GoMad Nomad Travel Mag » Photos

Photo of the Week: Matera, Italy

admin — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 09:51:10 +0000

This week’s Photo of the Week comes from Suzy Guese of SuzyGuese.com.

Entering Matera in the Basilicata region of Italy, in between Puglia and Calabria, was eerie to say the least. The town is said to be one of the world’s oldest, where settlements formed in caves, sassi, out of the natural grottos. In the 1950s, people started inhabiting the caves again due to extreme poverty, lending an infant mortality rate of 50%, a breeding ground for disease, and an Italian scandal of forcing residents into government housing schemes. To throw in a little more drama, Mel Gibson decided to film Passion of the Christ in Matera. I quickly found out why.

There was a chill to Matera, a quiet you couldn’t quite understand or think could possibly be in Italy, a country so rich in noise and chaos. As the sun beat down, the town glowed. A few Italian tourists here and there could be heard only by the snapping of their camera’s lens, opening and closing quickly. Then, the quiet ceased. A wedding procession began honking their horns, parading through town down to the church. Only for a moment did Matera seem like a normal Italian village, where a wedding can be seen in every quaint town on the weekend. Not a resident to be seen or real noise to be heard, Matera’s draws are not of beauty but a reminder of Italy’s impoverished and neglected South.

SuzyGuese.com showcases people and places from around the world not in the ordinary, travel guidebook sense. She is fascinated by the simple way a story can be told, usually with a little humor. Follow @suzyguese on Twitter and find her on Facebook.

Photo of the Week: Santorini, Greece

admin — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 12:43:58 +0000

We needed to return our rented moto by 4pm, so we decided to visit Santorini’s white sand beach before leaving the island. However, there were some road signs that just didn’t make sense and we decided to follow any sign that said beach. To our delight, we found ourselves at the red sand beach. We had to park the moto and walk about 10 minutes (over red rocks and stones), but it was well worth it. The blue water and deep red sand was such an unexpected surprise! It was hard to leave the beautiful spot, but we did return the moto and caught our flight away from paradise and back to reality.

Text and photo by Cara Metell

Photo of the Week: Mongolian Roads

admin — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 11:16:50 +0000

About 15 miles outside of Ulaanbaatar, we made a sharp left turn off the main two-lane highway and started off-roading it in our Russian van south to the Gobi. For another six days we wouldn’t see another paved road.

Part of the attraction of driving to the Gobi was just to be out in the middle of nothingness: no people, no other vehicles, no trees, no roads, no mountains, no camels, a featureless landscape. This is what I had come to see. And I wasn’t disappointed.

Text and photo by Stephen Bugno

Photo of the Week: Virginia Barn

admin — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 18:06:24 +0000

I drove through Virginia countryside for five hours on my way to Goose Point Recreation area on Philpott Lake, passing scenes like this much of the way. This shot was taken off Route 221 in Floyd County heading north to Roanoke.

I’m fascinated by barns and farm scenes lately—working farms, abandoned barns falling over, the differences in barn architecture as you move from New England to the South, the different ways hay is bundled up for the winter, the amount of hay harvests each region can produce before the winter arrives. This is what I’m thinking about as I wind my way along the roads that skirt the edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Text and photo by Stephen Bugno

Photo of the Week: Basilica of St. Anthony in Padua

admin — Fri, 28 May 2010 15:24:44 +0000

Such was the popularity of Anthony that work on the basilica in Padua began immediately after his death in 1231. The site was already attracting pilgrims and it was deemed necessary to raise a proper monument. The exterior was fashioned without a precise architectural style. The elaborate mix of a Romanesque Gothic facade with an eight-domed Byzantine roof and several small belfries give it an eastern look.

St. Anthony was beatified by Pope Gregory IX less than one year after his death. Thirty-two years later the immense Basilica was completed, and the time had come to transfer the body to its new resting place. When the sarcophagus was opened, the body had turned to dust while the saint’s tongue was found miraculously intact and red in color.

Today in the Baroque Chapel of Relics, in the apse at the back of the church, you can see the actual tongue presented in a gold reliquary. Also on display are the saint’s jaw bone and vocal chords.

Text and photo by Stephen Bugno

Photo of the Week: Beirut’s Corniche

admin — Thu, 20 May 2010 02:32:36 +0000

A visit to Beirut is not complete without a long stroll along the Corniche. Walk for hours past others out for a leisurely walk, men fishing, kids swimming, teenagers smoking shisha in between cliff dives, and women sunbathing on the sand. All before catching a sunset high on the cliffs overlooking the Mediterranean.

Beirutis continue to live and love life despite a recent history of much violence. It seems like everywhere you go there’s a building that’s been bombed out, a bridge that’s been blown up or a local telling you that this is the spot where a politician was assassinated.

Text and photo by Stephen Bugno

Photo of the Week: Beach near Olympos, Turkey

admin — Wed, 05 May 2010 12:23:23 +0000

After a vomit-inducing hydrofoil ride from North Cyprus, we docked at Alanya, Turkey—a big city filled with Scandinavian and Russian package tourists. From there we went an hour west to the little town of Side, which was even more densely packed with European package vacationers. From there we moved on to the Lycian coast to the anti-Side resort: Olympos.

We found this ghetto of independent travelers to be as equally annoying as places like Side. However, the great beach in an incredibly beautiful setting made up for the lack of Turkishness, expense, and loud, drunken nineteen year-olds crawling in and out of every treehouse hostel.

Turned off by the whole Olympos scene, we walked 3km north on the beach to the quiet village of Çıralı where we camped alongside Turkish families and enjoyed two days in the sun and sea.

Text and photo by Stephen Bugno

Photo of the Week: Soviet Mosaic in Kazakhstan

admin — Sat, 01 May 2010 14:07:02 +0000

In Honor of International Worker’s Day, here is one of the ubiquitous public mosaics that once adorned buildings and public spaces across the whole of the Soviet Union, many still remaining to this day. Although there has been a trend over the past decade or so to remove some of these monuments and other artistic relics of the Soviet Union, many still remain.

Here a farmer and an industrial worker stand proudly in the shadow of Lenin under the blazing orange sun of the central Asian steppe. This art appeared on the side of an apartment block in a village near Tekeli in southeastern Kazakhstan. I took the photo in 2004 as I made my way through Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Azerbaijan.

Text and photo by Stephen Bugno

Photo of the Week: Porto Old City View

admin — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 22:39:03 +0000

One of my favorite views of probably my favorite city of its size in all of Europe, Porto, Portugal is a city I would visit again and again.

Despite the many tourist friendly activities in the city, I somehow avoided most of them and just spent most of my five days wandering through the maze of cobbled streets, admiring the architecture, socializing with university students, staying up until daylight gaining an appreciation to the city’s authentic vibe.

This shot, looking out over the rooftops of Old Porto was taken from the Sé do Porto, the Porto Cathedral, which stands on a rocky outcrop above the city.

Text and photo by Stephen Bugno

Photo of the Week: Mumbai Victoria Terminus

admin — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 04:45:29 +0000

One of the most beautiful buildings I have ever seen, the Mumbai Victoria Terminus train station stands as a glorious testament to 19^th century architecture in this city of nearly 14 million people. It has been renamed Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus.

The famous landmark, built in the Gothic style, was designed by Frederick William Stevens, in 1887-1888 and took 10 years to build.

As we approached the station by foot we crossed through a huge park, weaving our way in and around several pickup cricket matches.

Text and photo by Stephen Bugno