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These are in a house in Zakopane that’s made up as a small museum, showing what rural life looked like back in the day. I don’t imagine every household carved the handles of their tools quite so interestingly, but some probably did — Polish winters are pretty long, after all — and since there’s a woodcarver’s workshop attached to the house (the place where I photographed this), it’s not surprising here.

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I lucked out in my first trip to Japan. I was only there for five days, but my timing coincided with the cherry blossom season in Kansai — quite by accident, as they bloomed early that year. This is Himeji-jo, one of the few original-construction castles still standing in Japan, and one of the most phenomenally picturesque places I’ve ever been.

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I have a large soft spot for awesomely ornate clocks.

No, I don’t know why.

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I have no idea why rhinestone-covered skulls are a thing all over Paris . . . but they are. This one was on display in a window near the flat we were staying in, and it was easily the most stupendous example of the breed I happened across during my time there.

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In the late eighteenth century, health concerns led the city of Paris to empty all the cemeteries within city bounds and move the remains to a series of catacombs outside the walls. There are an estimated six million people down there — you see only a fraction of the remains on your tour — and most of it is very difficult to photograph, as they don’t allow tripods or flash (so as to protect the bones). This picture, however, came out splendidly.

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Closing out our tour of the three great cemeteries I’ve visited, we have this mausoleum in Brompton, which makes me think inescapably of New Orleans — probably because that’s one of the few places in the U.S. where you’re liable to find this kind of mausoleum, weathered and stained and picturesque.

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One final shot from Highgate: another funerary urn, this one beneath a tree whose clusters of berries were catching the sunlight beautifully.

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I am not enough of a botanist to know what these berries are, but I liked the bright scatter they made across a grave slab in Brompton.

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Lintels: not that interesting. Lintels with a slight gilding of moss and some lens flare to liven up the scene: much more interesting. (This is one last detail from the Circle of Lebanon in Highgate.)

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There’s kind of an awful story associated with this one: the lion marks the grave of a fellow whose captive lion got loose in London and killed a number of people, including children. In typical Victorian fashion, the fellow in question basically had no liability for the incident; everybody was so impressed that he paid for the funerals, and nevermind his gross negligence in allowing the lion to get loose in the first place.

But it does make for a pretty monument.

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I think I mentioned before Brompton’s Great Wall o’Ivy. Here’s a portion of it, with a suitably ivy-bedecked tomb before it, and bonus cross for accent.

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I mentioned before that the “Circle of Lebanon” is named for the cedar tree atop its central structure; well, this is the tree. I would have loved to climb up there and sit beneath its branches, but somehow, I think our guide would have objected. 😛

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I don’t know the story behind it, but judging by what we saw in Poland, it’s a common tradition there to put candles in red vases and lay them on graves around Hallowe’en/All Souls Day. My husband got to see an amazing display of them in one of Kraków’s cemeteries at night; these are, of course, in Peksow Brzyzek, the cemetery we visited in Zakopane.

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Some of the graves in Highgate East are newer, as you can tell by the style of this angel and the relative lack of weathering. I quite liked the angel, and of course a book never goes amiss. 🙂

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Most of the trees in Highgate Cemetery are too closely packed to allow for particularly good shots of them. This one, however, was posing rather splendidly among the graves.

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This particular grave honestly looked to me like it belonged in Japan, not Poland. (In fact, I have a picture of some stones at Fushimi Inari that look rather similar.) The fern and the flowers made a nice additional touch.

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Leading up to the Circle of Lebanon is an area called the Egyptian Avenue. This is the cornice of one of the mausoleum doorways along its length, crumbling to show the brick beneath — another example of how Highgate’s decay, while not good on its own terms, is photographically appealing.

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Some of the graves in Brompton Cemetery still receive visitors. These artificial roses, laid before one of the headstones, made a spot of vivid color amid the green and grey.

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This is one of the better-known monuments at Highgate, I think — at least, it’s on the Wikipedia page. 😛 After having been to Highgate, I no longer wonder where Stephen Moffat got the notion for the Weeping Angels . . . .

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This gives you a notion of how closely packed the monuments are in Highgate West. (Although there was a recent burial there — as in, within the past few years — the place is almost completely closed to new additions.) I very much liked the three-tiered effect these had, all in a row; the only thing that would have improved it was if all three used the draped-urn motif. The Victorians may have had a bunch of different funerary motifs, but pile up enough of them in close proximity and you start to realize how repetitive they got . . . .