Japan this is not. Rock Island's one time owner was heavily influenced by Japanese culture.
Life is good when the only thing to do is watch the sun go down and listen to the waves cover the rocks below.
Alcatraz the dreaded penitentiary is today one of San Francisco's most popular tourist sites. There was a time though when no one wanted to go there.
Phase of the Moon on 9 September, 2006: waning gibbous with 94% of the Moon's visible disk illuminated.
Everyone says, dreamily, "it's the Paris of the Middle East." It's not. Beirut is its own funky animal: tense, beautiful, cracking with growth, assaulted by civil strife, graffitied with advertising for Starbucks and Applebees and perfumes from Paris, but without jobs for women, without futures for the young people bristling with university degrees.
This is a view of Pigeon Point taken from Fort Rodney on Pigeon Island National Park. You can follow the grass hill all the way to the top to find a view of the Atlantic Ocean with Martinique in the distance.
Raouché is a residential and commercial neighborhood in Beirut, Lebanon. It is known for its upscale apartment buildings, cliff-side cafés and its wide seaside sidewalk, the Corniche, where strollers and joggers crowd the pavements in the evenings and weekends.
Off the coast of Raouche, there is a natural landmark called the Pigeon Rocks.
These hungry scavengers were on the look out for their next meal.
Haystack Rock is a landmark along the coast near Cannon Beach, OR. It is a protected marine garden with abundent marine life.
Sun sets on the boathouse, which was once the site for large parties. It was built in 1926 and restored in the 1960's.