Harvey Travel Arts

I'm leading up to something here. You're probably wondering what a photo from our Greek cruise has to do with Thanksgiving. We'll, it is one more thing that we have to be thankful for this year: traveling opportunities. That's certainly not the most important thing I am thankful for; the top of my Thanksgiving list is my Savior, my God and His love for me and mankind . I'm also thankful for Brian, my wonderful husband and my family and friends...health and opportunities. Since I've made it a personal rule not to share photos of family and friends in my very public blog, you'll have to settle for a picture from our travels. I hope, reader, that whatever you did on Thanksgiving, you enjoyed your blessings with friends and family. I hope that you reflected on the gifts God gave you. And I hope that you are always thanking Him for His love. My blog posts may be irregular for the next couple of weeks; I hope that is okay. Trust me, I have plenty of thi...

The Acropolis in Athens is one of the best recognized or best known monuments. I cannot begin to tell you what we had to go through to get to the top. Our journey started when we walked through town, up a couple of hidden passages, just to arrive at the base of this attraction. You know all of the TV specials that show some man standing with an empty Acropolis in the background? I have no idea how they get those shots, unless it is off hours or the crowds are edited out. Seriously, there is no physical privacy there. Once we got to the base of the Acropolis, we saw a large crowd of people chaotically waiting near the entrance. It took a few minutes of observation to realize that tickets had to be purchased at a different area before getting in the massive crowds. So glad we figured that out first. Then, basically, there is pushing and shoving on slippery rocks until you finally make your way in. I am not exaggerating; people actually did stumble a bit around us and bodies were too ...

I need a good laugh, and today's Flower Power! post should do it. These are all more photos from Greece. I'm not sure where the "Having Pistils and No Stamens" wording came from. It must have amused Brian, though, because he photographed it. For those who aren't familiar with flowers, pistils and stamens are the female and male reproductive parts of a flower. There are some flowers which are "incomplete" and have one but not both. Not sure exactly what flower they were referring to here, but nonetheless, the English phrase in Greece amused us. Can't talk about flowers without showing this cute storefront! I love whimsy, and this place was certainly filled with it. The beautiful little jewel below is a perfect ending to today's pictures, don't you think?

Did you know that some of the Greek Isles are mostly rock? Uninhabitable places? I didn't, either, until our cruise. Other parts of Greece do have vegetation, though, as seen by the palm and the cactus. The country's landscape is diverse and every day on the cruise a new adventure. I particularly like the notion of the cactus by the water. I think more often of desserts and cacti together, and certainly there may not be much rain in a given area, yet the water surrounds it. So close, yet so far? I chose the below archway to go with today's posting to show the plant life growing all around the stone, crowding out the manmade structure. Sometimes life thrives in the most unexpected places!