Photo Journal/ A-Z Photo Challenge: J is for Journey

It is that time of the week again as we join Frizztext’s A-Z Photo Challenge. Letter this week is J and I choose the theme Journey. I have been blessed to have had the opportunity to travel in the recent years and here are some of the photos I have taken as I was about to embark on several of my journeys. I consider this an ode to waystations that bring a traveler to new lands, destinations, and adventure: a song to airfields, sea ports, bus stations.

Airports

Dubai International Airport enroute to Bahrain

“So I find words I never thought to speak
In streets I never thought I should revisit
When I left my body on a distant shore.” 
― T.S. Eliot

Dubai International Airport enroute to Bahrain

“People who meet in airports are seventy-two percent more likely to fall for each other than people who meet anywhere else.”
― Jennifer E. Smith, The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight

Changi Airport, Singapore to Hongkong

“You can leave Hong Kong, but it will never leave you.” 
― Nury Vittachi, Hong Kong: The City of Dreams

Taipei International Airport enroute to San Francisco

“What about San Francisco?”
“What about it?”
“Did you like it?”
She shrugged. “It was O.K.”
“Just O.K.?”
She laughed. “Good God!”
“What?”
“You’re all alike here.”
“How so?” he asked.
“You demand adoration for the place. You’re not happy until everybody swears undying love for every nook and cranny of every precious damn –“
“Whoa, missy.”
“Well, it’s true. Can’t you just worship it on your own? Do I have to sign an affidavit?”
He chuckled. “We’re that bad, are we?”
“You bet your ass you are.” 
― Armistead Maupin

Arrival at Las Vegas International Airport from Singapore

“To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive.” 
― Robert Louis Stevenson

Bus Stations and Ferry Rides

Bus Station from Berlin to Prague

The streets of Prague were a fantasia scarcely touched by the twenty-first century—or the twentieth or nineteenth, for that matter. It was a city of alchemists and dreamers, its medieval cobbles once trod by golems, mystics, invading armies. ― Laini Taylor, Daughter of Smoke and Bone

Bus Station from Berlin to Prague

“Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.” 
― Maya Angelou, Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey Now

Bus Station from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

“Think of the long trip home. 
Should we have stayed at home and thought of here? 
Where should we be today? 
Is it right to be watching strangers in a play 
in this strangest of theatres? 
What childishness is it that while there’s a breath of life 
in our bodies, we are determined to rush 
to see the sun the other way around? 
The tiniest green hummingbird in the world? 
To stare at some inexplicable old stonework, 
inexplicable and impenetrable, 
at any view, 
instantly seen and always, always delightful? 
Oh, must we dream our dreams 
and have them, too? 
And have we room 
for one more folded sunset, still quite warm?” 
― Elizabeth Bishop, Questions of Travel

Bus Station from Boston to New York

“Here today, up and off to somewhere else tomorrow! Travel, change, interest, excitement! The whole world before you, and a horizon that’s always changing!” 
― Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

Ferry from Singapore to Bintan, Indonesia

“See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. Ask for no guarantees, ask for no security.” 
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

How about you, dear friends, what is your J photo for the week?