A-Z Blogging Challenge 2025 - B is for Bells and Bookshops

 As I travel the world I take many photos that pique my interest, these could be lumped into a "peculiar category" ie. they are peculiar to my interests and may be different from what one usually sees in a collection of travel photos.

For the Blogging from A to Z April Challenge in 2025 my theme is Peculiar Pics. During April I invite you to join me for an online tour of Peculiar Pics from my digital albums. These will be sourced from my travels between April 2024 to March 2025.

When I hear bells I am taken back to my school days and the poem by Edgar Allan Poe. 

Bell Tower - Messina, Sicily

St Paul's Church - Passau, Germany

In a Church, Messines, Belgium

In Flanders Fields Museum -Ypres, Belgium

One drives under this - Bordeaux, France

Bell of Hortensia in Meriken Park - Kobe, Japan

As a former librarian and a lifelong bibliophile I find it hard to walk past a bookshop. 

Famous Bookshop, Livraria Lello in Porto, Portugal (snapped from a bus)

I think it's a bookshop - Vannes, France
It was closed on the Sunday we were there

Kotor, Montenegro

Bookshop in the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands. We may have invested in a few tomes. 

A Bookshop in the main street - Miltenberg, Germany

Budapest, Hungary

Just a few books to sell - On the street, Athens, Greece

I wonder what's inside - Budapest, Hungary

https://abc.nl/ -Amsterdam, Netherlands

The Final Snap

15 May 2013

On the last day of our magnificent journey we had a 6:00 pm checkout (for a fee - not free) from our airport hotel. We allowed ourselves a big sleepin to try to coax our personal timeclocks towards an Australian timezone so we missed the free hotel breakfast.

What should we so on our last day?  I did not want to travel too far lest our rental car break down and we miss our plane. I realised that I hadn't spent any time in a bookstore during the whole eight weeks of my holiday and I love the big bookshops in the US. Since the demise of Borders the only chain I know is Barnes and Noble.  I also realised that we hadn't visited one of the many Ross stores in Los Angeles - the well stocked one near Farmers Market; how convenient - I remembered that there is a Barnes and Noble store in the Grove Shopping Centre next to Farmers Market.

The Final Holiday Snap - a happy shopper at The Grove

I was quite restrained in my shopping at these venues because our six suitcases back at the hotel were bulging although underweight and the thought of having to squish more treasures into them wasn't too palatable. What I couldn't resist were a couple of DK Travel Guides for my next adventure at the end of June with my daughter.

At the end of a wonderful trip it is always good to have another journey to plan.