Tag Archives: humourous

Let The Sleeping Bears Lie

Walking through Quimper in Brittany, France one afternoon, camera in hand taking streetscape shots, when we passed a now-defunct shop. Instead of simply covering the huge pieces of glass with paper or whiting it out with paint, the owners created a clever and quite funny window display.

I loved the reflection of the streetscape behind — but you can still clearly see the Papa Bear, Mama Bear, and Baby Bear — all in a permanent state of hibernation — with their heads on pillows. Such a sweet and unexpected surprise.

Streetscape reflection and stuffed and sleeping bears of all sizes in the window of an old out-of-business store in Quimper, Brittany, France.

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©A Wanderful Life 2007-2018
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Cartoon Graphic From a Cafe With A Good Vibe

Directly in the block across the street from the old Union Station in Tacoma is the Renaissance Cafe. We had some hearty salads there and this cartoon graphic was on the wall behind my son Chris. I thought I should share it. Isn’t it nice to go someplace for lunch that does NOT have wifi and people are actually eating and talking amongst themselves?

Cartoon graphic from the Renaissance Cafe in Tacoma, Washington

P.S. I am posting this from Vancouver, Canada. We are here for a mere 24 hour visit, are hoping that the good weather holds out, and we’ll be winging our way to Australia tomorrow night. If my posts are a little thin for the upcoming days, it’s because I am recovering from jet lag in Sydney!

Silly Games For Sale in the USA

Taking a break from places to see and family pics in Washington State to share these two games that I spotted in a vintage goods shop inside the Freighthouse Square mini-mall in Tacoma yesterday. Seriously, I couldn’t pass these photo-ops up!

Trailer Park Wars game seen in vintage shop in the USA

Redneck Life game for sale in a vintage shop in the USA

Spruikers With A Scottish Twist

Spruiker — a word I had never heard before I moved to Australia in the mid-1990s. And many of you may be as clueless to what that word means as I was! The Dictionary.com interpretation of spruiker says that it is indeed based on Australian slang, and the verb spruik means “archaic , slang ( Austral ) to speak in public (used esp of a showman or salesman).”

Most of us will have passed a shopping district at some point in our life and heard the annoying sound of someone with a microphone trying to talk you into coming in and checking out the sale at the store that they are standing in front of. And that’s exactly what these incongruously clad gentlemen were doing on this particular day in Dresden, Germany.

The blaring soundtrack on their portable stereo was playing a mind-boggling mix of Scottish tunes and 1950s rock-n-roll. And dressed though they might have been in Scottish kilts and hats, they were indeed German through and through.

They did accomplish one of their goals even if I never went inside the discount shoe store — they made me stop and look!

Spruikers in Scottish garb on a shopping street in Dresden, Germany.

Photo Of The Day: Beer Will Change The World

Beer will change the world? Well — someone certainly thinks so! The manufacturers of this kitchen dish towel used bright colours, a catchy slogan, and a 60s-style male image to make it appealing. I saw this in an antique mall in Australia.

Beer Will Change The World linen dish towel seen in an Australian antique mall

Photo Of The Day: Let’s Do The Time Warp

Heads down, deep in conversation or deep in concentration, the three men walked through the historic passageway and probably never gave a thought to the juxtaposition of time periods that they represented.

This shot was taken in Dresden, Germany and it is quite likely that the two men in costume were employed by one of the historic tourist sites.

Enjoy!

A clothing 'time warp' in Dresden, Germany

Germany From Side To Side In One Day

It’s been a BEAR of a day, folks — seriously!

We left our apartment outside Dresden this morning, tried to get on the motorway to start heading southeast, couldn’t get on because the entry ramps were closed for construction, and we started our long day of driving by backtracking until we found an ramp that allowed us onto the motorway.

What should have taken us 7 hours to drive over to Strasbourg, just across the border in France, took almost ten solid hours of driving with two short stops for meals that took less than 20 minutes each time. Know why it took so long? Road construction from East to West all the way across Germany. AARRGGHH!!!

We are beyond tired right now, so don’t expect to see a steady stream of new posts until we get settled into our next 2 week stop in the Pyrenees. I am rather backed up on posts and sending photos to my agencies — so I’ll try to plow through some of the backlog then.

Until then, enjoy this shot of one of the many versions of Berlin’s ‘Buddy Bears’ that you see all over that wonderful city. This particular one was over 2 metres tall, had a rather happy face, and was spectacularly colourful!

Bright red Berlin Bear -- one example of many variations around the city