Very British baby carriages in Hyde Park

Today, when I searched for something else in my photo archive, I found this image, which I must have shot in London's Hyde Park in the late 70's. I think one could say that babies were transported in style at that time .....

The classic freighter Saturn in Helsingør

I have seen the small (54 x 9,3 m) cargo vessel Saturn several times passing by in Øresund. Today, my visit to Helsingør gave me a nice opportunity to have a somewhat closer look at this classic Dutch built (1966) beauty. Seeing Saturn lie in front of the beautiful old buildings in central Helsingør, was like going back in time about half a century.

But according to the owner, the Danish shipping company Janus Andersen & Co, Saturn is still very much in active duty, carrying different kinds of loads in Denmark and neighboring areas. The company website has a few nice photos of the ship here.

The view from the Glumslöv hills

The Glumslöv hills, on the coast between Landskrona and Helsingborg, are magnificent even in late December. From the hills you can 30 churches and seven Swedish and Danish cities, including Copenhagen and Elsinore. The island in the Sound is Tycho Brahe's Ven (Hven in Danish), where the astronomer lived and worked from 1576 to 1597.

PS (August 22, 2013)

I added this image of the Glumslöv hills, seen from the sea:

 

The Christmas Eve Mass in St Peter's Basilica in 2012

Watching Christmas Eve and Easter Masses celebrated in St Peter's Basilica in the Vatican has been tradition in my family for decades now. I find it amazing that they are able to create a feeling of warmth, even intimacy, in spite of the huge size of the St Peter' s - it can easily host more than 15.000 people.

Pope Benedict XVI celebrating the Christmas Eve Mass in 2012

Masses celebrated in St Peter's Square, pictured below in a 19th century drawing by Boudier, are even bigger events, with up to 80 000 people attending.

A wintry slideshow from Southern Sweden

With this slideshow 

I would like to wish you all a 

Merry Christmas!

Three old photographs from the Holy Land

The three photographs below show Nazareth, Capernaum and Gethsemane in the 1890s:

In the New Testament, Nazareth is described as the childhood home of Jesus, and as such it is a center of Christian pilgrimage, with many shrines commemorating biblical events.

Capernaum was according to the Gospel of Luke the home of the apostles Simon Peter, Andrew, James and John.  In Matthew 4:13 the town is reported to have been the home of Jesus.

Gethsemane, the garden at the foot of the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem is the place where, according to the gospels Jesus and his disciples are said to have prayed the night before he was arrested, the day before his death.

Merry Christmas to ARTE!

Not only are the programs of the French/German television channel ARTE of outstanding quality. In addition, even the small announcements and greetings between the programs are some of the most beautiful and creative that at least this "reviewer" has seen.

Take e.g. ARTE's new, visually fascinating musical Christmas greeting, illustrated by the two  photos below, as I could not find the greeting on ARTE's website or YouTube:

Looking forward to more quality programming, I say MERRY CHRISTMAS to all people over there at ARTE!