Italian Stairs

From our 2007 trip...


TUSCANY




Rummage sale, Arezzo




Etruscan caves, Orvieto




Nick and Piper, Cortona


UMBRIA



Monte Santa Maria Tiberina



Market, Citta di Castello




Citerna




Montone




Assisi



Perugia (just up the hill from Amanda Knox's house)


CAMPANIA


Quay, Praiano




Amalfi

Bicicletti

Sorry for the long absence, I've been concentrating on newer photos, on my EffStopLocal site.

Anyway here's a collection mostly from Tuscany/Umbria 2007. Since I was seeing bicycles parked patiently everywhere, I began documenting them, especially since they were usually in spectacular locations.

Arezzo



San Giustino (Valtiberina)



Sansepolcro



Gubbio



San Giovanni (Valdarno)



Sansepolcro



Lucca



San Giustino (Valtiberina)



Sansepolcro



Florence



San Giovanni (Valdarno)



Umbertide



Sansepolcro



San Giustino (Valtiberina)



Lucca



San Giovanni (Valdarno)



Arezzo



Sansepolcro



San Giustino (Valtiberina)

A Day in Roma

It was a rainy day. Our tour of middle- and high-school students had just missed, for better or worse, the spectacle of hordes of mourners from around the world saying goodbye to the dead Pope.




The Vatican tours were still crowded but the streets seemed quite subdued. An occasional distressed Roman could be seen in out of the way places.





The outpouring grief was perhaps only a slight addition to the standard despair of a few, like this beggar, prostrate on the Spanish Steps.





However, life also goes on: the baglady and dog on their rounds at the Colosseum.

York

More train shots... Last summer I and my daughter visited friends in Yorkshire, England. We arrived in the Viking/Roman city of York at the Victorian train station, with its typical arcing skeletal roof.




We did a lot of sauntering around town, including along the ancient city walls and a twilight "ghost walk." Another attraction is the railway museum. Here is the view from beneath an old steam locomotive.




Another locomotive has been opened up like something from the "Bodies" exhibit to show the workings of a steam engine.

North Yorkshire Railway

Haworth, England, has not changed a lot since the Brontes lived there.



But if you'd rather ignore the Bronte trail, you can just watch the steam trains.

Streetlife, Venice

It's hard to take a bad picture in Venice. Here are a few glimpses of workaday Venetians from our 2004 trip.


The pigeon-chow vendor, Piazza San Marco. I love the draped muslin sunblinds, behind which is a famed cafe once frequented by revolutionaries. Meanwhile the pigeons get fat and fatter, and bolder.



The waiter, near the Doge's Palace. I think this cafe had the most expensive sandwich and sparkling water I have ever consumed. But it was worth it, what ambiance! The shade, not to mention a place to sit, was welcome after trudging miles around the hot cobblestone alleys.

Of course, streetlife in Venice also means canal life.


The deliverymen. Not such a bad job!



Gondolier on a mobilephone break. Everyone with any sense was taking a siesta.



I don't know what these guys were doing but they were up early and rattling around in a backwater canal. There's something ineffable about being a tourist in a fantastically beautiful spot while the people who live there just go about their business.



Siesta's over, and the gondoliers queue up to cart off tourists.

Venetian Blind

Well, until our next trip (possibly to Germany this summer) I am stuck in the States, so figured I would just put forward a few choice scenes from previous trips, not unlike my other site, Eff-StopLocal, with a bit of blather about them.

So, this shot is from Venice, summer 2004. I have the requisite number of typical Venice shots of canals and gondoliers and pigeons. But some of the most pleasant memories (they're all pleasant actually) have to do with rising at the crack of dawn and wandering the deserted and silent alleyways (calles). Most of the windows in the blocks of flats and palaces had these heavy shutters over the windows to keep out the cold in the evening and the heat in the day.

Eventually we would find a cafe and grab a cup of espresso and a pastry, and pick up some focaccia for the kids who we'd left asleep in the flat. The smell of the canal, our sandals whacking the cobbles. The rattle of corrugated iron shopfront gates being raised.