Headbangers are looking across the rooftops this week

I'm early again.

When Lew gave us the theme this week of "views across the roof tops" he said to climb a tree or a mountain or stairs or take the elevator.

Sorry, Lew. I am not going to climb a tree or a ladder. I don't have any stairs that go up, just down, nor are there even buildings tall enough here to provide the view, and elevator??? nearest is forty miles away.

However, I can reach back into my archives from several trips that provide some rooftop views and meet the criterion to " just include the tops of houses or buildings." In fact, I may actually include some of the most unusual roof images that show up this week.

I will start close to home--

Seattle rooftops

 

Is that Pill Hill? I see at least one hospital.



across the roofs to the roofs of the stadiums



landing on the roof



rooftop garden
(These are from the Space Needle, by the way.)

Let's travel now--to the UK, 2010

Lincoln

walking the castle rooftop with a view to the cathedral

 Newcastle-upon-Tyne

hotel room view of the station roofs

 Ullapool, Scotland

B & B view THROUGH the roof

Stop for a few days in
London

Houses of Parliament

Charing Cross Station

Buckingham Palace. Happy Birthday, Prince Phillip

Big Ben--These were all taken from the London Eye.

Edinburg, Scotland

Edinburg Castle from Calton Hill

Calton Hill from Edinburg Castle

(and the Firth of Forth--had to add that because it sounds so cool)

 



Now let's go to Russia (1998)

Small dachas from the Trans-Siberian Railway

Gardens and rooftops in Krasnoyarsk (Siberia)

 Moscow

Kremlin rooftops include many onion domes.

And so, let's go on to India.

 

St. Joseph Boys' Village, Tamil Nadu, India

In the summer of 2000 I spent a month in India at St. Joseph Boy's Village, a home for poor, abandoned, and orphaned boys in Tamil Nadu. Our project there was refurbishing the roof of the cottage where the home's cooks stay. Along with local workers, three American volunteers removed the roof tiles, cleaned them, replaced the roof, and painted the building.

It was hot and dirty work.





Here is the cottage with the roof tiles and beams removed.

Dan and one of the older boys bring a tub of water for cleaning tiles.
You can see some of them stacked there at the left. We used wire brushes to remove years of grime.

 

One of the locals starts to put up the rafters.

 

 The rafter beams are coconut wood.

 There was some cement work needed as well.
No cement mixer here--just putty putty in a pan.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The boys prepare for the housewarming once the work is finished.

Now this final India shot, which I may adapt for the header, is across the courtyard to another building in the complex on laundry day. Lew probably did not envision laundry across the rooftop when he presented us with the theme.



 

 Well, I imagine I may have the most variety in regards to rooftops in this post. And I don't know that I have ever put quite this many pictures in one post.

But wait!! I am not finished. I am going to go back even farther and show Lew that I was not always reluctant to climb a tree or the stairs, or even a cathedral dome. Roofs of tiles the same color as those India ones. I found these two selected photos to scan.

Italy--1965



Siena

from the cathedral

Florence (Firenze)



from the top of the Duomo

So let me tell the story of that climb to the top of the famous Catedrale de Santa Maria del Fiore, the Duomo, in Florence. I spent my junior year of college in Florence in 1965-66. (Yes, I am that old.) We had classes four days a week and did a lot of weekend travel around Italy. But like everyone, it was sometimes easy for us to overlook the treasures nearby. Not wanting to do that, some of us made sure to spend some of our travel time right there at home.

So one day we went to climb up through the cathedral dome to see the view from the cupola at the top. It was a long climb on stairways that wound through between the inner and outer skins of the dome--a little narrow when you had to pass another party that was going down.

One such group consisted of a diminutive  Franciscan friar and his companions. And as they wound around the bend, you could hear his plaint which, loosely translated from Italian went like this: "If I ever....puff puff...get my hands...puff puff puff...on whoever...puff puff... talked me into...puff puff...climbing......." and you can well imagine the rest as the sound faded around the curve of the dome.

Now that I found this picture, I will really have a hard time deciding which to post in the header.
You can see what the guys have decided for "Across the rooftops" by clicking their links in my sidebar sometime Wednesday afternoon.