Amazing Organs

While we traveled around Europe and visited so many churches, I began to photograph the organs when possible. These musical instruments are so awesome with the music they can play. I was lucky enough to hear a few of them playing. I hope you enjoy these.

Our first trip was to the Berlin Cathedral. It had an organ with nice dark wood, finely carved holding the silver pipes for it's organ in a side naive where everyone could see it as they walked into the church.

Berlin Cathedral

Berlin Cathedral

Prague had a very lovely cathedral up by Prague Castle. It's organ was in two levels with the top level having wooden and golden tops on the pipes. The lower level was set up under three marble archways where there was a nicely decorated wooden rail in front with knight shields, swords, and jousts.

Prague Castle Cathedral

Porto several old churches with organs I photographed. The first church had two organs. This was quite a small church with a lot of gold painted items. Over bearing in my opinion. However, the organ pipes were painted green (and slightly rusty), with heaps of golden ornamenting.

Next was an organ in the back of a long church high above everything with a beautiful window behind it. The pipes were silver with an arrangement that took the large one outside and smaller ones in the middle to allow for the light to come in the window. Very nicely organised (pun intended).

This highly golden covered grey piped organ had some pipes pointing straight out like little horns. A cool design in the brown wood frame and massive gold decoratoin.

In Milan we went to the Duomo di Milano the was a small organ in a wooden box with small pipes. There were some paintings on the side of this organ with views of Christian acts of faith. Quite small for the size of the church, but elegant.

notice the photos opened on the sides.

We were in Northern Ireland and Ireland next. Got a photo of one of my favourite organs. The great window lights up the nice wooden frame holding the big light blue with some dark blue and gold highlighted pipes. Gorgeous!

A great window behind the wooden frame of blue pipes.

Two organs, both small

In Copenhagen we went into a cathedral which had a nice small organ in a wooden box with some red velvet holding the silver and gold pipes.

We also got a shot of the organ in the Marble Church from a distance. It has a wooden frame with lots of gold dusting surrounding it's pipes.

Marble Church

On our first morning in Sweden, Penny and I walked around Malmo, Sweden and visited a couple churches there. St. Petri (St. Peter's Church) had a window behind the organ, which made it a bit hard to see, but this organ was lined up along the two side walls instead of what is normally seen in having the pipes all in one line. I liked the different look, even with the blurry photo.  They also had an old box organ. It was a big square on top of the stand holding all of the pipes along all four sides. Small in size, but it still had some decent sized pipes.

The first place we saw an organ in Munich was Michaelskirche. It was a well lit church with a white interior, which made the organ very visible by some windows in the back. It had gold trim around the silver pipes up on the balcony. Really nice looking organ!

The next church we had a view of the organ was in a small town on our way up to Neuschwanstein Castle. It was a bit small, but in an amazing looking church with the pink colours around the silver pipes trimmed in gold and white statues. Sounded really nice while we were outside waiting to leave and the church service had just started.

Then we went to ___ church which is a UNESO Heritage site. This huge church had and organ with three sets of pipes. The middle ones were quite big with two smaller sets on the sides. All were in some white painted wood with gold trip in a well lit bright church. Looks small as we were quite far away, but it was large!

In Luneburg, Germany we went into a small church. There was a weird red light shining on the organ which was placed high in the wall above a sitting area. The dark wood and statues with gold trim
looked nice.

Spooky looking with the red "glow"

In Nice, France we came upon a church with an organ that had three large separate parts. Two sides had some large pipes with dark wooden frames and a middle made up of many small pipes in it's dark wood. some of the pipes were even hanging over the wall above the window. Interesting look!

One of my favourite organs was the futuristic looking one in Monaco Cathedral. The pipes were inside round clear tubes of various sizes hanging off a light coloured wooden platform with pink lighting. It was also playing some random music as we walked around taking in the different sites in the Cathedral.

Futuristic looking organ

Vienna had a couple organs I liked. The dark photo was an organ that just had the pipes standing on the wooden platform and nothing visible holding them at the top. Hard to tell, I know. Another one was in St. Peter's Church. This was quite far away, so not the best photo. You can see the highly ornate gold trim around the pipes.

A bit later on this trip we came across a quaint church with a bright white interior with and organ contained in a white painted wood with golden statues and trim.

Now I am just putting in some photo's from our Spain trip in 2013. I don't remember all the churches. There are some differences in these organs as many of them have some pipes sticking straight out making a nice design. I like this concept.

This organ had some very elaborate wood work surrounding the pipes. The detail was exquisite, but hard to see in this photo of the whole organ. Really cool design.

One cathedral had two organs with similar designs and some of the smaller pipes sticking straight out instead of standing like the rest. The wood work is similar, but the pipes have a different colour to them and a bit different design. How loud would a service be if both organs were playing at one time?

This final organ was in the Sagrada Familia by Gaudi in Barcelona. This is one of the less impressive designs in comparison to the cathedral itself. I like how the pipes are in a nice colour wood. The difference is it is behind the alter, where most of the others are in the back or on the sides of the church. However, the thought process behind how sounds works in this place makes this an awesome place to listen to an organ play.

Penny and I aren't really religious, but enjoyed seeing so many churches and the different designs. So much money spent on places to worship; including the art work, organs, pulpits, paintings, stain glass windows, and of course the time it took to build these historic buildings. Amazing!

Which one is your favourite? Do you have any photos of organs you would like to share?

Porto, Portugal means more than Port!

I got introduced to Port when I was living in Colorado about 12 years ago. So, to be living in Europe and having a chance to go to Porto, the origin of port was an excellent opPORTunity. However, there was more to Porto than the Port.

We were meeting Rachel, a friend from our Africa trip in 2010. Since we arrived on Thursday night, we had some time to walk around in the morning, find a place for breakfast and get an idea on how to get around. We ate at the Traveller Caffe for breakfast and gave it a two thumbs up and ate breakfast there every morning.

Francesniha with chips.

We were told we had to try the traditional francesinha, so found a place to have one. It wasn't hard to figure out what the sandwich was made of with a photo on the wall.

Let's build a sandwich!

     

After this huge feed, we thought about going walking around, but the rain started to come down hard. We decided it was a good day to be inside trying some port. So over the bridge we went (the number one attraction to see in Porto, according to Tripadvisor). This bridge was built by a student of Gustave Eiffel in 1886. Quite an amazing looking bridge, especially for its time.

Ponte Dom Luis I Bridge

On to the port tasting where we learned a lot about port wines. They are sweet, stopped half way through the fermentation by adding a spirit, and the grapes come from Douro (about an hour drive away from Porto). Similar to wine tasting you start with the whites and move to a newer style called the pink (like a rose wine), then on to ruby and tawny. There are others like vintage (coming from grapes of a certain year), reserve (a premium ruby port, not of single vintage), and LBV (late bottled vintage) that are also thrown into the mix. I didn't know there were so many types, but well worth tasting to find out your favorite.

Rachel and Penny at Kopke

Kopke was our first stop and we had a tasting of 5 different ports between the three of us. We all had a bit of each of them, and each had our favorites. The best part of this tasting was they had chocolates to accompany the port. With the nice size pours and chocolates, we were there for a while before moving.

Next stop Sandeman. Here we had a tasting and a look at the museum before we went on a tour. On the tour we saw the warehouse, which stores the port, and learned most of the information we needed about port. We all found the Sandeman branding to be excellent with the Spanish hat (sherry is produced in Spain and is part of Sandeman's product), the black cape (actually a Portuguese student's cape, which they still wear today), and port/sherry glass in hand. We had a tasting of the white and tawny ports after the tour as well.

Our tour guide and a lot of port!

Deciding we had enough port for one day we went back to our hotel, making sure to pass by another one of the best attractions in Porto - the Sao Bento Train Station. The main hall of this building has a bunch of murals made with mostly blue and white tile, which is a Portuguese tradition. We saw similar tiling on a lot of the older buildings in Porto. The tiles were not always white and blue on the houses, but many of the houses had some tiling for the siding instead of brick, wood, or panels.

Sao Bento Train Station

We ate dinner down on the river front and found a nice place to eat, which had some interesting items hanging from the ceiling. Found this one particularly perplexing on why it was among the others.

Yes, it's what you think it is!

Saturday was a clear day and much better for walking around. We went to Ingreja de Santa Clara and the Cathedral. These places were very ornate with a lot of gold paint. This would have made me ask as a parishioner, "where is the tithing money was being spent?". A bit too extravagant for my liking, but beautiful non the less.

Santa Clara

Penny and I love bell towers, so we had to ascend the 250+ stairs to the top of Torres Dos Clerigos for some great views of the city. The views were well worth the effort even in the narrow space with people going both up and down at the same time.

View from the tower

We had trouble getting around a couple who wanted to have a photo shoot up in the tower, so we were stuck up there for a bit soaking up the view.

Our next stop was the library that is considered (at least according to the lady in the tourist information center) as "the 3rd most beautiful library in the world." J. K. Rowling was so inspired by the stair case that she describes it in her Harry Potter books and they library appears in the Harry Potter movies. We were not allowed to take photos inside the library (a guy was at the top of the stairs watching for those taking photos and telling everyone "No Photos.") Sorry, you will just have to watch the movies to get a glimpse, but they were very cool. They have one entrance at the bottom, and then split part way up so there are two stairs  to the second level.

Livraria Lello

It was over to taste some port again. Porto Cruz was first on the list with a taste of the pink port. The ladies liked this one a bit more than Scott. We went for a boat cruise on River Douro to see several bridges and enjoy the sunshine.

Porto Cruz Pink

Scott, Penny, and Rachel getting ready for River Douro cruise. 

Porto view from cruise boat

Porto view from cruise boat.

Back on shore it was time to go to Offley for a tour and tasting. Next was Croft, which was one of our favorites. We had an excellent tour guide (explained about the introduction of pink port), tasted some really good port, and ended up buying two bottles of port from Croft. 

Tour guide from Croft

We stopped by Quevedo, which had live Fado music. It was nice to hear some live music, taste some port, eat some snacks, and have a little play around in the old barrels. Mostly kids were playing in the barrels, but Scott had to see if he could fit in the little opening. The girls were a bit more practical by having a seat on a bench.

Scott's big barrel, little opening

Live Fado singer

Rachel and Penny sitting inside a barrel

 Before leaving we went out to the beach for a look at the lighthouse and enjoy the busy boardwalk watching walkers, joggers, and bikers get into their exercise on Sunday. It was another gorgeous day, but time to leave Porto. We enjoyed our time here, especially since we were able to spend time with Rachel. We left with 4 bottles of port, so have plenty to remember our trip for a while, but will have to drink it all before we leave for Australia. Too expensive to bring into the country!

Our Hotel...Can you find Scott? Look up top!

Rachel and Penny at the beach

The waves come crashing in on the lighthouse! Awesome power.

Penny and Scott at the beach

Our purchases, yummy!