Religious Sites

Religious Sites 

          As I noted in my "Gardens" post, some venues offer photo ops that cut across trips. In particular, churches & other religious sites offer a variety of exterior looks & museum-quality interiors. Here's a sampling of some favorites. I won't try to label every site, but I'll group them regionally (accurately, I hope). More details can generally be found in the travel journals in other posts. 

Local sites

As I did in the "Gardens" post, I'll begin with a familiar local venue: St. Pius X in Loudonville, where I sing in the choir. Beautifully decorated for Christmas 

Easter

and other special days.

Plus the usual pretty details.

and a drone view

I've also sung with the Mendelssohn Club at St. Francis of Assisi in Albany,

St. Thomas the Apostle in Delmar for First Night,

New Scotland Presbyterian,

  

and New Covenant Presbyterian where we have our weekly rehearsals. 

I've also sung in St. Clement's, a "Redemptorist Community" in Saratoga. 

There's Albany's Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception

Cathedral of All Saints, here decorated for "Cathedral in Bloom"

and First Presbyterian, with its beautiful windows.

.

 Several churches in Troy have Tiffany windows.

We've celebrated Tet "New Year" with Vietnamese parishioners at Sacred Heart in Watervliet.

St. George's in the Schenectady Stockade, 

also 1st Reformed Church.

Immanuel Baptist in Albany 

and St. Basil's Russian Orthodox Church in Watervleit.

We've met very friendly & welcoming people at Latham's Al-Hidaya mosque 

and the Hindu Temple Society in Colonie.

We've found other lovely NY churches in Poughkeepsie,

Sleepy Hollow, 

Cold Spring, 

and near our family in Jackson Heights, Queens: Blessed Sacrament has a very large Christmas scene, 

and St, Joan of Arc is also beautiful inside and outside, winter and spring,

and lovely side chapels, including one (to the right) with a stone from St. Joan's 15th C prison.

Plus other churches around NYC.

Other East Coast churches have included Newport,

 
 

South Carolina 

Washington DC, 

along the Mississippi,

 and the National Shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa in Bucks County PA.

Travels in the Southwest & California have brought us to missions & historic old churches.

Mormon temples in Salt Lake City 

and St. George. 

Near the Temple in Salt Lake City is the beautiful Cathedral of the Madeleine.

 St. Francis of Assisi in Lake Tahoe, with a panorama of trees and lake behind the altar,

and over the mountains to Virginia City and St. Mary's in the Mountains.

 

Canadian sites have ranged from the Maritimes, PEI & Nova Scotia, 
 

to Quebec & Montreal

to Banff & Vancouver.

 

Europe, of course, offers many spectacularly ornate churches. As recounted in other posts in this blog, the St. Pius X choir has done 2 European tours that entailed seeing many churches, and singing in many of them! The first tour was to Italy. 

Our 2nd tour went from Munich to Vienna & Salzburg to Prague. 

 

Marjorie & I have had our own travels thru Italy, 

along the Rhine, 

in Central Europe, 

Provence, 

Notre Dame in Paris

 

  [Sadly, Notre Dame was badly damaged by a massive fire, April 15, 2019.]

along the Seine: Giverny, Vernon, Les Andelys

   

 

modernistic Eglise Sainte-Jeanne d'Arc in Rouen

Also in Rouen: Cathedral de lumieres at Notre Dame cathedral

the Netherlands & Belgium, 

along the Danube: Matthias Church in Budapest,

a return to St. Stephan's Cathedral in Vienna, 

St. Francis of Assissi (aka Kaiserjubiläumskirche) also in Vienna,

Gottweig Abbey,

and another St. Stephen's Cathedral in Passau, Germany, with an incredible organ (almost 18,000 pipes!). 

 

Edinburgh Castle in Scotland

and churches in Scotland

Greece, 

  

Scandinavia,

In Spain: Barcelona,  

 

Andalucia: Malaga

Seville

Cordoba: Mezquita 

and a synagogue

A Viking Ocean Cruise "Into the Midnight Sun" led to sites in Scotland and Norway: St. Magnus Cathedral, Kirkwall, Orkney Islands, Scotland

Flakstad Kirke, Lofoten, Norway 

Arctic Cathedral, Tromso, Norway

Molde Domkirke, Norway

Geiranger Kyrkje, Norway

and I'll include Iceland here since it straddles Europe & North America geologically.

A Viking River Cruise took us through Portugal and parts of Spain, with lots of cathedrals and shrines: Batalha

Fatima

Salamanca

Lamego

Porto

Braga

Santiago de Compostela

A trip along the Adriatic brought us to many beautiful churches in the Balkans: 

in  Croatia: Opatija

Dubrovnik 

Montenegro: Our Lady of the Rocks, Bay of Kotor 

Zagreb, Croatia

Radovljica, Slovenia

Lake Bled, Slovenia

Bled Castle

Ljubljana, Slovenia

During our 2 trips to Turkey we were fascinated by the great variety of beautiful mosques, from very elaborate to quite simple.

 

We've found lovely island churches in Bermuda: St. Peter's in St. George's,

Cathedral of the Most Holy Trinity (Hamilton),

St. Theresa's Cathedral (Hamilton)

and Hawaii: St. Benedict's "painted church"  

and Tahiti: Cathedral de l' Immaculatee Conception

Eglise Evangelique

Our travels across the Pacific have also taken us to St. Mary's Cathedral in Australia 

  

        and beautiful temples in Vietnam.

My brother & I found beautiful churches in Rio 

and Buenos Aires: Catedral Metropolitana. 

Pretty churches in Costa Ri