London buildings...

London, in terms of buildings, definitely has a really good balance between the old and the new. At many places I saw the two worlds clashing, wierd looking modern buildings of glass and steel standing next to old, elegant, brick and stone buildings, maintaining a pleasing contrast. Here are some examples:

This was visible from the Westminster bridge...


Don't remember where I took this but found the two buildings next to each other very striking...


The next two are while walking from the London bridge to the Tower Bridge on the southern side of the Thames river. The walk from between these two bridges is something I would recommend to everyone. There are a million things to notice there...

Portland Aerial Tram

The aerial tram is a 3 minute ride to the top of a hill to the Oregon Health and Science University and definitely a must see for people visiting Portland. Here are the mountains that were visible...

Mt Hood


Mt St Helens belowing volcanic smoke...

Aww nuts!!!

Manged to finally get one picture in which he was staring straight at the camera and the camera didn't shake :)

Places...

Trillium lake...Trillium was the name of the first company that I worked for after graduation...

Madras!!! Well, I didn't take the 26 East to check if they too have their version of the 'Sarvana Bhavan' ;-)

beaches and waterfalls...

...of Oregon

Oregon...pristine

After covering nearly 600 miles of 'Oregon Scenic Byways' over the weekend, pristine is the word that comes to mind. Pristine in the sense of beauty and serene but also untouched and uncorrupted. How do they manage to keep such vast expanses of natural beauty in so much 'order'?!? Even in the remotest of the places it looks as if someone has just mowed the grass and pruned the trees...

But, no doubt, the place is amazing. The weather was not the best but the drive was totally worth it. I covered the Oregon coast from Newport to Astoria on one day and the Mt Hood scenic loop the other...

On the costal drive the highlight was the Yaquina Head Lighthouse built in 1873. The winds were howling and the view form the lighthouse was nothing because of the heavy fog rolling in but whatever was visible and the lighthouse itself were quite nice...

SF run...

The Twin Peaks in San Francisco were the target of my run in SF. I started running from the Mission street in the general direction of the hills. It wasn't a good idea to run uphill after a week's layoff from running but it was a nice sunny day and very ideal for running. Obviously I got lost but finally did manage to make it all the way up to the hill right besides the Twin Peaks called the Sutro hill which I now found out is about 50 feet taller than the Twin Peaks anyway ;-). The Sutro hill has a huge and very peculiar tower called the Sutro tower on top of it. I had my camera with me in a pouch that fitted very nicely in my hand and took some pictures on the way up and made mental notes of the rest that I wanted take pictures of on the way down, here they are...

This was another one of those steep streets that I ran up. Well I ran up this one but there were several on which it was just not possible to either run up or down. Check out that striking dark red, maroon tree...

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Finally I spotted the Sutro tower right in front of me and I took this without stopping on the way up the final uphill street...

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Below is the 'Transamerica Pyramid' building (taken with 12x digital zoom), a fairly prominent part of the SF skyline...

And lastly the Golden Gate bridge was visible from the top. The bridge is now 70 years old...

Building mural...

This was the mural on the side of a building in SF city. It is one of the best murals I have seen. I don't think the panoramic picture above captures the painting too well. Maybe the close-ups below capture the uniqueness of the painting...

More SF...

Another house from SF with really nice flowers growing up front. Unfortunately the camera shook a little and the picture didn't come out too clear...

San Francisco

The sun was out today and the walk through SF was spectacular. You can see it for yourself below...

Here is a panoramic view of the city...


Here are two differently coloured but typical SF houses standing next to each other...