Suit

Loro Piana.

I'll post with photos later.

Some Fun

I take lots of pictures, but I'm not the only one. Sometimes we get tired of photographing all this silly architecture and just want to have fun with our cameras. Case in point:













These were taken simultaneously. Oh good times.

Photo Galleries

I know that not everyone has Facebook so they haven't been able to follow all the photos I've been uploading on there. Here are the three galleries I have up so far, but you can only see them if you have an account with Facebook. If you don't have one and don't want to create one, you can leave a comment to this post and I can email you the album. There are quite a few of my best pictures on there, many more than I can put on here.

Gallery 1: Cermalus

Gallery 2: Palatium

Gallery 3: Velia

By the way, I'm naming them by the 7 hills of ancient Rome, so really the name has nothing to do with the pictures contained within.

Photos

I know, I know. So much for my flurry of posts. You know how it is.

Here are some pretty pictures from the places I've been.

Cervara, Italy. We spent the better part of the day walking around this beautiful city.

Pantheon. I stood beneath the oculus in the rain. Absolutely incredible experience.

A beautiful church in Pompeii. That's the city, not the ruins.

A building in the ruins of Pompeii.
These were actually pretty tough to witness.


Caparola.
Circular Stairwell in the Villa Farnese in Caparola.

Again.

Also, I have a bunch of pics up on Facebook, but I don't think all of you can get there. I'll see if I can post links to the galleries.

Venice

One final post on the trip. We concluded by getting up Sunday morning and dashing out of Padova to catch our train to Venice. We made it with some time to spare, and enjoyed a relatively peaceful ride through the Italian countryside. As we came closer, we saw it:

Yes, we had finally arrived in Venice. We really didn't have any sort of plan to speak of, other than our departure time of 4 pm, so we bought a map of the city and began to wander.

Now, I'm as obsessed with bridges as I am with reflections, so Venice was a magical city for me. The bridges were superb, and great fun to photograph.

Details, also, were fun to observe as we moved between cities. I really enjoyed looking at the intricate metalwork that was similar throughout entire cities, but different between them. Each place had its own distinct style. Venice was no different, so I captured plenty of images of the little details.

Of course, everyone loves the symmetrical views down the waterways with the bridges spanning in the distance and gondolas floating along, so I took some of those as well.

In the end, Venice was an absolutely beautiful city, if touristy. But given that this is nearing summer-time, that's to be expected. I'm glad that I was able to visit this early in the year, because I expect that the city (and Italy in general) will only get more crowded as time goes on.

Eventaully, we had to bid farewell to Venice, and caught our train home. We were on a EuroStar, a "fast" train, but it still took us about 5 hours to get back. We arrived about 10 o' clock and took a little bus back to Trestevere, and home.

Padova

When we arrived in Padova, it was already after dark. We ran into a hotel, found a map of the city and directions to a hostel, and began making our way across the city. We conveniently ran into an English-speaking couple who were going to their home just a few blocks from our stay. The hostel was clear on the other side of Padova, and though with the map I could get us there, it would have taken substantially longer. Because we were moving quickly (and getting a nice tour along the way), we didn't take any pictures that night.

We found our hostel, booked a room, and went to dinner at a nice little place whose name translates to "Up and Down". We spent a laid back evening wandering around the city, getting a little gelato, and just enjoying not having to be places. Eventually though, we turned in for the night.

The next moring, we grabbed a quick (really quick) breakfast from the hostel and dashed our way to the train station, because our train to Venice departed at 8:30. We did manage to snap a few pictures along the way though. Behold, Padova:














And then there was this cool little guy

Vicenza

I know I've been out for a while, but I've been very busy. Hopefully I'll be able to post a lot soon to catch back up. I'll continue to talk a bit about my trip from the weekend before last (sigh, so far behind...)

If you look at a map of Italy, you'll see that Florence is right in the center, and Vicenza is a short distance to the North. The day after my little adventure of being lost in Florence, the three of us made our way around the city to check out some things we'd missed the first time around. This included a visit to David, but for the most part we just wandered for a bit.

That afternoon we jumped on a train to Vicenza, which lasted about 3 hours. We honestly didn't know much about the city when we left, except that Palladio -- a famous Renaissance architect -- built a bunch of buildings there.

We arrived, walked around a bit, took some pictures, found a little hostel, ate at a cool help-yourself (but not really buffet) restaurant, explored the night-time city, and went to bed.

The next morning we did more of the same, mainly just exploring. However we did have one noteworthy experience, we visited the Villa Rotonda, aforementioned Palladio's most famous work. It's a jewel of Renaissance thinking: perfectly symmetrical in all directions. Not exactly my favorite, but exquisite in proportion and balance.

Afterward, we walked back into the city and caught the train to our next stop: Padova.