This week Cheri Lucas Rowlands invites us to share an image of a wall that reveals something about a place, people, or ourselves. You can view the entire challenge post here.

In reviewing my galleries of images, I realized I have a lot more photographs of walls than I might have imagined. I have selected three different walls with three different functions. I submit for your approval a gallery of walls. In the opening image, an artist used his skills to decorate a wall that shields a hazardous area from the passers-by on the sidewalk. The wall is located in Bisbee, Arizona. The former mining town is now an artist’s community, so I had lots of options from Bisbee to share wall art with you. You can read more about Bisbee here.

Cartagena, Colombia is an old city on the seaside trade routes of merchants and pirates. After becoming a wealthy seaport, the residents drew tired of pirates looting and plundering their city. A seawall constructed to protect the city still stands, though today it has many more openings and gates than it did originally. You can read more about our visit to the walled city here.

One of my favorite walls is located in a coffee shop on Deck 8 of the cruise ship Norwegian Pearl. The Blue Lagoon restaurant provides an uncharacteristically simple menu for a cruise ship restaurant. The coffee bean carpet and the coffee wall both attract coffee aficionados with signs about their favorite beverages from around the world. However, the view of the ocean and the smell of hot, fresh coffee are the forces that drew us there most mornings on our two tours on the Pearl. You can read more about the Norwegian Pearl here.

John Steiner