Category: travel

After a few hours of trains, we arrived in Monterosso!

Monterosso is the northernmost of five cities perched on the edge of the Mediterranean known as Cinque Terre. As our last major event we planned on hiking along the trails between the cities and relaxing on the sunny beaches of the Mediterranean. Let’s explore this last destination with the worst of my worst pictures.

1. Our hotel? Hotel Porto Roca? AMAAAAZING. This picture was taken at night, and I think we rotated it backwards.

2. SERIOUSLY… LOOK AT THIS VIEW (deeply overexposed)

If you’re going to stay in Monterosso, make sure to stay in OLD Monterosso. New Monterosso isn’t as quaint. Old Monterosso is connected to New Monterosso with a pedestrian tunnel.

3. The Pedestrian Tunnel – nothing in this picture is in focus.

I think I actually got a picture of Jen taking that picture of the Hotel Porto Roca sign up above. Please note, I am making a shadow puppet on her body – I am particularly proud of this.

4. The water was beautiful, here’s some water with some rocks in it with some trees around it. Pretty D- composition if I do say so myself.

Yes, our vacation was pretty excellent. Right up until the last day when I got food poisoning – presumably from some local fish. I threw up SO HARD that I blew a blood vessel in my eye. It was like sharknado out of my mouth except with local sea bass.

I asked Jen to document the event.

NEXT WEEK, I will post some good pictures of our 11 days in Italy!

Ahh, Chianti.

Jen and I took a one day trip into wine country as part of our exploration of the Tuscany region. Here’s a photodocumentary of our adventure featuring the worst photos from the trip.

We hopped in a van with 6 others and started winding our way out of downtown Florence. I was lucky enough to have a window seat as we soon began passing through beautiful tuscan hills. Olive trees and Vineyards extended as far as the eye could see. The landscape, peppered with castles and villas, was idyllic in every way. While we were zooming along the road, I leaned out the window with my camera to try and capture the scene and caught this first perfectly timed picture:

1. Tuscan hills: There is an amazing villa immediately behind that sign.

The focus of this trip was Chianti.
Chianti was one of the first alcoholic beverages that I found myself enjoying. Defined by DOCG as a red wine with at least 80% Sangiovese grapes, Chianti is preferred by the locals with cheese or bread – almost never alone. It’s also conveniently cheap almost wherever you go! An expensive Chianti shouldn’t be more than about $35.

2. At the first winery, my face once again appearing fairly quasimodo.

3. Wine Cellar! Taken in shutter priority mode without proper timing.

Our second winery was at a beautiful villa, complete with gardens and dining room where we tried 6 different wines and enjoyed cheese, honey, and pasta. We relaxed in the gardens before venturing back to the city.

4. Jen took this gem of the gardens. I stepped in at the last second and she got this shot of my camera. That’s my chin in the upper right.

After a wonderfully relaxing day, we got back to the hotel.

5. Our hotel room. The lights switched off just exactly as I snapped the shot.

Tune in tomorrow for terrible pictures from Cinque Terre!

After three days, I was pretty eager to get to Florence. Venice is a small small city and while it has a lot of charm and romance to it, after three days we’d seen most of it.

Florence was my favorite. We arrived and rattled our way through the cobblestone streets with our rollerbags. Our Hotel was GORGEOUS and just a stones throw from the Duomo.

Enjoy our worst pictures.

1. The Duomo – Build in the 1400’s it still stands as the largest masonry dome in existence. I was so enthralled by the Duomo that I took out a book on its construction once we got home. Here is the Duomo (translates to ‘home’ not ‘dome) taken with incredibly shaky hands.

2. The inside of the Duomo – One of our trip highlights was climbing the inside of the Dome. In addition to seeing the very cool construction methods, we got great views of Florence from above. The climb was tight spaces and narrow steep stairs coupled with mildly numbing heights. This shot shows Jen on the far left and some random lady in the tight spiral staircase to the top.

3. Tools to build the Duomo! Brunelleschi not only developed the clever means to build the huge masonry dome, he also designed many of the tools used for construction. Check out this sweet out of focus picture of a selection of his tools

4. Cacio Vino Trallalla – Perhaps our most beloved lunch, this little place is off a side road by the Ponte Vecchio. Run by a cute Italian couple, the restaurant provided top notch food and extreme charm. Here I am looking pretty dang Quasimodo.

5. Michelangelo’s David – A must see on any trip to Florence, Michelangelo’s David was impressive beyond all my expectations. This picture captures the SmartBrick, a device that monitors the cracking of the marble.

Thursday, get stoked for bad pictures from our trip out to the Chianti region!