Baltic cruise

Posted on July 9, 2018 by johnageddes

In May of this year, I took a 12 night Holland America Baltic cruise on the 1600-passenger ship Rotterdam and it was a great opportunity to visit several cities that have been on my bucket list. The cruise left from Rotterdam, Holland and visited Copenhagen, Tallinn, Berlin, St Petersburg, Helsinki, and Stockholm. I took hundreds of photos and it has taken me this long to whittle them down to one per stop for this blog article.

I will post one representative photo and a short comment about each city.

Copenhagen, Denmark was clean and bright and one thing that struck me as unusual was that people just left their bicycles (and they use them a lot) unlocked without fear of having them stolen. This says a lot about the people who live there, don’t you think?

Copenhagen, Denmark

Tallinn, Estonia was a delightful small city to roam in or climb the streets up to the top of the hill for a great view. It would be an ideal place just to hang out for a week, soaking up the ambiance, reading books and drinking coffee.

Tallin, Estonia

Berlin, Germany was a 2 hour drive from where we docked but well worth the effort. A vibrant city with lots of parks and trees and recent history. The city is very open about acknowledging with a certain amount of shame, but more determination not to have it ever happen there again, the horrors and trauma of WW2 and the Nazi regime.

Berlin, Germany

St Petersburg, Russia was certainly interesting visually but the glitz became almost too much. Much of St Petersburg (previously Leningrad) was destroyed during WW2 so, although the buildings like the Palaces and the Hermitage were impressive, they really were reconstructions, not the originals. Ostentatious comes to mind.

St Petersburg, Russia

Helsinki, Finland seemed a bit drab after St Petersburg. Russians go there to shop. I spent the day there taking a ferry to a nearby island where there were no cars and lots of opportunity to walk near the sea. A refreshing change and I actually walked over 20 kilometres that day, not something you might expect on a cruise vacation.

Helsinki, Finland

Stockholm, Sweden was a photographer’s delight. The old town on the island was very wanderable with colorful alleyways and streets at every turn. The city also has a lot of canals and waterways that made a hop-on-hop-off boat trip a must.

Stockholm, Sweden

Rotterdam, Holland, where the cruise both started and ended, strikes me as a city with a shipping port/industrial past that is gradually gentrifying and becoming an interesting destination, not far from Delft and The Hague as well.

Rotterdam, Holland

Taking a cruise like this is an excellent way of seeing these spots. It is so good to have all your things in one place for the trip and have a “hotel” room that moves with you.

Where would I return? I would gladly go back to spend a few days in Berlin. Lots of culture, history, museums, parks, restaurants, coffee shops. And Stockholm was also somewhere I could hang out for a few days.

Playing with some of my vacation photos

Posted on May 17, 2018 by johnageddes

I may have had a bit too much time on the plane to fiddle with my phone. I came across a photography app that I had never used there called “Warmlight” and started fiddling with it and some of my photos from my recent trip to Europe.

I do prefer my photos to be clear and bright and honest but some of these treatments are appealing as well, just for a change. What do you think?

Street crossing, St.Petersburg, Russia.

Seagull,Tallin, Estonia

Photo shoot in front of the Reichstag, Berlin, Germany.

Nyhavn, Copenhagen Denmark

Nyhavn Copenhagen, Denmark. Looking the other way from the bridge.

Rooftop at the Citadel, Copenhagen, Denmark.

Grabbing s beer in Tallinn, Estonia.

Some of the Peterhof Fountains in St Petersburg, Russia.

Cranes along the docks at Helsinki, Finland.

Cathedral, Helsinki, Finland.

Windmill, Rotterdam, Holland.

Canal in Delfshaven district of Rotterdam, Holland.

Street in Gamla Stan – old town, Stockholm, Sweden.

Across the tracks in the new Rotterdam Central Station.

Escalator up from the bowels of the St Petersburg, Russia subway.

Grand Place, Brussels, Belgium.

A stroll through Mbita town

Posted on April 13, 2018 by johnageddes

I really enjoy strolling through Mbita town on the shore of Lake Victoria. I have visited Mbita, Kenya about a dozen times in as many years. As you can see from the photos, I am the only muzungu for miles around. I get many greetings and stop to talk with vendors or pikipiki drivers. I feel very safe and welcomed. I love the vibrant color that surrounds me there. The town also has special signficance for me which I will note at the end of this post.

The photos can speak for themselves.

Below is one other reminder of my special connection to this town. In the middle of the local hospital grounds, now behind some trees, is a water tank bearing my name. It was the first infrastructure project that I tackled in Kenya in 2005 and the benefits it gave to this clinic led me to establish the CanAssist African Relief Trust in 2008. Since that time, CanAssist has provided more than a million dollars of infrastructure support to communities throughout East Africa. Little did I know, in 2005, what a profound effect that water tank in Mbita town would have on my life for the next several years.

Ramula Shopping Centre – photo gallery

Posted on April 11, 2018 by johnageddes

Situated right on the Equator, Ramula is a colorful, little, rural Kenyan trading centre that I love to wander around and take photos. So much character. Friendly people living what appears to be simple lives but that are really quite complex given the challenges they face getting from day to day.

Here some photos of some of the shops that operate in this rural Kenyan “shopping centre.

This dilapidated van has been sitting here for the last five years, looking like this. In front of the “Palace” kinyozi (barber) hardware and beauty salon.

This fellow makes wooden tables, doors and cabinets using all hand tools. I contracted him to make a crib out of cyoress wood for little Heather Maddie at a cost of 6000KES ( $80 Can)

I asked these guys who were the other nine of the top ten. There were no others. Guess that makes this one number one.

The fellow hidden in this kiosk cage also can make deposits and give money from your Equity Bank account. In his spare time he does construction and cuts hair.

This is where the fellow above gives haircuts. The little sticker in the upper corner says “Trust in God”. Advice for clients who may not feel his skills are up to par?

And for the ladies…

The Place Pub, complete with smoking zone outside.

Scotland – September 2017

Posted on October 17, 2017 by johnageddes

Apple has conveniently helped in selecting photos of my recent trip to Scotland off my iPad and put them into a nice little 2 minute video. So here it is – a quick selection of images from my recent 2 week trip to Edinburgh, Skye, the Highlands and the Borders district in September.

Kids…pictures are worth thousands of words

Posted on January 30, 2017 by johnageddes

Here are some of the kids who have warmed my heart in the past couple of weeks. Enjoy their innocence.

Nyumbani – Home

Posted on January 15, 2017 by johnageddes

When I posted to my Facebook page that I was back in a Kenya I received a number of comments from my many African friends that could be summarized as “Welcome home.” The Swahili phrase is “Karibu Nyumbani”. ” Come and visit. When will I see you? I hope we can have lunch? Are you coming my way? ”

This social media welcome extended to our first couple of days here where school principals were asking if we could visit them. Even the students at one secondary school we anxious to have a school assembly to welcome us and they insisted that all of them get in the picture.

Africans are generous and excited about welcoming visitors. They extend that greeting to me but it feels more like family to me in so many East African communities.

I have a theory that there is some of my DNA that recognizes this as a place of my ancestral origin. If Monarch butterflies can find their breeding ground in Mexico without ever having been there or salmon can swim back to their birthplace to breed, I am sure that there is some little chemical part of my genes that know this as the place where my genetic being began.

Over the next three weeks I will visit at least ten communities and will try to share some photos of my visits. On Friday we went to the St Catherine School to open a new classsroom building and to the Ramula Secondary School where we constructed a new kitchen several months ago. Both are well maintained and are serving the students and teachers well. They are all grateful for the support of the many donors to the CanAssist African Relief Trust that have made these improvements to their communities possible.

Yesterday we attended a basketball tournament in Kisumu – food for another longer story. Stay tuned.

Today we are heading to “the rural” for an overnight with Dan Otieno’s grandmother, Ann. How fortunate I feel to be able to experience this association with my numerous African families.

We cross the equator every day going from Kisumu to Ramula. In fact the Ramula Secondary school is situated on the Equator!

These are the students at Ramula Secondary School, taken near the water tanks, installed with CanAssist donor support. Before these tanks were put in, the water for the school was brought in by donkey from a stream. The student have much less gastrointestinal illness with this clean water available.

Nancy looks out through the window of one of the new classrooms at St Catherine school as the kids sing and dance in celebration in the yard.

When I visited this community two years ago there was nothing here. The kids learned under a tree. Now there are six classrooms, an improved latrine, rainwater catchment and school furnishings at the St Catherine school, thanks to the support of CanAssist donors.

Signing the guest book at St Catherine School in the principal’s office. The last time I signed a document here it was in his office on a table under a mango tree.

Cutting the ribbon to open the new classroom at St Catherine school with a butcher knife. No scissors available.

Docks Part 3 – closer to home – Ontario

Posted on October 15, 2016 by johnageddes

Winter – Kingston Harbour

Dock by the Delta Hotel – Kingston

Confederation Basin, Kingston – early Spring

Eagle Lake dock

Cousins on the dock – Ontario cottage country

Wolfe Island dock

Three minutes from my home – Kingston harbour

Docks – Part 2 – Longboat Key, Florida

Posted on October 7, 2016 by johnageddes

One of my favourite docks to photograph is on Longboat Key Florida. I have been going there for over 30 years to vacation and this dock always draws my eye and my camera.

What’s up? Docks! – Part 1

Posted on October 5, 2016 by johnageddes

A Facebook friend recently posted a visually striking black and white photo of a man on a pier and it reminded me just how drawn I am to photographing docks and piers and breakwaters. I think it is the idea that the dock leads somewhere and the somewhere is often an expansive body of water. The boats at the docks are transport for adventure into the ocean or lake. There is something solitary about many of these images at the same time. Perhaps we are dwarfed by Nature.

It spurred me to look through my photo library for pictures of docks and piers that I have taken in many parts of the world. I have so many that I have to divide this into three parts. I hope you enjoy this maritime travelogue.