Lee Smith | Lee Smith Photography

A Calm Cloudy Sunrise

A panoramic image of Deerfield Beach on a calm cloudy morning at sunrise

A Collection San Francisco Views

I decided to place a collection of images on this post of a 2013 trip I made to San Francisco

The Golden Gate Bridge viewed from the bay on the Ferry — Golden Gate Bridge – IMG_11386

The Richmond San Rafael Bridge on the way to the San Francisco Piers From my San Francisco trip (2013) — San Francisco – IMG_10916

A view of the San Francisco Harbor — San Francisco – IMG_10729

The mast of a tripple master docked in along Fisherman's Warf — San Francisco – IMG_11623

Speeding over the water to San Francisco, the Golden Gate was visible Sailboats, Standing Paddlers — San Francisco Ferry – IMG_11386-cropped

Sailing on the San Francisco Bay on a beautiful winter day — San Francisco – IMG_10752

The Cable Cars Of San Francisco are a manually operated cable car system & established between 1873 and 1890 — The Legendary Cable Cars of San Francisco – IMG_10786

San Francisco - One of the many steep streets for famous Cable Cars with a portion of the Bay Bridge in the background - Trolley Tracks through San Francisco, From my San Francisco trip (2013) — San Francicso – IMG_10820-cropped

The Spanish Monastery in NMB

I recently visited the Spanish Monastery in North Miami Beach, FL.

The Spanish Monastery has quite a history. Construction of the Monastery of St. Bernard de Clairvaux was begun in the year 1133 AD in Sacramenia, near Segovia in northern Spain and completed eight years later in 1141.

In the 1830’s, the Monastery’s Cloisters were seized, sold, and converted into a granary and stable.

In 1925, William Randolph Hearst purchased the Cloisters and the Monastery’s outbuildings. The structures were dismantled stone by stone, bound with protective hay, packed in more than 11,000 wooden crates, numbered for identification and shipped to the United States.

All the crates remained in a warehouse in Brooklyn, New York, for 26 years where after one year after Hearst’s’ death in 1952, all the containers were purchased by two entrepreneurs for use as a tourist attraction. It took 19 months and nearly $20 million dollars (in today’s currency) to put the Monastery back together.

In 1953 Time magazine called it “the biggest jigsaw puzzle in history.”

reference: http://www.spanishmonastery.com/history