I had planned to blog while I was away but the time is going quickly and this is my first post. The fact is, that taking the pictures and downloading them is taking a lot of time.  Also internet connections are not always the best for uploading files. But here I am in Steyr, a beautiful city in Austria that also happens to be where I was born and where I lived the first five years of my life.  This is the highlight of my trip. Paris was great. Vienna was too but both are huge cites, especially Paris and I am more drawn to smaller places. Steyr has a population of 40,000 so it is a great size.  It also has some of the oldest buildings in Europe, as well as a variety of styles of archetecture (a subject I know virtually nothing about). We went to an abby a couple of days ago, which was amazing. We also were in Salzburg where there are many beautiful sites. The heat there was oppressive and there is not air conditioning. I didn’t feel that my images of Salzburg did it justice, as the heat got in the way.

Here are just  a few of the 1000s of pics that I’ve taken:

This first one is of the Claude Monet gardens in Giverny. The woman just happpened to be standing there wearing a perfect white dress.

The fireworks were part of the celebration of Bastille Day in Paris. There must have been a million people there. I’ve never been a part of a crowd that big and quite frankly, don’t care if I ever am again. I need to do some photoshopping with this one.

This is the view from the fabulous hotel that I am staying in called Hotel Minichmayr. Isn’t that beautiful!! And the rooms, the staff and the food is wonderful. You can find them at this link:  www.hotel–minichmayr.at/

Another image taken right from my hotel window.

This was taken at the abby in St. (oops can’t remember right now). What a spot that is!! Simply amazing. There were even 1000s of skulls in the basement.

Hard to believe how quickly the time is going and that my trip is almost over, but it is. And soon I will be back in Winnipeg to pursue my other photography passion, and that is family, children and wedding pictures.

Christina