St Patrick’s Church in Trim, Ireland

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St Patrick’s church, Trim, County Meath, Ireland. Viewed from the castle’s southern curtain wall.

St Patrick’s Church Trim is a Gothic Revival style Roman Catholic church. It was built circa 1900. The church is surrounded by landscaped grounds that overlook Trim Castle. Celtic mosaics decorate the interior of the church with white marble reredos and stained glass windows depicting the history of Trim. Overall the church is a very imposing building. There is a fantastic pipe organ situated on the choir balcony that is serviced by a lift. The acoustics are excellent as a result of the scale of the church. A sizeable congreation of 800 could be accomodated in the church.

Trim is situated on the River Boyne and has a population of 8,268. The town is noted for Trim Castle – the largest Cambro-Norman castle in Ireland. It was once the county town but today that honour belongs to Navan. One of the two cathedrals of the United Dioceses of Meath and Kildare — St Patrick’s cathedral — is located north of the river. Trim won the Irish Tidy Towns Competition in 1972 and 1984 and was the joint winner with Ballyconnell in 1974.

The town has been used as the location for some film productions, including the use of Trim Castle to depict York Castle in Mel Gibson’s Braveheart.

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Trakai Island Castle

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Trakai Island Castle (Lithuanian: Trakų salos pilis) is an island castle located in Trakai, Lithuania on an island in Lake Galvė. The castle is sometimes referred to as “Little Marienburg”. The construction of the stone castle was begun in the 14th century by Kęstutis, and around 1409 major works were completed by his son Vytautas the Great, who died in this castle in 1430. Trakai was one of the main centres of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the castle held great strategic importance.

Trakai Island Castle was built in several phases. During the first phase, in the second half of the 14th century, the castle was constructed on the largest of three lake islands by the order of Grand Duke Kęstutis. During the second phase, two wings were added, and on the southern side a 6-storey (35-metre or 115-foot high) donjon was built. The expansion of the forecastle in the early 15th century marked the third phase of Trakai’s development.

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Alcatraz Hospital Stairs

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Alcatraz prison in Alcatraz Island. This stairway leads up to the prison hospital, which was the place where several prisoners died over the years.
Al Capone was admitted into the prison hospital and released a few days later with a minor wound. Capone eventually became symptomatic from syphilis, a disease he had evidently been carrying for years.

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Cliffs Of Moher From The Sea

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The Cliffs of Moher. Looking from the sea.
Love the green reflect on the blue water.

The Cliffs of Moher (Irish: Aillte an Mhothair) are located at the southwestern edge of the Burren region in County Clare, Ireland. They rise 120 metres (390 ft) above the Atlantic Ocean at Hag’s Head, and reach their maximum height of 214 metres (702 ft) just north of O’Brien’s Tower, eight kilometres to the north. The tower is a round stone tower near the midpoint of the cliffs built in 1835 by Sir Cornelius O’Brien. From the cliffs and from atop the tower, visitors can see the Aran Islands in Galway Bay, the Maumturks and Twelve Pins mountain ranges to the north in County Galway, and Loop Head to the south.

The cliffs take their name from an old fort called Moher that once stood on Hag’s Head, the southernmost point of the cliffs. The writer Thomas Johnson Westropp referred to it in 1905 as Moher Ui Ruis or Moher Ui Ruidhin. The fort still stood in 1780 and is mentioned in an account from John Lloyd’s a Short Tour Of Clare (1780). It was demolished in 1808 to provide material for a new telegraph tower. The present tower near the site of the old Moher Ui Ruidhin was built as a lookout tower during the Napoleonic wars.

The Cliffs of Moher have appeared in numerous media. In cinema, the cliffs have appeared in several films, including The Princess Bride (1987) (as the filming location for “The Cliffs of Insanity”), Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009), and Leap Year (2010). The cliffs are mentioned in the Martin Scorsese film Bringing Out the Dead (1999), and are noted in the 2008 documentary Waveriders as the location of a large surfing wave known as “Aileens”.

In music, the cliffs have appeared in music videos, including Maroon 5’s “Runaway” video, Westlife’s “My Love”, and Rich Mullins’ “The Color Green”. Most of singer Dusty Springfield’s ashes were scattered at the cliffs by her brother, Tom.

In television, the cliffs appear in the episodes of Father Ted called “Tentacles of Doom” and “Cigarettes and Alcohol and Rollerblading” (1996).

In literature, the cliffs are an important location in Eoin Colfer’s The Wish List, as one of Lowrie’s wishes is spitting off the Cliffs of Moher.

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Old boats aground

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Old fising boats aground in Camaret Sur Mer, Brittany, France.

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Sentinel Building or Columbus Tower

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Columbus Tower, also known as the Sentinel Building is a mixed-used building in San Francisco, California completed in 1907. The distinctive copper-green Flatiron style structure is bounded by Columbus Avenue, Kearny Street and Jackson Street, straddling the North Beach-, Chinatown-, and Financial-districts of the city. It is designated landmark number 33.
Despite the 1907 finish, building work had begun before the San Francisco Earthquake the previous year, but extensive damage to the building site, and the rest of the city, slowed down the construction considerably. For a relatively small building such as Columbus tower, with the extensive workforce available in San Francisco at that time, taking more than a year to complete the building was slightly longer than would have been expected.
The top floor initially housed the headquarters of the notorious Abe Ruef, a local political figure at the time. Also featuring early in the building’s history is the restaurant Caesars, which is the restaurant widely credited with the creation of the popular Caesar Salad. Despite its flourishing business, the restaurant was closed down during prohibition under the Eighteenth Amendment. The Kingston Trio owned the building and used it as their corporate headquarters during the 1960s. They built a recording studio in the basement which they used themselves and for many other artists including the We Five.
By the early 1970s the building was falling gradually into a state of mild disrepair. The film director Francis Ford Coppola chose then to purchase the building, and renovate it into the building that can be seen today. Coppola then set up his own business in the building, and remains there to this day.
Currently occupying much of the tower is Francis Ford Coppola’s American Zoetrope studio.
On the ground floor is the Cafe Zoetrope (previously Cafe Niebaum-Coppola), which has occupied part of the building since 1999. The cafe is a bistro and wine shop satellite of the Inglennok Estate Winery in the Napa Valley.

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vintage canvas prints

King Charles I observing Glamis Castle in Scotland

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Monument of King Charles I in front of Glamis Castle, Scotland.

Glamis Castle is situated beside the village of Glamis in Angus, Scotland. It is the home of the Earl and Countess of Strathmore and Kinghorne.
Glamis Castle has been the home of the Lyon family since the 14th century, though the present building dates largely from the 17th century. Glamis was the childhood home of Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, who married King George VI, and was later known as Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother. Her second daughter, Princess Margaret, was born there.
The castle is protected as a category A listed building, and the grounds are included on the Inventory of Gardens and Designed Landscapes in Scotland, the national listing of significant gardens.

Charles I was monarch of the three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649.
Charles was the second son of King James VI of Scotland, but after his father inherited the English throne in 1603, he moved to England, where he spent much of the rest of his life. He became heir apparent to the English, Irish and Scottish thrones on the death of his elder brother in 1612. An unsuccessful and unpopular attempt to marry him to a Spanish Habsburg princess culminated in an eight-month visit to Spain in 1623 that demonstrated the futility of the marriage negotiations. Two years later he married the Bourbon princess Henrietta Maria of France instead.

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Beatles street mural

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Sreet mural in New Oxford Street, London, United Kingdom. By Banksy’s associate Mr Brainwash.

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beatles art – beatles photos

Vintage bicycle at the window

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Bicycle and plants at the window of Sarastro Restaurant, in Drury Lane with Kremble Street, London, United Kingdom. 

Sarastro restaurant, named after a character in Mozart’s “Magic Flute”, first opened its doors in August 1996. Housed in what was once a public house on 19th Century gin soaked Drury Lane and latterly part of Peabody Housing, Sarastro quickly established itself as one of London’s most unique and must see restaurants.

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garden photos

Watch The Throne

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Old armchair and graffiti in an abandoned farm. 

‘Watch the Throne’ is a collaborative studio album by American rappers Jay-Z and Kanye West, released on August 8, 2011, by Roc-A-Fella Records, Roc Nation, and Def Jam Recordings. 
Jay-Z and West promoted the album with the Watch the Throne Tour that spanned October 2011 to June 2012 and became the highest grossing hip-hop concert tour in history. 

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