Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Pictures From Italy

Don't have too high of expectations, but here are my pictures from Italy.


Grapes right before harvest in the Chianti region. I never tasted a wine grape before, but I picked one off the vine, and it was incredibly good. Very sweet.


The bishop's church in Arezzo. Most of the tours involve looking at churches. Usually, I would say "boring," but it wasn't. The construction of the churches was fascinating--start, stop, fight a war, start, stop, fight a war, start. And the artist (forgot the name) painted the ceiling, which is at least 60 feet in the air. I feel confident that scaffolding in 1300 was not as good as it is in 2010. And the stain glass windows were amazing. I also learned it's really hard to take pictures of stain glass windows with bright sunlight outside.




View of a cemetery from Cortona. Those are olive trees in the foreground. The olive harvest was underway, and many of the roads up to Cortona had harvesters placing nets under trees and shaking the tree to allow the olives to fall onto the net. It reminded me of harvesting pecans when I was a young teenager--my grandfather put down a net and made me climb my young ass up the tree and jump on the branches (when your grandfather says climb a 100 year old pecan tree and jump on branches, you do it, but it's probably why I'm so scared of heights now).



Here is a picture of the town of San Gimignano, and it's famous towers (grapevines in the foreground). The personal tour guide explained that the richest, most powerful men built the biggest towers. As if I couldn't figure that out. It was either that or the dude with the biggest...


...and speaking of David, here's the replica. The detail is amazing--Michelangelo must have studied the male...er...parts...for hours, days, weeks, and months. Modeling for Michelangelo was good work if you could get it during the Renaissance.

And finally, the hotel band on Saturday before departing. They didn't take requests.


Like I said, don't expect many good pictures from a lonely honeymooner, but we did go to Tuscany, and I did tour a little while Deborah was miserably sick in the suite watching Italian television.

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