Tag Archives: photos

Photos taken by Raoul Pop

A Guide To A Good Life

The Office Lounge is a restaurant and night club in Predeal, Romania. Its location is amazing. It sits on top of a mountain peak which overlooks an idyllic meadow and valley. Other mountain peaks frame the view all around.

The restaurant has indoor space, but it also has a beautiful terrace where you can truly enjoy the view.

The espresso is good. It could even be called great, but let’s not get carried away… It has a well-balanced taste: not too bitter, not too watery, not too chocolatey. It’s good. And when you sit on the terrace and look at that gorgeous view, it somehow tastes even better.

We also had some very tasty “clatite” — a Romanian dessert that’s similar to French crepes and to British (not American) pancakes, according to one of my readers.

The place is a nightclub — and we’re not much into nightclubs. We went there during the day, to enjoy the beautiful view. If you’re interested in going there for a morning coffee, don’t — they open around 11 am or noon, because they close in the early hours of the morning.

Here is a map.

Espresso at the Office Lounge

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Thoughts

Mitzi and Trixie at play

I don’t think there’s anything more adorable than kittens at play, so I couldn’t resist posting more photos of Mitzi and Trixie today. I found a whole series I took when they were playing one day. And as promised, there are more photos of Trixie in this post.

Since this is a series of photos, it’s probably best to view them via the slideshow which is embedded at the bottom of the post. I’ll post a select few as individual photos, but make sure to see them all in the slideshow, it’ll only take a minute.

After tumbling about for a bit, they both took a break and lay on the ground a few feet apart, staring at each other, before pouncing once more.

Kittens love these hit-and-run encounters. They’d pounce, tumble about for a bit, and dash away. Here Mitzi jumped away from Trixie after she ambushed her, then hid between the bushes while Trixie began to play by herself.

Of course, Mitzi couldn’t stay away for long, and she ambushed Trixie again.

When they had enough play, they went exploring together. Ah, kittens! 🙂

If I seem particularly effusive today, it’s because I’m glad Trixie is still with us. She almost died last night. She apparently ate something poisonous, and was in shock through mid-morning. She’s better now, but not completely out of the woods. You can read the details here.

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Thoughts

Mitzi and Trixie explore the yard

Part of the fun of having kittens is seeing them explore the yard when they finally get the nerve to venture out there. Everything is so brand new to them — every texture, scent, breeze, shape, color, insect, flower, tree, etc. They walk out, slowly, tentatively, sniffing everything, tasting the air, then they get more courage, and soon they’re prancing happily all over the place, tumbling in the grass, falling over things, bumping into plants and trees, pawing flowers, and looking absolutely adorable while doing it.

Here is a series of photos of Mitzi and Trixie exploring the yard on their own. I’ll probably post more photos today, of the two of them at play. They were somewhere between 2½ and 3 months old here.

Mitzi came pretty close to falling into this hole a few times, but her amazing sense of balance (she’s a cat after all) always kept her safe.

The next post will have more photos of Trixie, I promise. 🙂

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Places

The John Douglass Brown House in Alexandria

The John Douglass Brown House stands apart from the rest of the houses you see in Alexandria because of the choice of its building material: wood. (Most of the houses in that part of the town are brick.) The simple, rustic architecture talks of an early, more modest beginning as a farmhouse, not a townhome for a wealthy trader, like the rest of the places around it.

Built in the 1700s, the house was owned and occupied by the descendants of the John Douglass Brown and Mary Goulding Gretter from 1816 until the 1970s-80s. When we visited it (it’s not open to the public), not knowing anything about it, we realized something was different nonetheless, and began to look at its exterior more closely.

The neighbors came out, and we talked to them. They graciously offered to introduce us to its current owner, Mr. Charles J. Reeder, who couldn’t have been nicer. We got to talking, and asked if we could come inside the interior courtyard to photograph it. He allowed us in.

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Thoughts

Two kittens on a stool

I did promise Sunday would be my cat day, right? I couldn’t keep that promise last week, as I was traveling, but I’m back this week with another post about our kittens.

Here are Mitzi and Trixie, resting on an inverted stool one evening, when they were about two months old. They loved that chair! Even though they had their own box, laid with soft padding, they preferred to sleep in the seat of this stool.

The sequence of photographs you see here is chronological, recorded as they moved about in the chair, reacting to our movements and the sound of the camera’s shutter. Think of it as a very simple moving picture.

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