This photo was pretty easy to find as I took it out of my hotel room window in Florence while there for meetings. In order to find out the name of the church, I had to use google street view to virtually walk my way over to the church from my hotel.
According to Wikipedia, the Ponte Vecchio is “a Medieval stone closed-spandrel segmental arch bridge”. I’m not entirely sure what that means, but I thought I’d fill you in just the same.
About ten years ago I had dinner with my family in a restaurant “Golden View” across the river from here. I stayed behind after dinner, with my girlfriend at the time, and wound up playing the piano there. That resulted in the waiter providing us with complimentary champagne, strawberries and cream before driving us back to our hotel out in the countryside!
I planned on trying that trick again on this trip, but never made it across the river.
I was walking past a building that appeared to be under renovations and liked the look of the staircase, so let myself in to take a photo. It was pretty creepy in there. It was quite a bit darker than the photo, lit by the open door, makes it appear. Then, I heard banging and voices upstairs. I didn’t want to have to try to explain what I was doing in there so took this photo as quickly as possible.
On my recent tour of Europe, I wasn’t particularly good at getting up early to take pictures. Partly because for most of the trip the weather wasn’t ideal but mainly because I tended to hang out way too late to even consider getting up early. Florence, on the other hand, inspired me. I couldn’t go there and not come away with some sunrise photos. So, I dragged my travel buddy up at the crack of dawn. We’d wander the empty streets of Florence before collecting our car to drive up to Pisa, down to Sienna, and back up to Florence.
The sunrise didn’t disappoint and I got this opportunity to take a super close up of Florence’s famous cathedral in front of blue sky and pink skies. Following this I bought two prosciutto on mini-croissant sandwiches for breakfast. It was a good start to the day.
I haven’t posted a photo in a while as I’ve been preparing for some exams on Monday and Tuesday. It’s time for a break so I spent the evening processing one of the photos from my recent trip to Florence.
This was taken from Michelangelo Plaza overlooking the city. It was about half an hour after sunset and we’d made a quick drive back from the Chianti region to get here while there was still a bit of light about. It was so frantic that when we saw a deer next to the road in amongst the vineyards I, unfortunately, didn’t even think to stop and try to get a picture of it!
Still though, I think this night shot makes up for it. If you click on the image and blow it up you’ll be able to see the first stars streaking across the sky.