This Post Started as a HubPages Question

What do you seek when you visit other countries?

Baudelaire wrote of escaping "anywhere out of this world" and Proust pondered our longing to get out of our own lives, frustrated by discovery that they follow us wherever we go like our shadows. Enlightenment travelers are less concerned with the experience there are having than with understanding the places and people they visit, but it takes time and patience and modern tourists are short of both.

Asked by Beata Stasak.

I Like to Travel for Culture and History

I like to find the atmosphere of the place. I'm not a social butterfly, but I push myself a bit and talk to people when I travel. I ask about things that interest me. Sometimes I find out about a great place to visit while I'm there. Sometimes they tell me about a local group I could join in with. Often I get a new perspective on my old, taken for granted ideas.

I like finding culture and history. I will go to things like local museums and flea markets and those farmer's markets where they really do still have produce as well as crafts and such for sale.

One thing I always do it get out very, very early so I can be out people watching as the town/ city wakes up for the working day. I like to see the place start fresh and come alive around me.

There is something special about getting away. First you have that flash of horror at being adrift in a new place. But, once you get over that the adventure starts. It's only when you travel that you can really be free, reinvent yourself, try something new and waste a day doing nothing, guilt free.

How to Enjoy the Trip

Remember you're a tourist and take the day (or week, however long you are away) off.

Write about your adventures. Draw, doodle and illustrate if you can. Add postcards if you can't draw anything at all. Save ticket stubs and other bits of things which you can add to your travel journal.

Have one planned destination each day. Maybe a tourist spot, maybe a restaurant that sounded too good to pass up, or a place you planned to see long before you left home even. Don't plan every step of your day. Give yourself room for unplanned adventures, changing your mind and wandering.

Talk to people. Even if you don't usually talk to anyone, put forth a little effort and talk to a couple of people each day. A real conversation. See if you can get past the regular small talk about the weather.

Take photos, lots of photographs. We are past the days when you had to pay for photofinishing and film. Now, the digital camera sets you free to make a fool of yourself being a tourist with a loaded camera. Go all out and put your thumb in a few pictures too, it's traditional.

Take the time to send postcards while you are still away from home. Write them with a new pen while you enjoy coffee, tea or something else in a lovely location with a great view.

The hotel, motel, bed & breakfast, or hostel you are staying at is a good (easy to find) source for great places to see, what to eat and things to do.

Do some of the things you like to do when you're home. I like browsing at bookstores. It's a great way to spend an afternoon when I'm in another town, another city, province (state), or country. I look for second hand bookstores too, not just retail.

Do something you don't make time for when you are home and busy or just don't have the energy. It might be something like getting a pedicure for the first time ever. You might get tickets and go to a live theatre performance, evening or matinee. Be open to new experiences.

**Five Easy Steps to a Little Free Library in Your Neighbourhood  **

1. Identify a location and steward.

2. Decide if you want to:

Order a complete Little Library or kit from our online catalogue.

Build it Yourself.  Make it official!.Get plans and instructions.

“Endow" for someone else (tax deductible!). Support Books for All in Africa, India or your community, Little Free Libraries for Small Towns or other initiatives.

Honor someone or have a Memorial Library

3. Contact us.  Use the Contact Us form on the website.  Reserve an official number and style, supplies and access to books.

4. Build Support

Lead the way. Be the first to give to the Little Free Library G.I.F.T. (Give It Forward Team) Fund.

Find a business or group sponsor

Tell your neighbours and friends. Invite them over for a little house party or send them a note asking them to join you.

5. When it is installed, celebrate! Send your photos and information to the website and get on the worldwide map!

Keep your Little Library full of books.  Protect it. Enjoy it. Feel great!

P.S. Always support your public and school libraries!)

Source - Little Free Library

I like the history of the old cemeteries. That's why I take my camera and respectfully enter old cemeteries in the city or nearly forgotten cemeteries in rural areas where the church itself might be just a rural ruin now.

It's a shame to see graves which have been moved. It still seems disrespectful, even all these years later. I like to photograph the old headstones and admire the engraving/ carving/ sculpture.

People like to explore cemeteries and graveyards for assorted reasons. Some are urban explorers, some are genealogists researching family histories and some want to discover more about local history.

Myself, I'm an urban explorer in rural Ontario. I often see small cemeteries or just a few plots leftover on a farm. It would be nice to have them remembered, those people who became our history.

How and What to Photograph in a Cemetery

Each headstone that you photograph should be done from a few different angles, try to get the shadows as highlights on the letters and engraving/ sculpture. A stone which you can read at the time will be harder to read in the photograph when you are back home. Give yourself every chance at getting a good, clear photo. Take more than one photo from up close and farther back.

Morning light is often the best light for cemetery photos. In older cemeteries it was traditional to bury people facing east. There are always exceptions to this rule. If you can return to the location a few times, experiment and find the best time of day and the best weather (cloudy, sunny, rainy) to work for the stone you want to photograph.

Bring aluminum foil (or a large sheet of white bristol board/ paper) to add illumination to the stones. Set it at the foot/ base and move it around to catch and reflect the light onto the headstone. White bristol board will give a glow to the stone rather than a shiny reflection.

Bring water in a spray bottle. Wet the stone and let it dry a little. Water will remain in the crevices but dry from the flat areas. This will add some texture and make the stone easier to read in your photograph. Take photos before you wet the stone so it can be seen as it is (unless you really only want to read it).

When taking a photo of an individual stone - fill the screen with it as much as possible. Turn the camera so you are taking a tall rectangle rather than the squat square standard photo. (If you've never done this before you should read more about basic photography). Tilt the camera for the stones which have settled on an angle, few of the old headstones are perfectly in place.

Some headstones will be flat on the ground. Avoid getting your shadow caught in the photograph. Take the photo from an angle, try moving to the side or take the photo standing at the top of the stone instead of the base. Whatever works to keep your view of the stone clear from your own shadow.

Bring a gentle brush to remove dirt from the stone. Don't do anything that will harm the stone. Avoid chemicals and cleaners which will cause the stone to become more porous (shaving cream has been used to clean the stones but it also weakens them which causes them to deteriorate sooner).

Carefully pull weeds from around the stone. A stone already on the ground could be fragile and crumbly where the weeds have been making inroads. It's great to see more of the stone and give it a break from the crowding weeds but it would be a shame to have a chunk of it fall apart once the weeds are no longer supporting it/ keeping it in place.

Haunted Victoria Canada Graveyards: Ghosts at Old Burying Ground, Ross Bay Cemetery, Pioneer Square

Provincial Resources

• Western Canada Cemetery Association
• StonePics: Newfoundland Cemeteries

For Canadian Cemetery Explorers

• CanadaGenWeb's Cemetery Project (Canadian Cemetery Directory)
• Flickr: Cemeteries of Ontario (COO)
• Flickr: Canadian Cemeteries

Other Resources

• Pinterest - Cemeteries fascinate me.
• Cemetery Photography | Photography.ca
• Juliet's Lace.: My guide to graveyard photography.
• Achingly Beautiful Cemetery Sculptures (20 photos) - My Modern Metropolis
• The Stories Behind The Stones; Cemetery Photography | Fuel Your Photography
• The Association for Gravestone Studies
• Genealogy.com: Tips for Photographing Gravestones
• Recording Cemeteries with Digital Photography | Interment.net
• How to Photograph a Cemetery
• 11 Tips for Taking Pictures in a Cemetery | StoneAngels
• The Hobby of Graving
• 40 Hauntingly Beautiful Photographs of Graves Taken In Graveyards and Cemeteries

*This is my contribution to #AdultSexEdMonth. This is personal and does contain mentions of taboo sexual fetishes and kinks. I don't apologize for the contents of my sexual fantasies. *

I have a problem with sex. The problem happens when I involve anyone else with my enjoyment of sex. Masturbation is divine. You won't catch me saying that to anyone, in person. But, masturbation is fully under my control, there is no feedback from cheap seats and I can do whatever I want to myself because I know what I like and how I like it. I explore self pleasuring - I've been doing it for a few decades and I'm just getting better at it all the time.

Why does sex have to be about more than one person? I think most people consider self pleasure to still be a selfish act. Or, something for only the lonely. …more

Not everyone tinkers with HTML any more. If you have and know what the alt image tags are (and where they are) you could give this a try. It’s not so practical now that almost no one uses a text based web browser. In the early days of the Internet a text based browser was practical because there were few images and if you stuck with text only web surfing you could be much faster in the days of dial up modems.

As you can see below the code is basic HTML for adding an image with the addition of the alt attribute to describe the image. This alt tag is still practical for people who concern themselves with SEO. Mainly it is good for keeping your site accessible for those who are vision impaired and have technology which will read those image tags but be unable to describe the image unless the tag exists to be read.

To do this, have your ASCII art ready. Create an ASCII image to go with the graphical image you are using.

In your HTML code include the entire <IMG> tag inside <PRE>…</PRE> tags, and put the ASCII art inside the ALT attribute. (See the image below which I recreated and then cut and pasted from the site where I found this idea.)

With this code a text only web browser would pick up only the image text and thus show your ASCII art picture. The ASCII art picture would not benefit the vision impaired web reader/ browser. So it is a good idea to add a word to describe your image along with the ASCII art picture.

Do not add text before or after the image itself. It will work as part of the image. Keep it all between the quote marks and the PRE tags (which tell the web browser this is pre-formatted information which should be kept “as is” with line breaks and spaces).