Ornate Street Lighting

I know I live in - well near these days - Blackpool but I'm ignoring illuminations and to be honest, the UK altogether for this entry. Having travelled around Europe quite a bit we have come across many examples of older or just simply decorative street lighting and it's become a habit to look out for them.

As most of our travels have been on cruise ships, we don't tend to see a lot of places at night, so most of these shots will be daytime. But that does make it easier to see detail on the lamp standards and finials. We'll start gently with this view of St Tropez.

Villefranche nestles between Nice on the French Riviera and Monaco. This street is named the Hidden Street and it runs parallel with the seafront and is totally enclosed. It is lit with what seem to be ancient housings containing more modern electric lights.

Housings that look as though they should be holding flaming pitch-covered lengths of wood or bundles of twigs always get my attention. This one is above a gateway into the ancient city of Rhodes.

Another year and back on the French Riviera; this is Sanary-sur-Mer. Wouldn't it be wonderful to sit on the Promenade and listen to a concert in this band stand with it's old-fashioned lighting?

We had just got off our ship in the harbour at Ajaccio, Corsica and this street lamp stood out against the deep of the blue sky.

Koper in Slovenia. I particularly enjoy looking around those medieval cities where many of the street lights are attached to buildings rather than lamp posts, because the streets are so narrow.

These lights are a touch more modern, but at least a bit of imagination has been applied to the design. They sit on the end of a pier at Limone on Lake Garda, Italy.

Lamp posts this time. This is Funchal on the island of Madeira out in the Canaries.

And another one in Valetta in Malta.

We went a long way to see this one. It's in Walt Disney's Magic Kingdom in Orlando. The flag was a clue wasn't it...?

The lamp standards in Venice have pink glass in their casings. Perhaps to make the most of the colours of the Doges' Palace?

Also in Venice, we found a dragon holding up a bunch of umbrellas! Well just the one wouldn't keep it dry...

The medieval city of Kotor in Montenegro has such narrow streets and nestles so close under the mountain that the light finds it hard to penetrate and the street lights were still glowing when we arrived one morning.

A lovely bit of decorative ironwork in Palermo, Sicily.

Piombino in Italy and a street that I just happened to glance down as we passed it.

For most things architectural it's hard to beat Spain's wonderful city of Barcelona. It's a city where your neck should be constantly stretching upwards to make sure you don't miss anything and for this article I'm going to finish with a second look at Barcelona's magnificent street lights below.

Curiosities - Buildings and Infrastructure Index

Mediterranean Essence Cruise on Island Star, 23-30 August 2008

A series of articles charting our progress and antics on a cruise with Island Cruises with my mum along for the week.

Each article can be accessed by clicking or tapping the photographs below. A link at the end of each article will bring you back to this index page.

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The Island Star in Ajaccio, Corsica

Monday 25 August 2008. We are in Ajaccio, Corsica and have arrived back onboard our ship, the Island Star, after a morning's excursion to the Prunelli Gorge and the Tolla reservoir.

We are in our favourite afternoon spot, ready to relax, reading, perhaps taking part in the daily quiz. This is where the little bird crashed into the window yesterday.

Mum has filled her glass too full... Oh dear... Elegance at all times...

The effort has exhausted her...

Time for a quick peek off the side of the ship. On the dockside lorries are queuing up waiting to move onto a ferry.

To one side we have the Girolata, one of the ferries of the La Méridionale fleet. Launched in 2002 she takes 650 passengers and 160 cars and carries 45 crew.

Thomson Destiny is moored next to us on our port side. Built in Helsinki for Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines, she launched in 1981 and went into service as Song of America. She transferred to Sun Cruises as Sunbird in 1999 and after Sun Cruises ceased trading she was chartered to Thomson in 2005 who called her Thomson Destiny.

Mum meanwhile has woken up and decided she wants a smoothie. Julius the waiter grabs her hand and leads her off to get one... I'm not really sure what she was enjoying the most, the hand holding or the smoothie, but anyway it put a smile on her face for the afternoon.

The lovely little area at the rear of the Island Star gave us great views and was always a busy area.

Time for a quick peek off the stern of the ship. The outskirts of Ajaccio as the hills crowd down towards the sea. Behind them a range of mountains.

Time to set sail and Corsica glides slowly away from us as we head once more into the Mediterranean, bound for Civitavecchia, Italy from where we shall take a trip to Rome.

In the theatre, settling down to watch the show.

Afterwards we end up in the cafe bar having a coffee. I have a latte which is extremely strong! Yuck!

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Hidden Gems Cruise - Propriano, Corsica

Thursday 19 September 2019. Two days previously we had flown from Manchester out to Palma, Majorca to board once again our favourite ship, the Marella Dream.

She may be small compared to the current fad for floating cities, but if you meet someone whose company you enjoy, you do have a chance of bumping into them again on her. And she can visit ports that simply cannot cope with the huge (dare I say ghastly?) goliaths that roam the seas, turning everywhere they visit into a crowded mass of people.

Which is precisely the inspiration for the cruise we are on. Hidden Gems will take us across the western Mediterranean, calling at smaller ports where passengers can step off on their own to explore beaches and towns off the beaten track. Alternatively there are excursion tours to the larger popular sites if you so wish.

Today, after a day at sea, we have arrived in Propriano on the island of Corsica and we have opted to explore this place that until we booked the cruise, I confess, we had never heard of.

The Dream is moored alongside a marina and we walk the length of it, coming to a point where the road heads off up a hill. There's a beach before us and further on another which leads to an interesting rocky promontory.

We climb the hill and look back towards the marina and Dream - that's Dream with a capital D, we didn't take a nap or anything...

Halfway up we pass a set of steps leading to a building. Neither the steps nor the building seem to have been used for a long while!

We reach the main road and carry on in the same direction in order to reach the far beach. Propriano lies on the route from Ajaccio to Bonfaco. We have visited Ajaccio a few times in the past, it is the birthplace of Napoleon Bonaparte.

We reached the far beach and as the ancient and unpracticed legs were demanding a rest, we sat for a while; Fran on a bench, but me on the hard wall in order to have a viewpoint that would let me sketch the scene.

To the right, the land rose up towards a cemetery on top of the hill, but to the immediate right was a car park, not particularly attractive and hellish to draw convincingly, so I turned it into scrubland with a gleeful disregard for fact and accuracy. And I don't care...!

This took the best part of an hour and whilst the legs were now rested, certain other parts which were resting on unyielding hard stone were calling for me to get up again. We kept to the road, this time and walked down into the town.

Once there a rather more comfortable seat gave us a place to sit and have a drink whilst watching the passers by. This did make Miss Franny a bit uncomfortable at times as the road was fairly narrow and a couple of cars turning into the road at her side came very close to the railing, having to slam on brakes and reverse to try again. One woman took four goes at it...

So what can I say about Propriano itself? Well it has ancient roots going back to the Romans and the Greeks. It was invaded in both the 5th century by the Vandals and the 8th century by Saracens. Filitosa, 8km north and Palaghju, 11 km south have some standing stones from prehistoric times; Palaghju having the largest number of stones of any site in the Mediterranean.

The first day onboard the ship I found that my shaving brush was rapidly trying to emulate my head and was shedding bristles at an alarming rate. However visits to the local pharmacies failed to produce a replacement, so I was forced to spend at least another day lifting out the click-clack plug to scrape out bunches of badger hair before they blocked the plumbing!

Ah yes - I have a bit of a thing for decorative street lighting. So much so that there will probably be a collective article of them at some point in the future. Here is Propriano's entry to the lamp post hall of fame...

Finally, we are thrilled to be cruising with long-standing friends and entertainers, Tomas and Maris, who sing every night in the Tides Bar onboard Marella Dream. I played a couple of songs with them every night, so that the audience could see just how good they were... My favourite sort of audience - tolerant!

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