On the fourth day of our Dorset trip we went to Eggardon Hill, the site of Iron Age fort and settlement. It’s never been excavated, so all you can see (but what a sight!) are the dips and hills of how the shape of it all used to be. The view was absolutely beautiful (it’s no Austria, but I had to quell the urge to sing The Sound of Music).

Panorama (you have to see this in it’s original size and scroll right to the right):

Cristiano on a hill:

Countryside:

Finding a geocache:

Cow:

Geeks in the Country:

Thanks to Cristiano, Sheila and Harry for their photos. You can see more photos of Dorset on their Flickr accounts (Cristiano, Sheila and Harry).

During our second day in Dorset we went to a couple of cool places. As promised here are more photos:

Hardy’s Monument:

Panorama from the countryside:

Pretty Flowers:

Doggie Woof Woof:

Froggy Ribbit Ribbit:

Lulworth Cove:

Pebbles:

Durdle Door:

I promised photos of our trip to Dorset, so here are a couple of our first day there. We had tickets to the Melplash show, an agricultural exhibition, featuring farm animals, country food and the like. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it was great fun! Highlight had to be the goats; they were just so cute.

Goat with a teddy bear:

Pretty flowers:

A “thrilling” swordfight:

Llama:

Eagle (? correct me, if I’m wrong, my bird watching skills aren’t that good):

Big bull:

Kudos go to Cristiano for all the beautiful photos; see more of them on his Flickr page.

Last Saturday Cristiano and I met up with Carlo, Fabiana and their friend Daniel in Portobello Road. Fabiana made this cool photo of me:

Melinda by Fabiana Zonca on Flickr.

I like how the shadows play on my skin and how everything is dark except me. I want to say I was thinking of something insightful or ‘searching my soul’ (as I call this picture), but to be honest: most probably I’m trying to figure out what tiles on the ground I should step on.

Do you ever play that game where you just sit somewhere, watch people and try to create their back stories? This photo somehow catches that type of game for me. I can keep staring at it, wondering what each person in it was wondering at the time.

Much to my amazement when I wanted to step on my balcony this afternoon, I discovered this:

Yes, that’s a squirrel. A freaking cute small squirrel asleep in my beanbag. A squirrel. Asleep. In my beanbag. How cute is that?! I’ve never seen a sleeping squirrel before, let alone one in a beanbag! By accident I then woke the little thing up and it jumped away, but a few minutes later it was back. Eyes shut and sleeping peacefully:

These pictures (and a couple more photos up on Flickr) don’t do it justice; you can actually see it breathing heavily as if it was snoring. I wouldn’t have been surprised if I had gotten closer that it was doing just that (cats snore, so why not squirrels?). I didn’t want to open the door and step out, cause I’m sure it would have ran away then. It’s dark now outside, but it’s still there.

With the pigeon nest (I’ll come around to that in another blog post) in the other corner, this balcony is turning out to be quite the wildlife shelter. What’s next, I wonder?

By now you should know I love Annie Leibovitz’s photography. I just recently discovered these two photo spreads picturing the Wizard of Oz and Hitchcock movies. The first set is from December 2005 and features Keira Knightley as Dorothy Gale. If you want to see all the images, take a look at the slideshow.

The second set just came out this week and features a wide collection of current day actors posing in iconic Hitchcock scenes. I love these two with Jodie Foster in The Birds and Marion Cotillard in Psycho. Check out FirstShowing for more Hitchcock.

Update: Apparently though they are not from Annie Leibovitz. (I misread the other article). Still they are beautiful photos.

These photos from Annie Leibovitz are just stunning. They belong to the Dream Portrait Serie, an advertisement campaign from Disney featuring celebrities as traditional Disney characters. The first three images came out in January 2007, the second batch of three in October 2007 and the latest four came out this week. I’ve featured the photos I like the best first; while most of them are cool, there are a couple that just don’t work for me.

Update: I’ve added the latest photos of the campaign that were released in March 2011 here at the beginning of this post. Again they’re so gorgeous! It’s also interesting to see that Disney is using actors that are featured in their main live-action franchises right now: Olivia Wilde and Jeff Bridges were both in Tron, Penelope Cruz will be in the next Pirates of the Caribbean.

Update 2: I’ve again added the latest photos of the campaign. The Taylor Swift one as Rapunzel was released in January 2013.

Where A World of Adventure Awaits

Taylor Swift as Rapunzel from Tangled

Where A Moment Of Beauty Lasts Forever

Jeff Bridges as The Beast, Penelope Cruz as Belle

Where Magic Speaks, Even When You’re Not The Fairest Of Them All

Olivia Wilde as the Evil Queen, Alec Baldwin as the Mirror

Where Memories Take Hold and Never Let Go

Queen Latifah as Ursula (from The Little Mermaid)

Where Another World Is Just A Wish Away

Julianne Moore as Ariel (The Little Mermaid) and Michael Phelps as a random merman.

Where Every Cinderella Story Comes True

Scarlett Johansson as Cinderella

Where You’re The Fairest Of Them All

Rachel Weisz as Snow White

Where Dreams Run Free

Jessica Biel as Pocahontas

Where You’re Always The King Of The Court

Roger Federer as King Arthur

Where You Never Have To Grow Up

Mikhail Baryshnikov as Peter Pan, Gisele Bündchen as Wendy and Tina Fey as Tinkerbell

Where Imagination Saves The Day

David Beckham as Prince Phillip from Sleeping Beauty

Where The Magic Begins

Julie Andrews as the Blue Fairy from Pinocchio and Abigial Breslin as Fira from Disney Fairies

Where A Whole New World Awaits

Jennifer Lopez as Jasmine and Marc Anthony as Aladdin

Where Wonderland Is Your Destiny

Beyonce as Alice, Lyle Lovett as the March Hare and Oliver Platt as the Mad Hatter

Where Your Every Wish Is Our Command

Whoopi Goldberg as the Genie

(Photos courtesy and copyright of Disney)