JARDINES DE LA ALAMEDA
200 Jardines ... 200 Gardens |
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The time in Antigua is
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Cambodia Apr 2023
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Laos Apr 2023
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Argentina Sep 2022
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Christmas 2021
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Sep 2021 Germany, Czech,
Austria
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June 2021 Germany
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April 2021 D.C.
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August 2020 Colorado
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Our trips around the U.S. South -
summer 2020
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March - August 2020 Covid-19 in Louisiana
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Esme, my grand-daughter!
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Camino de Santiago September 2018
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Spain September 2018
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Ireland August 2018
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Alaska and B.C. May 2018
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February 2018 trip to El Mirador
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Argentina July 2017
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Family Christmas 2016 in Guatemala
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"Czechia" Sep 2016
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Sicily, Malta, London 2016
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Berlin 2015
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June 6, 2015 wedding
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Irene, March 2015
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January 2015 - Yaxchilan, Bonampak,
Palenque, Villahermosa
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Thanksgiving 2014, Roatan
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September 2014 Europe
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May 2014 Europe
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April 2014 Mexico
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January 2014 Madrid
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Christmas 2013 & Jan 2014, Prague
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Site Q: Trip to La Corona, December
2013
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July 2013, NYC, London, Barcelona
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June 2013, Boston
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May 2013, Cuba
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May 2013: Trip around
Texas with Sasha & Jenny
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May 3, 2013 party for Sasha Cernikovsky
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New
Orleans, March 2013
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Our memories of 9/11
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"Czech" 2010
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Apartments for rent
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Find us on the Antigua map
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The Antigua Curry Club
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Fuego explosions
8th January 2003, 2004
jito1949
House 2007
Photos 2003
Baths 2002
Kitchens 2002
Fireplaces 2002
Fountain 2006
Guest Apt 2004
NYC to Antigua trip 2002
Contact me
Germany,
Luxembourg
June 2003
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502-7832-8466 casa
502-5916-5331 cel Tomas
US: 917-855-4510 Tomas
917-855-4508 Lorraine |
 Tomas:
cernikovsky@hotmail.com
Lorraine:
lorduncan@gmail.com
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U.S. - Guatemala
courier
Tomas Cernikovsky (A-369)
P.O.Box 669004,
Miami Springs, FL 33266
A |
Angkor Wat, Siem Rep, Cambodia. April
2023. Click on the image to see a lot of photos from Cambodia. |
Angkor Wat, Siem Rep, Cambodia. April
2023. Click on the image to see a lot of photos from Cambodia. |
September 2022
Argentina. Visiting our friends Martha & Jim Mast for their 70th
wedding anniversary in Buenos Aires and then trips to Salta and
Mendoza. Click to see more.
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Click on the photo or here to see
many more.
September 2021.
Prague. Working in my mother's house in Cologne, but taking
side trips, this one to Czech for a smalll funeral for her. Also
to see friends in Czech and Austria.
Click to see more.
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Click on the photo or here to see
many more.
June 2021.
Germany. Working in my mother's house in Cologne, but taking
side trips, this one to Bavaria.
Click to see more.
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April 2021.
Visiting Washington D.C. to see David, Brie and little Esme and the
famous cherry blossoms.
Click to see more.
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August 2020.
A two-week trip around Colorado. This is at Arapahoe Basin, one
of the highest ski resorts in North America.
Please click to see
many photos of our trip, with open-air restaurants, mountain-top
pic-nics, masks and hand-sanitizers. |
July 2020.
Visiting The Parthenon ... no, not in Athens, but in Nashville.
A full-size replica built for a 1897 "centennial exhibition". It
certainly is in a better condition than the original, and as you can
see, they are again repairing it.
See more photos of our
trips around the South, with masks and hand-sanitizers.
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June 2020.
Visiting Longvue House in New Orleans. See more photos of our
trips around the South, with masks and hand-sanitizers.
Click to see more photos of our
short trips. |
July 2020.
Visiting the USS Alabama in Mobile.
See more photos of our trips around the South, with masks and hand-sanitizers.
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Covid-19.
During over 9 months on our golf course, in a forest near Abita
Springs, when we have so far walked 700 miles (10 times what we did on
the Camino a Santiago), we often talk to
family and friends. Here we are talking to my grand-daughter Esme in
Hyattsville, Maryland, and her parents, Dave & Brie.
Click to see more of our Abita
Springs photos. |
Covid-19. In March 2020, we went, as
usual, to Austin, TX and with Jenny to Canyon Lake in the
Texas Hill Country and San Antonio. She had a good birthday. See
photos. After that, we were
heading, again as usual, to Louisiana for Lorraine's mother's 99th
birthday. For over 9 months now, we are in a small time share on a golf course that closed
some years ago, deep
in the forest over 5 miles north from the small town of Abita Springs. A
very extreme form of Social Distancing.
Click to see many photos
of our
environment. |
A superb family 2019 Christmas ... near Orlando, 10 adults, 8
granchildren, Airbnb.com house, 8 bedrooms, some theme parks, a
splendid time for all. Everybody had a night to cook for the
family. |
This was in New York City in July 2018. Click on the photo, or
here to see many more photos of Esme, my
grand-daughter!
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May 2018 ... click to see many photos of our
trip to Alaska, Washington and British Columbia. |
February 2018 ... on top of La Danta, a pyramid in the north of Guatemala,
the largest in the Americas, and the largest, by volume, in the world,
with archeaologists Marion Popenoe, Richard Hansen, Director of El
Mirador (right) and Carlos Morales (left). Also friends Frank Peterson
and Liz Bell. 21 friends came on our trip. Click to see
more photos (and videos) of this exciting trip.
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Going to a wedding party in Collioure, south of France.
Congratulations Raffaella & Gregory! What a splending part of the
world for a wedding.
..
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Going to a fancy dinner in Buenos Aires. Wintertime. Here
for Ashley's "Bat Miztvah", skiing in Bariloche, opera and
sightseeing. Please click on the photo above
or here, to see 65 photos.
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We had a fabulous family Christmas in Guatemala. Please click on the photo above
or here, to see over 30 photos.
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September 2016: A trip to the other Cernikovsky's Diamond Wedding,
Sasha's birthday and to travel in "Czechia", with side trips to Poland
and Austria. Please click on the photo above
or here, to see many photos.
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May 2016: Second honeymoon. Taormina Greek Theatre, Sicily. At the British Museum,
at the start of the trip, we saw a "Sicily: Culture and Conquest"
exhibition and the next day we flew to Sicily. Fascinating. Click
here or
on the photo to see many more images of our trip.
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May 2016: At the British Museum, there is an exhibition (see behind
us) of "Sicily: Culture and Conquest".
We saw it on Sunday
and the next day flew off to Palermo. Click
here or
on the photo to see many more images of our trip.
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September 2015: Our honeymoon trip to Berlin. Here by the
Brandenburg Gate. Click here or
on the photo to see many more images of our trip.
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June 6, 2015. A fabulous wedding with Lorraine. Cheers!
Only a few photos here, but almost 200 are at
http://www.lorraine-tomas.com/
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June 6, 2015, La Antigua, Guatemala. A fabulos wedding with
Lorraine. A superb setting in the ruins of San Jose el Viejo.
Only a few photos here, but almost 200 are at
http://www.lorraine-tomas.com/
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June 6, 2015, La Antigua, Guatemala. A fabulos wedding with
Lorraine. Almost 200 photos are at
http://www.lorraine-tomas.com/
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June 6, 2015, La Antigua, Guatemala. A great wedding dress, a
good cake and a fabulous party.
Almost 200 photos are at
http://www.lorraine-tomas.com/
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May 2015: Dr. David Cernikovsky ... Psy.D, graduated from Rutgers
University. Wow, congratulations! 5 years at University of Rochester
(UR!), two years in Korea and Guatemala, now 5 postgrad years at
Rutgers University (RU?) and now a freshly minted Doctor Cernikovsky!
May Brie have helped you along the way to keep going ? With Brie's
parents, Laura and Steve. We are all proud of you, Dr.David!!!
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April 2015: Yet again, being tourists in my home town of
Antigua. Here, you can get a new experience so often ... this time a
visit to the Santa Teresa monastery, which reopened 2 weeks ago. It
was used as a jail for over 50 years and in reconstruction the past
five. Beautiful, yet few know about it.
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This is Amalienborg, Copenhagen. See photos from our
September 2014 trip around
France, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Holland ...
...
please click here or on the
photo to see many more images. |
June 2014. MoMa and Warhol. |
June 2014, Little Italy, with Dave, Brie, Laura and Steve. |
June 2014. New World Trade Center Tower, finally finished. The common thread in all the photos
here is
the old building on the right with a rounded corner and, on the right,
a flag for "Cables and Chips". |
World Trade Center Tower, nearly finished, September 2013.
Click to see more Sep 2013 NYC photos. |
World Trade Center tower, July 2013 |
World Trade Center tower, June 2012 |
World Trade Center tower, August 2011 ... |
... and the same place in the morning of 9/11/2001 |
Coming back from Europe, we had lunch with a bunch of good friends.
One used their iPhone to take a photo. Click to see a larger
image.
My (Czech) father used to say, coming back from a trip
(in English):
"East-West, Home is Best!" |
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Piran, in Slovenia, was on our May 2014 trip to
Venice, Vienna, Budapest and parts of Hungary, Slovenia, Trieste and Rome.
We saw churches,
museums, visited opera houses, had mostly good weather and enjoyed a great trip.
We used seven apartments booked through Airbnb.com, with kitchens,
wi-fi and a touch of home, all very nice.
Click here or on the image above to see many
photos from this trip. |
"La Venta" park, Villahermosa, Tabasco, Mexico, April 2014.
See more photos from Mexico. |
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March 2014. She was not happy with me as I made her climb the
313 steps up to the Cerro de la Cruz, the "Hill of the Cross" ... but
when we got there, the view was splendid. We had a sunny pic nic
lunch with a tablecloth, glasses, plates, looking over Antigua at
Volcano Agua. This is a beautiful town. |
El Escorial in the New Year 2014.
See more photos from Madrid. |
Prague in December. Good weather, good food, good company, a
good Christmas vacation. Click here to see more photos from
Prague. |
October 2013. Verona Arena, 2,000 years old. |
Cologne cathedral |
Munich Town Hall |
Mad Ludwig's Herrenchiemsee castle, a copy of Versailles.
Some details here are even bigger than the original near Paris. |
Beer and food ... last day of Oktoberfest. |
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August 9.
Celebrating our anniversary. In six months, we have done
a few things. Since that long-ago first night open-air
concert in Antigua, we have seen the Rolling Stones in Boston,
"Tosca" at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, "Annie"
with Lorraine's grand-daughter Ashley in it, a play by Jane
Austen in London and "Mamma Mia", which is currently running
in Guatemala City. We have attended a couple or
archeaological conferences and had people take photos of us
under a full moon in the central Plaza of Tikal and the old
town square in La Havana. We did a lot of sightseeing in
and around Antigua, saw the Statue of Liberty, spent a week in
Barcelona and stayed in a Louisiana plantation house. We
threw parties large and small, met my mom at Lake Atitlan and
in Barcelona, met Jenny in Austin, David & Brie in NYC and
"the other Cernikovskys" in Boston. We met Lorraine's
mom and her brothers in New Orleans, where we are headed for
our third visit. I got to cook dinner for Lorraine's three
children and 6 grandchildren, whom we see often. In the
photo above, biking down La Reforma in Guatemala City last
weekend. They close it to traffic on Sundays so that
people can walk, run, bike, skate. We'll be doing it
again, it's good fun!
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View of Barcelona from the Montjuic hill. What an
interesting city. Click to see many more photos of this
visit. |
... also on the way to Barcelona, we stoppped off in the Royal
Opera House in Covent Garden for a sold out "Tosca".
Click to see more London photos. |
On our last night in Boston, we saw the
Rolling Stones, on their "50 + counting" tour.
Click on the image to see more photos from our Boston trip. |
The "Capitolio", a major landmark in Havana,
is, like much of Cuba, in a poor condition and closed down. We
spent several interesting days in Cuba ... see
photos. |
The "Grassy Knoll" at the end of Elm Street, in
Dallas (where JFK was shot almost 50 years ago). May 2013, a trip with grandma Sasha and Jenny.
See photos from our 10 days
in Texas. |
Being tourists around Antigua ... this is in San
Cristobal el Bajo, just outside Antigua ...
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... and this in the market of Santa Maria de
Jesus.
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March 2013. A romantic weekend in New
Orleans, visiting some old plantation houses. This is at Oak
Alley. Click on the photo to see
more.
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April 2013: A dinner party "in honour of
Tomas & Lorraine" |
February 2013 |
2013 March, Antigua Parque Central, with
Lorraine.
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College Station, TX. Jenny wins gold in
Texas state-wide bocce ball competition, Special Olympics.
Last year, she won in swimming. She is enjoying her sports
and says that at Marbridge, she will pick a different sport each
year. Well done, Jenny! |
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On a Saturday morning in the market, right behind the house, Sonia
spends about $15 on all these flowers, as well as a week's worth of
oranges for fresh OJ, and lots of other fruits and vegetables.
Last month, in a Houston supermarket flower section, I saw the
bunches of tiger lilies were $15 each, without some of the added
colour! We are lucky! |
In September, Guatemala celebrates independence
in 1821.
There are processions with school bands and a lot of playing of
the very long, very cheerful national anthem. Felix & Benigno
always hang out lots of Guatemalan flags in the street. |
April 2012 ... Catarina Palopo, on Lake
Atitlan. This view from the terrace shows volcanoes, from
left to right, Toliman, Atitlan and San Pedro.
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Antigua, Guatemala: "The situation
was ravishingly beautiful, at the base and under the shade of the
Volcano de Agua, and the view was bounded on all sides by mountains
of perpetual green; the morning air was soft and balmy, but
pure and refreshing. With good government and laws, and one's
friends around, I never saw a more beautiful spot on which man could
desire to pass his allotted time on earth." So wrote
John Lloyd Stephens, visiting Antigua in December 1839, in
"Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan".
We quite agree with his assessment, and the government is still
working on its part, too. And many friends are already here,
while others visit from time to time. Please come and visit
us, too.
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"Antigua Guatemala, the old capital,
thirty miles to the westward of the new, is still a place of
considerable importance, and its time was far superior to the
present capital in size and appearance. Previous to its
destruction in 1773 there were but two cities on the American
hemisphere which compared with it in population, wealth and
magnificence. These were the City of Mexico and Lima, Peru.
New York was then a commercial infant, Boston a mere village and
Chicago yet unknown. But here was a city in which were
centered ecclesiastical and political interests of the Central
American colonies, where millions of dollars were spent in erecting
churches, convents and monasteries, which covered acres of ground,
and beautiful residences whose shattered portals still bear the
escutcheons of the noble families who ruled the city and
cultivated plantations of coffee, sugar and cochineal.
Antigua, as it now called, was not only the scene of wealth and
influence, and the commercial metropolis of the country, but the
home to the most learned men of all Spanish America, the seat of
great schools of theology, science, and art, for two hundred years
the Athens and Rome of the New World, the residence of the
university, as well as the Inquisition and the headquarters of those
untiring apostles of evil, the Jesuits. The population is said
to have been about one hundred and fifty thousand."
From "The Capitals of Spanish America", by William Eleroy
Curtis, late Commisioner from the United States to the governments
of Central and South America, New York, Harper & Brothers, Franklin
Square, 1888
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Sumpango, Sacatepequez, 1.11.11 ... more and more
giant kites, and more elaborate, there is "new product development" even
in the kite business. |
The Cernikovsky's family
9/11 memories ...
.... for the 10th anniversary, click here for a long page of our photos and
experiences of that day in 2001
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June 2011. Felix can certainly make plants grow. This is
our garden. A few rows below this photo is the new one, which
is also growing. Click to see a big image. They call
Antigua the town of eternal Spring ... you can see why! |
April 2011. Jennifer moved to live alone
in Austin, TX, at
http://www.marbridge.org/. She is loving the activities,
two "classes" in the morning, two in the afternoon, trips
offsite to shop, to movies (she has 800 movies, right behind her),
Lady Bird Johnson's botanical gardens, and looking forward to a
September Caribbean cruise. |
January 2011. We visited El Mirador, a huge,
very remote early Maya city, from 650 B.C. to 200 B.C. With 20
friends, we flew in on helicopters. |
No, not a new restaurant
in Antigua ... our new patio. |
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April 2012: Felix makes things grow ...
what a change! See
below what it looked like a year ago ... and two years ago, a
demolished church and a cement parking lot. |
May 2011: Garden is growing ... |
August 2010: Our new garden ... our house is
to the right, with new doors and windows and a patio. For years,
there was a very noisy church, with services many times a week. It
also had an extremely bad rock-band, with drums, practicing several
nights a week. They would not lower the noise and so, in the end we
bought the property. We have now turned it into a garden with a
fountain, a patio, parking (and a covered walkway to the
apartments), plus a small garden and a new laundry for one of our
apartments in the far back right. We started gardening. |
The plot next door ... our house is to the
right. This is what it looked like in April 2010, after the noisy
church moved out. Silence, at last!
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April 14, 2010: Volcano Acatenango, seen from our rooftop, WITH
SNOW! People who have lived here all their lives have never seen
anything like it. And, on the left, Volcano Fuego, puffing.
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During Semana Santa in Antigua, hundreds of
thousands of people visit for the Easter processions. This photo
was on Palm Sunday in front of our house.
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Semana Santa in Antigua: the float, called "anda",
carried by 80 men, is passing our house (yellow, on the left) on
Palm Sunday. Click to see our photos of
carpets
and an animated sequence of a
procession passing our house.
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Christmas 2009 in the garden ... it's very sunny ... click to see a
larger image |
We have a full-time gardener, Felix, on the
right, who takes care of our gardens inside the house, the planted
area behind, as well as hundreds of plants in the hallways and the
rooftops. Benigno, in the red shirt, worked for us for several
years and, before we handed the 200 gardens and over 70 new trees to
the city, took care of the Alameda, watering, planting, fumigating,
fertilizing, and so on. Here they are in May 2009 (our house on the
right), planting a new jacaranda tree, in garden #196.
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Further down the street, here are two more new
jacaranda trees, #199 and 200, in May 2009. After the photo was
taken, the metal "protections" were installed, without which new
trees would not survive in the Alameda.
Click here to go to the 7 pages that describe
the project and its "members" ... between 2002-2009, we have
constructed 200 gardens, which we are maintaining. We have
planted 72 new trees in new places, and as replacements for trees
that died. Of the 200 gardens, in the 7 years, 26 got smashed by
crazy drivers and with the help of friends and neighbors, we have
replaced them.
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Jennifer & Monica, at the "giant kites" of
Sumpango, not far from Antigua, 1st November 2008.
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Our garden in Antigua
with a couple of amaryllis plants that Felix keeps on dividing, so
we have more and more here and some to give. |
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Here is a colourful blessing of the newly paved section of the
market behind our house, attended by hundreds of Mayan women in
typical clothes. Behind the priest, who was blessing baskets
full of vegetables, is the back of my house.
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Jennifer and Helen on
opening day of JennyStar DVD Rentals in our house, February 2006
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February 2002: on the road to Antigua, with
our new truck
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