly ever take photos, and when I do they are with my iPhone. I don't own a proper camera. I know flat-zero about photography, and I have snarky opinions about photo filters. Beyond logistics, too, I generally consider people with cameras to be obnoxious. It's because I think they are disconnected (no pun intended), concerned more for how they will be able to recapture or relive a situation in the future than for how they are actually orchestrating it in the present.

Last May author Jonathan Safran Foer gave a commencement address at Middlebury College that did a lot to shape my current thinking on -- among other things -- everyday photo-taking (his speech can be seen here or read in a much-condensed version via The New York Times). If you haven't seen the speech, and have better things to do than watch it now, here is the portion that I want to talk about:

"On the other hand, a cell-phone photo of a someone crossing a stage is a meaningful symbol of the graduate's achievement and the photographer's pride and support, but it cannot capture the experience of the day. And more, it detracts from the experience of the day. Just as one cannot capture a visual experience without a camera, one cannot fully capture an emotional experience with a camera...Humans have the ability to do many things at once, but we don't have the ability to do many things at once as well as we do one thing at a time."

To be sure, I agree that we should all try a bit harder to be present in our everyday lives. As an American tourist, too, I am hyper-conscious that the "archivist" (as Safran Foer calls these habitual photo-takers) tendency is one that is typically ascribed to our culture and viewed as an appendage of American materialism. I think that this view is both valid and worthy of my concern, and mean for the blog title to serve as a recognition of the fact that -- at the end of the day -- I am still an American in a foreign country taking pictures with an iPhone.

As this concern applies to my blogging, though, I have a few counterpoints and some hard-wrought compromises:

1. I will not be taking photos every day, and I will make a sincere effort not to post photos that demean, trivialize or stereotype the cultures of which I am a guest. No men in kilts. No cars driving on the wrong side of the road. Instead, I want to use this space to share some of the beautiful, cool and otherwise interesting things that they have over here. If you think I am falling short on this pledge (or just want to talk about fantasy football), shoot me an email (dpparker at middlebury dot edu).
2. I am without a functioning cell phone. I feel like that fact at least partially exempts me from concerns about disconnectedness and the other ludditical anxieties that I am prone to.
3. I am taking three classes, one of which is about bagpipes.
4. I am free of my usual journalistic obligations, and thus full of pent-up expressive energy.
5. I realize that there are people out there that are concerned about my well-being. I hope this blog will help convince them that I am alive, in good health and have not been arrested.
6. I am in a country where I know no one, with most of the people I care to talk to very far away. At the end of the day, this seems like a great platform for mass communication.

If everything goes according to plan, this will be the only post which is not primarily a photo. I suspect that my posting frequency will decrease as I become more acclimated to life here and when I begin to run out of readily-available pretty things to take photos of.

Thanks for tuning in. Enjoy!