Sua

I always worry about missing out on the spring blossoms

 

White Wisteria

In the tomato jungle

Bee orchid

Time to be free

 

Midsummer Night's Eve

Zegama Erle Erle Ezti Gozokiaak

The interior Gipuzkoan town of Zegama had a honey/beekeeping festival in late March.

 

Beehive types from the past

 

The idea was ostensibly to have an educational festival about honeymaking, but in actuality, there were tables upon tables of pastries, and a "pastry tasting", which ended up meaning that ALL the pastries were given away to the crowd. Pastries by local bakers with businesses that have been established for hundreds of years, like Eceiza and Gorrotxategi. We will be returning in the future.

Contest winners, with their championship hats. The man who is rocking the mustache in the chef's coat is from the Gorrotxategi family.

Eire

On the centennial of the 1916 Easter Rising. Andrew O'Hehir wrote a very good piece about just how odd an event it was.

Kilmainham Gaol, where many of the rising's organizers were executed.

Inside the prison, which has been used in a lot of film shoots.

Dunguaire Castle, in western Ireland.

The Burren, an area that is dominated by karstic rock formations.

An Irish High Cross

Raven Kingdom

The Cliffs of Moher

 

A building that is now a bank in Galway, but was once the home of a prominent local family.

Medieval detail of a bar in Galway.

Inside Galway Cathedral

 

From an exhibit in Galway. I cannot overstate how much of the tourism industry is geared towards attracting people of Irish descent.

The old outer wall of the city is now housed inside Galway's shopping mall. The city was an important port that changed hands many times. It is now a big music/cultural/party center.

St. Stephen's Green, where a lot of the fighting occurred during the Easter Rising.

A memorial to the potato famine.

Errausketarik Ez

There is a trash incinerator planned for construction nearby. After concerted opposition, the project languished for a while, but under new administration, the project is gaining traction again, and so there was a march against it in February.

"Clean air to breathe"

"A clean environment: Our right". The other sign makes a reference to the reconstruction of Donostia after it burned in the 1800s, and how it began in Zubieta, the area where the incinerator is planned. Interestingly, local trash management policy has become a proxy battleground for questions about Basque autonomy. The party that is against the incinerator is also independentist, and the atmosphere of the march was more Basque-speaking than the region on the whole.

The march started in one town and marched through the centers of several cities to gather more and more people, and then walk over a mountain to the incinerator construction site. It was held the day after a torrential rainstorm.

"No incinerator"

 

Otsaila

European goldfinch

Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic

Is that guy srs

Some sort of coot hanging out in the drainage pipe

From the Fort of San Marcos, outside Donostia.

An overview of the neighborhoods of Pasaia and Bidebieta, along the port of Donostia. The fort was built in the 1800s.

It is now an historical site with a restaurant.

 

Urte Berri Late

January 1, 2016, Dawn-ish.

 

Incredibly changeable weather and lots of blustery days this winter.

Winter has alighted on that mountain, where it shall remain.