Talk About Cliff Hangers

My Friend John from up in Vermilion Bay Ontario Canada sent me an email with the following information and photos:

I was notified by a reader, that the images shown belown are not of Bighorn Sheep on the face of Buffalo Bill Dam in Wyoming. This information seems to be part of an urban legend that has gone around the internet. The photos had been obtained from the original posting Italian web site.

I would like to thank Sandy for bringing this to my attention.

The following information was obtained from About.com

For those who aren't familiar with the view - it's the downstream face of the dam and those dots are wild goats WALKING ACROSS IT. They're licking the surface for the salt and other minerals that are on the masonry.

THE CRITTERS are a species of wild goat known as Alpine ibex (aka Capra or European ibex), not bighorn sheep; the edifice is Cingino Dam (Diga di Cingino), not Buffalo Bill Dam; and the snapshots were taken in the Alps of northern Italy.

According to the website Animal Corner, Alpine ibexes are herbivores and inhabit the steep, rocky terrain of the European Alps between 6,500 and 15,000 feet above sea level. They're quite agile, as one might gather from the photographs, and have a "unique hoof structure" making it possible for them to navigate near-vertical rock faces and, of course, dams.

Day 7 of our Baltic Capitals Cruise- Part 2 of the 2nd Day In St. Petersburg, Russia

After finishing our tour of Catherines Palace, along with the surrounding grounds and gardens, we took a brief bus ride into the country and headed for the restaurant where we were going to be having lunch at.

If I remember correctly, I believe that the restaurant was called the Catherines Palace Restaurant.

Lunch was ok...nothing that I would get excited about. We also had a salad and bread with our meal.

Good thing I packed up some extra cookies in my backpack to keep me going until we got back to our ship.



Veronica saw the ladies bathroom and decided that she just had to have a photo of it, so here it is. She said it was all gold. I told her that if that was the case, we needed to take some bathroom home with us.



They had some Faberge styled eggs on display. They really looked nice.

After having lunch, we headed to see the Peterhof Fountains And Grounds. Built to rival Versailles in France, the palace sits atop of a high hill overlooking the Gulf of Finland. Peter the Great drafted the layout for the 300-hundred acre park and supervised the design of the palace fountains. The Grand Cascade, the most famous fountain group, features gilded Samson prying open lion's jaws as water cascades down the terraced steps, and small spouting fountains anoint smaller sculptures.

For those of you who have been reading my blog for a while, you know how much I enjoy fountains and anything with a water feature to it. I was in heaven here at the Peterhof Fountains



The Peterhof Fountains and gardens back up to the Bay of Finland. Right off of shore, I caught this duck with his/her hiney up while he/she was searching for food.

As we headed back to our ship, after another long day, we passed this really nice looking church.

All in all St.Petersburg, Russia was a rather interesting place. The architecture was fantastic, as you can see. Even as great as the architecture was, I still left with the sights of concrete apartment buildings that reached towards the sky...all crammed one after another...everywhere you looked. It finally came to me that the weather on the first day we were in St. Petersburg, kind of fit the feeling I walked away with, especially seeing all of those grey concrete housing complexes...cold...dreary...kind of the look and feel of a dark overcast rainy day.

I am still very thankful that I had the opportunity to visit St. Petersburg

 

Now here is the way NOT to do a video..try not to get too dizzy

While we were out for the day, Fernando, our room steward was busy making us a towel animal. And to think that they sell a video on how to make these things.

Here is one final look at St. Petersburg, Russia as we leave port and head to our next destination...tomorrow we will be in Helsinki, Finland

To see all of the photographs that were taken over the 2 complete days that we spent at St. Petersburg Russia, please view the following 2 slide shows. Just click on the picture to enlarge them.