Friday Horse Blogging
More horses on our hike this week, this time around West Wycombe. They're starting to get a shaggy coat for winter. Some horses already have their winter coats out, but this was a fine sunny day, so these horses were enjoying the feel of a naked roll in the grass.  The one in th

Highgate Cemetery: Pompous Victorian Ghosts
Last week seemed like a good time to visit a Victorian cemetery, so we trained into London to see Highgate Cemetery. It was the first private cemetery to be built outside of London, to bury the growing number of dead Londoners. It opened in 1839 and although it is still occasionally used, it's mostly fallen to ruin as the families of the inhabitants have died out. Victorians were pompous in death, as in life. Gothic monuments, now crumbling and grown over with vines, are crowded in the cemetery. Stone angels, draped urns, and Egyptian obelisks line pebbled paths. Once fashionable mausoleums are now covered with cobwebs. Sentimental statues depicting the pets (including a pet

Friday Horse Blogging
This nice looking horse lives near Chenies. He wanted to be friends with my dog, but my dog is more a people person, so she ignored him.

Berlin: A Modern City of Antiquities
Berlin Cathedral, with the "pope's revenge", the star-crossed TV tower, in the background.Don't let the soaring modern architecture fool you; Berlin is chock full of some of the oldest remnants of civilization. The Pergamon Alter, the Ishtar Gates of Babylon, the 2000-year old bust of ancient Egyptian queen—and that's only a small part of what you'll find in Berlin, as modern a European city as it's possible t

Friday Polar Bear Blogging
This is Knut, the famous polar bear born at the Berlin Zoo, the first "ice bear" born at the zoo in 30 years. His mother, a rescued circus performer, rejected him, and he was hand raised by a zoo keeper. Eventually Knut became a media sensation (you can read about it at Knut's wiki) and earned the Berlin Zoo millions of euros. I'm not normally a fan of zoos—I don't like seeing animals in captivity,