91. Vernazza

I love Italy.  I love the ocean...well technically it is a sea.  It's beautiful.  My life is awesome.

85. Roma

After a rather lengthly blogging break, I am back to posting photos (I'm still shooting for five a day).  However, before that, I have some catching up to do.  Like I said, I went to Italy for 10 days with some of the most wonderful people at BYU.  IT WAS FABULOUS.  Seriously, best summer vacation ever.

Our first stop was Rome.  We took a night train from Vienna to Rome on a Sunday evening.  Let me tell you--a night train does not mean a sleeping train.  We tried all laying down in our compartment, but there were just WAY too many feet in my face, so I went and slept with some strangers.  Once I did that I was able to get some zzz's.

Once we arrived and took care of some logistics and planning stuff, we went to the Colosseum.  It was incredible!  Do you know it took them like seven years to build it?  It is crazy what slave labor accomplished back in those days.

The romans love the trees shown in the photograph below.  They call them pine trees....yeah, I was confused too.  They like them because they can plant a bunch of them together and make a big umbrella of shade.  Italy gets warm--not for us, of course because its just been a freak summer--but usually the shade is quite welcome.  I think they look neat.

We went on an actual tour of the Colosseum and Roman Forum, just so we could understand things a little better (and not be like, "Hey look...some old stuff!!").  It was super interesting.  Below is a church that is standing in the Roman forum.  The six lovely ladies were my travel companions: Krystle, Ambree, Maria, Jana, Kayla, Whitney.

Can you believe that people in Rome just drive past this on their way to work every day??  It is unbelievable to me!

That night we went to the Spanish Steps and the Trevi Fountain (and ate gelato-naturally).  We all threw coins into the water at the same time.  I learned later that you are supposed to throw in TWO coins, one of which is to guarantee your return to Rome someday.  I think I'm just going to make that happen anyway.  I could have spent a lot more time in this city.

It was a perfect first day in Italy.

78. Wandern

63. Farbe

The only thing that unites my photos today is that they are all colorful (kinda-i might be pushing it).  

First photo: a street in Prague.  Yeah, a street, like what cars drive on.  Grass grows up through the cobblestones making the road look so much cuter than plain old asphalt.  

Second Photo: We found a mini flea market as we were wandering around.  All the booths had the cutest toys!  I had a hard time not taking everything home to my niece and nephews.  I took a picture of the pencil things because I think it would be a fun way to store school supplies in a kid's room (in the far distant future).

We also travelled to the Lennon wall on Saturday.  Under Soviet rule this wall was quite a political thing.  Every so often the graffiti and political messages would be painted over, resulting in a lot a lot of paint layers.  Now it is perfectly legal to graffiti the wall, so we all left a little note.

Considering that it is called the Lennon wall, we couldn't help but stage one of these:

Last photo: near the wall we found a fence with thousands of locks on it.  We found out that people that are in love come and place a lock on the fence and throw the key into the river behind it.  I thought it was kind of a cute idea.

62. Charles

Somewhere back in Czech history there was a King named Charles.  He did a lot of great things for the city of Prague, including building a bridge on July 9, 1357 at 5:31 in the morning (well that's when they started it anyway).  This day and time was chosen because 135797531 is one of those palindrome things (like Hannah, kayak and race car), and the scientists and astrologers that were advising King Charles thought that this would make the bridge last forever.  Well, it is 2010, so I'd say they did a good job.  Besides the tower he built a humongous castle and a beautiful cathedral  Here are a few pictures from inside.

In the night pictures, the castle is up on the left, and the bridge is on the right.  I was pretty stoked about those shots considering I didn't have a tripod.  

Below is more experimentation with shutter speed, etc.

55. Naschtmarkt

In the first district, where we have school, there is this amazing street market.  It is easily the largest in Vienna, and everything looks so interesting there.  In photo class we walked over and tried to see what we could capture on film.  This day I decided that I could never be a photographer, I just don't have what it takes.  However, it was a fun assignment anyway.  The colors were amazing, and I had such a hard time not buying every pastry I saw.  The good news was I handled a few conversations auf Deutsch rather well.  That was exciting.

At the nicer end of the market there are several cafes.  Cafes are a big deal around here.  Like a really big deal.  I'm a fan of them myself.  In this photo I can see at least five different cafes.

This photo below is probably my favorite of the whole day.  I just love how vibrant those peppers look.  I want to eat them right now.

Und heir ist frische Erdbeer.

Like I said in the last post, I LOVE orchids, and they are ALL OVER this town.  There are flower shops all over, and the Viennese always take flowers home for the weekends.  They are all GORGEOUS, and pretty cheap.  I wish this flower thing would catch on in the states.  I think Holland or Denmark is the largest flower exporter in the world, which might explain why they can sell flowers cheaper here.  Anyway, I'm a a big fan.  Unfortunately I couldn't come up with a photo of the Orchids I was really happy with, but this one will have to do.

This was probably my second favorite photo of the day.  This barrel smelled TERRIBLE, especially since it was right next to a barrel of sauerkraut.  I honestly don't know why I like this photo so much.  I promise most of the food here looks a lot better than this.

Whew!  Five photos a day is a lot!!

44. Solitude

My niece decided that she wanted to eat her ice cream in peace and quiet.  So, she settled in the corner of the yard and contemplatively enjoyed a chocolate Creamie.  She was nice enough to let me take a couple photos.

I love this girl.

36. Research

One of the most interesting subjects I have ever written a paper about.  Design for Recyclability (DFR) methods in mobile phone design and life cycle analysis.  Seriously, interesting stuff.

And yes, it's hot chocolate.

18. Tragedy

I knew Provo had parking problems, but I didn't know they were this bad.