the website of Mark S Bailen. . . writer, illustrator, and fake-nature photographer
Because my wife was prepping for a marathon, we only had one afternoon to visit the Blue Mountains. So we did the most touristy thing possible; we visited SCENIC WORLD in Katoomba, a hybrid national park / theme-park. We rode a tram, a plunging railway car, a cable car, and hop-on, hop-off buses. Almost our entire experience was mediated through windows! Very weird.
A petro station in somebody’s front yard. . . and another at a convenience store.
If you’ve never been to Bali (or anywhere in SE Asia), life is mediated through the motorbike. School, work, shopping, everything. Unless you live out in the sticks, walking is impossible. The roads aren’t built for pedestrians. Bicycles are nowhere to be seen. Cars are expensive and endure endless traffic jams. VIVA LA MOTO! The machines went nuclear about 25 years ago when Japan flooded the market with cheap motorbikes, available on easy credit.
I really enjoyed peeking into the mechanic shops: dark, sacrificial chambers with little altars where they worked on the bikes.
Lisbon has these cute yellow trams that are emblematic of the city (sort of like San Francisco’s cable cars). They appear on souvenir t-shirts and coffee mugs, and tourists love to ride them. We were lucky enough to visit one of the tram’s flats in the Baxia district where it invited us in for coffee, sardines, and sweet custards.
shhh… don’t scare them