Water

 One Word Sundays         

   Cellpic Sunday      

July 26, 2026 - Toronto ON

Iceland June 2025 

Frida Kahlo

December 2025 - Phuket Thailand

June 2025 - I found Frida Kahlo socks in Reykjavik Iceland!

April 2025 - Lisbon Portugal

April 2025 - A present!

February 2025 - Cathedral City CA

July 2023 - Frida Recap

July 6 is Frida Kahlo's birthday!

I am a huge Frida Kahlo fan. Love her art and her story. Click here for a short biography.

March 2022 - Immersive Frida Toronto ON

Click here for the Immersive Frida Exhibit we saw in Toronto.

In 2015 I went to an exhibit featuring her at the Textile Museum in Toronto. It also includes a link to an exhibit also in Toronto at the ROM.

Click here for an exhibit of Frida's work we attended in San Diego in 2014.

I found a mural in Toronto with Frida on it.

Another Toronto mural.

I am posting a recap of the various items we spotted on our 2016 Mexican trip.

Artist Frida Kahlo was born on July 6, 1907, in Coyocoán, Mexico City, Mexico. Considered one of Mexico's greatest artists, Frida Kahlo began painting after she was severely injured in a bus accident. Kahlo later became politically active and married fellow communist artist Diego Rivera in 1929. She exhibited her paintings in Paris and Mexico before her death in 1954.
You will find renderings of Frida and her works on everything, everywhere in Mexico.
She is often depicted with her trademark "unibrow" and faint mustache.

Mazatlan

Painted on the wall of an art gallery "Feet, what do I need you for when I have wings to fly?"

Guadalajara

Mural on El Andador Coronilla

Tlaquepaque

San Miguel de Allende

Guanajuato

This town is the birthplace of Frida's husband Diego Rivera.

A nude painting of Frida done by Diego, it is in Diego's museum.

Frida and Diego in papier mache.

Puerto Vallarta

Weekend Roundup

 Welcome to The Weekend Roundup...hosted by Tom The Back Roads Traveler

1.Has an "X"
2. A Favorite
3. Looks like an X - chosen by Tom

Has an  X

EXIT

FAVOURITE

NEXT Toronto

Looks like an X

Las Vegas NV

Weekend Roundup

 Welcome to The Weekend Roundup...hosted by Tom The Back Roads Traveler

1. Starts with "W"
2. A Favorite
3.  WATER - Chosen by Tom

Starts with W

FAVOURITE

WORMS

Chiang Mai Thailand

WATER

Iceland

Women's History

 

Before there was a President Vigdís, there was a strike.

On October 24, 1975, approximately 90 percent of Iceland's women walked off their jobs — every job, paid and unpaid — and gathered in the streets. No cooking. No childcare. No office work. No factory shifts. The country ground to a halt in a single day, and the men of Iceland were left to manage their own children, their own meals, and their own realization of exactly how much work women were actually doing.

The Women's Strike of 1975 didn't just make headlines. It planted a seed.

In the years that followed, Icelandic women began asking a question: if women hold up this country, why shouldn't a woman lead it?

The answer they settled on was a theatre director named Vigdís Finnbogadóttir.

Vigdís had spent years turning the Reykjavík Theatre Company into one of the most celebrated cultural institutions in Iceland. She had taught French on national television. She was known for her intelligence, her composure, and her deep love of Icelandic language and heritage. She was also a divorced single mother — she had adopted a daughter — and she had undergone a mastectomy for breast cancer.

When women's organizations approached her about running for president in 1980, she agreed — not because she expected to win, but because she believed it was important to prove that women could lead political campaigns.

The questions she faced on the campaign trail were something else.

How could she govern as a single mother? Would she be distracted by childcare? Was she — one journalist actually asked — a virgin? And would having had a mastectomy, would having, literally, one breast — affect her fitness to serve?

She answered every question. Calmly. With humor. With the quiet authority of someone who had decided that the question itself revealed far more about the questioner than any answer could reveal about her.

On June 29, 1980, Vigdís Finnbogadóttir won Iceland's presidential election in a four-way race, prevailing with 33.6% of the vote Wikipedia — a plurality, not a majority, but enough. She had not expected to win.

On August 1, 1980, she was sworn in as the fourth President of Iceland — and the first woman in the history of democracy to be elected head of state of any country in the world.

She served for 16 years. She was re-elected without opposition in the 1984 presidential election Wikipedia, ran unopposed again in 1992, and in 1988 won her only contested re-election with nearly 95 percent of the vote. She used her presidency to champion Icelandic language and cultural heritage, to advocate for the environment, and to represent her nation with a dignity and warmth that made her one of the most beloved heads of state in Icelandic history.

In 1986, she hosted the historic Reykjavík Summit between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev — a meeting widely credited with beginning the end of the Cold War.

She retired in 1996, having served the longest tenure of any elected female head of state in history. In the years since, she has continued working on behalf of languages, human rights, and women's empowerment around the world.

She is still alive, now 95 years old, and still speaking.

Her personal motto, throughout all of it, has been reported to be simple: "Never let the women down."

She lived by it.

Monday Mural

   I'm linking up at Monday Mural 

June 2025 - Reykjavik Iceland

 On the side of Njálsgata house number 22 is a mural of a mermaid by Icelandic artist Mæja Sif.

At KEF Airport

Weekend Roundup

 Welcome to The Weekend Roundup...hosted by Tom The Back Roads Traveler

1. Starts with "G"
2. A Favorite
3. GIANT - Chosen by Tom

Starts with G GOLD GUNS GUITARS

Denton TX

FAVOURITE

GOLD GLASS GRAZING GELATO GALAXY

GIANT

Reykjavik Iceland

Hot Diggity Dogs - Tuesday Treasures

 Tom the backroads traveller hosts this weekly meme - Tuesday Treasures

Get yer hot dogs heeeeeeere!

While Toronto may not have a defining hot dog culture like New York or Chicago, we do love our weenies. Street meat is still a staple late-night nosh, and last year alone, Blue Jays fans (and I guess we also have to credit those cheering for the visiting teams) ate more than 700,000 $1 hot dogs during Schneider’s Loonie Dog Tuesdays at the Rogers Centre. Though, admittedly, this could have more to do with how much everything else costs at the stadium’s concession stands and not how much we heart hot dogs. 

You can get hot dogs around the world!

I'll start with Champs, they provide all the street meat to the hot dog stand vendors around downtown.

Photo taken 2008 when I was working across the street from Champs and it was surrounded by parking lots.

Also 2008

Hot Dog stands.

.

Church St.

Front St.

This place isn't around any more.

Then there's the Franks...

.

Woofdog's in Kensington Market

New to the market is Japadogs with several locations around town.

PORT DOVER ON

NIAGARA FALLS ON

MONTREAL

Nothing like a Montreal steamie!!

JOGGINS NOVA SCOTIA

CALGARY ALBERTA

BANGKOK THAILAND

ICELAND

When you order your hot dog - I can't recommend highly enough to have "One with everything" or as we say in Icelandic: "Ein með öllu".

Icelandic Hot Dog 'One with everything':
Lamb Hot Dog
Icelandic Mustard
Remolaði sauce
Fried Onions
Raw Onions
Iceland Style Ketchup (with apples instead of sugar to sweeten the flavor)
So in other words ...
Don't order your hot dog, Bill Clinton Style (with mustard only)

BORDEAU FRANCE

FRANKFURT GERMANY 

BERLIN GERMANY

AMSTERDAM THE NETHERLANDS 

ROME ITALY

NEW YORK CITY

We've eaten at Nathan's but I'm having trouble finding our photos, if we took any!

CHICAGO

Portillo's Restaurant Group, Inc. is an American fast casual restaurant chain based in the Chicago area that specializes in serving Chicago-style food such as hot dogs, Maxwell Street Polish, and Italian beef.

Portillo's was founded in 1963 by Dick Portillo.[6] After returning from serving in the Marines, Portillo gathered money from his savings and an investment from his brother Frank to open a hot dog stand. They bought a 12-foot trailer that had no restroom and no running water. They named it "The Dog House". The Dog House operated on North Avenue in Villa Park.At first the stand lost money and a solution was needed. Portillo snuck into one of the back rooms of a competitor and wrote down where they were purchasing their product. He continued the process of learning by visiting different competitors. By 1967, The Dog House, now in good financial standing, was upgraded to a larger trailer and was renamed "Portillo's".