Life in progress

Category Archives: Travel


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#ThursdayDoors – A Train and a Station

I absolutely adore train stations. I’m not sure why – perhaps I traveled by train often in another life. Anyhow, one of my favourite places to visit (as you may already know) is Kingston, Ontario, and downtown there is an out-of-commission station, now used as a tourist shop and information booth.

The doors, in my opinion, are spectacular. Please click on the images for a closer look.

And finally, behind the train station there’s an old engine sitting on an unused length of track. I tried to take a picture of its door, but it’s kind of squashed in where you can’t see it well.

Thursday Doors is brought to you by the great Norm Frampton here. Click the link to read the rules and add your own post.


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K’lee and Dale’s Cosmic Photo Challenge – Metal

As I was wandering around Kingston on the weekend, looking for metal, (because that’s the theme of this week’s Cosmic Photo Challenge) I came across a gate with some nasty looking needles. It’s like they put them in there just to make a point… so to speak.

The first is close to the original. I washed out a bit of the colour to age it a little:

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But then I thought what the hell. I just got a new phone today and the camera came with a few editing goodies, so why not make it look like I took the photo when the place was built?

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What do you think?


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#ThursdayDoors – Historic Doors, Kingston, Ontario

During my last excursion to Kingston I took a lot of photos. This house:

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luckily, speaks for itself in the form of a plaque right outside.

 

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The front door is no longer in use. On the inside…CAM01581

 

is the Kingston public library.

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Thursday Doors is a popular weekly prompt brought to us by Norm at Norm 2.0. Check out his post (by clicking on his name) and join in!


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#ThursdayDoors – More info on doors that aren’t, Kingston, Ontario

As promised, I did some more research on the wall (with a hole where a door used to be that I discovered on Ontario Street in Kingston), when I was there last weekend. Upon searching the library, I came up with two addresses on the adjacent street: 221 and 223 King Street. I still couldn’t find any information about the wall, except that it seemed to stretch across the back yards of these two homes. So off I walked to check it out. Handily, it was only a couple of minutes from the library.

Here is 221 King Street

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and attached to it is 223 King street.

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Here is the wall from both sides,

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You can see the door at the bottom of the garden, below the branches of the small tree.

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and the “front” door of #223.

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All this still didn’t give me any clue as to what the wall might have been part of, however. So I came home and did some more research. I came across this site: http://www.historicplaces.ca/en/rep-reg/place-lieu.aspx?id=8265 which goes on to say that #223 was built in 1834 for a lawyer, John Solomon Cartwright as an addition to #221. (If you click the link, you’ll see a much better picture of the wall than mine: in 1991 it had ivy growing on it.) The only real mention of the wall is this:

The property on which the building stands is also of interest, containing a carefully groomed lawn, plentiful gardens and a ten-foot limestone wall at its rear.

which indicates that it might have simply been built as an aesthetic piece. I’ll continue to keep my eyes open; I kind of hope, in some strange way, that it used to be a structure.

This post is part of Thursday Doors, brought to you by Norm at Norm 2.0. Check out his post (by clicking on his name) for the prompt and join in!


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K’lee and Dale’s Cosmic Photo Challenge – Architecture

For this week’s Cosmic Photo Challenge,  the prompt is “architechture.” Since I don’t have a lot of fancy tools at my disposal for altering photos, I decided to choose a building and pick it apart. I thought what better place to look than Japan, where aesthetics is everything.

Here’s a picture I took in December of 2014, of the Disney store in the Shibuya section of Tokyo. Click on the pictures for a closer look:

 
If you’d like to participate in the prompt, click here for Dale’s page, and/or here to go to K’lee’s place. Go on – it’s fun!


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Is it as sexist if a woman does it?

Saturday afternoon found yours truly enjoying a beer on the patio of one of Kingston’s livelier establishments. At this particular place, since it is Irish, the waiting staff wear kilts. Both the girls and the guys.

My table was adjacent to a table where three middle-aged women were sitting. Between us, a waiter stood talking to some customers. His back was to the other table. I watched as one of the women extended her arm and wiggled her fingers below the hem of the waiter’s kilt, as though she was going to reach up under it and tickle… something. I didn’t know whether to smile or be appalled. In retrospect, I’m pretty sure it’s the latter.

So let’s see… what is your reaction? Take the poll:

I could probably have come up with some more answers, but I’m interested to see what you have to say. Let’s discuss.

Edit for clarification: The woman didn’t come in contact with the waiter, and he didn’t notice she did it.


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#ThursdayDoors – Doors that aren’t, Kingston, Ontario

On a recent visit to Kingston, Ontario, I was wandering up Ontario Street and decided to take a picture of what used to be a building between Earl Street and William Street. After doing extensive research and finding nothing in the history sites of Kingston, I think I’ve figured out it was either a shed, or more likely a stable that was demolished sometime around 1953. It could have been a house or maybe servant’s quarters, but it wouldn’t have had road frontage. I found a map that dates back to 1865, with a slider that morphs the map up to 2013. Now, the wall faces a parking lot behind the houses on the two above-mentioned parallel streets. Here’s the map: https://apps.cityofkingston.ca/snapshotkingston/ It’s actually really really neat. I found the streets by their names in the 1865 version of the map. Grab the map and move it right and up slightly, so you’re moving south west – the block you’re looking for is right at the letter “A” in “ONTARIO.” (Note: Ontario Street runs parallel, and closest, to the water.) You can zoom in once you find the right block (the +/- button is at the top left of the map). You can see the building there before 1953, but it disappears at about ’53 and then shortly after, the wall appears as a white line in the middle of the block, running parallel to Ontario Street. It’s the wrong colour to have been the the above-mentioned building, but on close inspection I can’t tell what else it could possibly have been.

I’ve always had an interest in ruins. They cause my imagination to go in both conceivable and inconceivable directions. Next time I’m in Kingston, I plan to visit the library or the town archives to see if there’s any information on what this might have been. In the meantime, I’ll allow my imagination to play.

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Please forgive the odd angle…

 

...this was as close as I could get.

…this was as close as I could get.

I’m so happy and excited to finally be participating in this prompt. Kingston is just a two hour drive from where Norm took his Thursday Doors pictures. Check out his post (by clicking on his name) for the prompt and join in!


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Wordless Wednesday and #LoIsInDaBlog – The Eye and Palette Town

From the top of the Eye. Recognize anything?

From the top of the Eye. Recognize anything?

 

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2007

 

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Apparently I only visit places with giant wheels

Brought to you by Wordless Wednesday and The Bee at Just Fooling Around With Bee for LoveIsInDaBlog


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The Queen’s Inn – Kingston, Ontario, Canada

A couple of weekends ago it was my pleasure to stay in one of the oldest operating inns in Canada, The Queen’s Inn, in Kingston, Ontario.

It’s a comfortable hotel with friendly staff and, considering there’s a sports bar downstairs and I was there on a Friday and Saturday night, it was very quiet.  Despite the fact that they provide WiFi, the place hasn’t lost much of its ambiance from back in the 1800s when it was built. As you can see, drywall, in my room at least, isn’t necessarily a consideration.

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After dinner, I went outside to take a picture. My windows are on the second floor with the light on.

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In the morning I had Coppers Pub downstairs to myself for the complimentary breakfast, so I wasn’t at all self-conscious about taking pictures.

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While I was sitting in the pub, I wrote in my notebook:

I love these old buildings. They send my writer’s imagination into orbit, much like I want to believe the inspiration for the Overlook Hotel did for Stephen King. The feet that have walked these floors and gazed upon these walls – people with a million different thoughts in the their heads even as they looked but barely saw, astounds me. Humans stopped here for the night with their horses stabled nearby – weary souls traveling through came here, refugees from the cold as far back as 1839. The place has so much history, and I can only imagine…

I love staying in Kingston, so it fits well with The Bee’s Love Is In Da Blog prompt for today, “write about places you love.”

If you’d like to read about my most memorable and amusing, (and spooky) visit to Kingston to date, you can find the post here.

To visit the Queen’s Inn website, click here.

Thanks to The Bee for the prompt!


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I made it!

Just a quickie to say I got home safely. I woke up this morning at six – thirty one and a half hours ago – and now I’m ready for bed. As you can well imagine. I’ll go through the pictures tomorrow if I can actually stay cognizant long enough.

Nightie-night all!