Postcards from Monterey (the cell phone version)

Downtown Monterey, parking is free on Sunday!

I have a feeling those chairs are talking to each other.

It's the first time in 15 years I ever sit down and eat in a restaurant at Fisherman's Wharf.

My lunch, Linguini Isabella. It is delicious.

At a candy store. I got toothache just looking at them.

A lovely day to walk around Monterey's Historical Park.

Historical Pacific House and Garden.

A fountain with water lilies.

And a lot of hungry fishes.

I don't know this plant's name, I only know it is from Hawaii.

Red chair. The HDR of my call phone kicks in for this photo.

The most crazy cactus grove I have ever seen.

Somehow the cactus looks juicy.

Postcards from Monterey

Historical house: Casa Soberanes.

Deranged Landscape II

Deranged Landscape

Rock on Beach

Abandoned Seal Pup in the Sea

Point Lobos in My Mind's Eyes

The Rocky Shore of Point Lobos

Point Lobos, on the Trail near Whale Cove

Blue Flower

The flowers are tiny, each the size of my fingertip. Someone saw me photographing the flowers and asked me if I knew its name. (I don't.) "It's so beautiful!" He said.  

The Saints in the Garden

Stopped by Mission Carmel on my way to Point Lobos. The light was harsh at this time of the day but the amazing dynamic range of D810 allowed me to be experimental.

Life Is Short, Play with Your Cat

Pomponio State Beach

Finally felt strong enough to carry my camera bag out to take photos (and didn't cut the trip short). Though the result is terrible (so out of practice). I am happy my health has recovered. Improvement can wait till next time.

It's the first time I had seen dead jellyfish on the beach.

Masterpieces of Scottish National Gallery

Scottish National Gallery, quite an impressive place to visit.

The exhibition begins with a Botticelli, good choice.

An early Vermeer. His "Girl with Pearl Earring" was last year's sensation here.

The first real El Greco I have seen in person. I can hardly believe he lived in the 16th century. His work is ahead of the time.

I had seen the reproduction of this painting many times, but nothing prepared me for how alive and vivid the original is.

Frans Hals, the Dutch master. 

Ah, the fatal moment we all know from Dante's Inferno!

Painted by the teenaged Valazquez, really a precocious genius.

I recognized this painting as the cover of a Mendelssohn's CD I owned.

I was surprised to see a Matisse here. 

Mrs Dalloway Mrs Dalloway

Gauguin in Tahiti

Picasso in Blue

A Kirchner

Seuret, forever the colorist, this painting showed how his ideas had influenced Van Gogh.

A Frederic Church Niagara Fall. Whenever I saw super sized color landscape photos, I thought about the Hudson School.