Florence, Italy

No, I'm not in Italy right now, but my family took a trip there this summer, and I'm just getting around to showing y'all the pictures! It's bright and sunny here in Seattle, so I wanted to post some colorful pictures from our trip. 

We stopped in Florence for four days and stayed in a cute little local hotel called the Hotel Alessandra. The concierge was the most adorable, friendliest, and overall helpful person we met in Florence.

My brother and I were fascinated by the Duomo, a cathedral originally built in the Roman times, and consequently re-built throughout the ages. The architecture is Italian gothic in style, and is just overwhelmingly huge. The facade is entirely made of different colored marble (!!).

These pictures were taken from the campanile (the bell tower) right next to the Duomo. The brother and I climbed all 414 steps (it is 278 feet tall!), taking pictures along the way.  It was a lovely sunny day which offset the building's colors and created some nice shadows and highlights.

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This picture was taken looking out one of the ventilation slots in the campanile. My aim was the frame the picture with the ventilation slot (though it looks like the top didn't quite make it), and simultaneously show the beautiful orange roofs of the city disappearing into the hills.

I do like how you can see in the bottom of the picture that someone had traced some filigrees into the grime. I think it adds a little extra texture to the picture, making it more realistic and less just a pretty picture.

Because there are so many straight lines and curves in the building's facade, I wasn't sure how to display them without overwhelming the viewer. So I only put about the top third of the Duomo in the frame, focused on the dome (with the roof to offset all the marble), and looked for the shadows from the other parts of the structure to add some depth.

I'm very happy that we had blue skies, because the same pop of color would not have happened with overcast skies.

I hope you are enjoying the lovely spring days in your region! (Is the snow finally melting??)

Summer: Leavenworth

Hello! It is near freezing here, and supposed to snow on Saturday. But heck, what better time to look back at summer? I love winter, all bundled up by the fire with tea, but sometimes summer sounds really good. Like right now when my dorm room refuses to budge above 66.5 degrees F. Boo.

I found these lovely pictures from when I went to Leavenworth last summer. When I was little (and gas was cheaper), my family would hop into the car for an impromptu drive, and often find ourselves 3 hours away, in Leavenworth. It is a quaint little Bavarian village, known for its friendly atmosphere, trails in the summer, and skiing in the winter. 

I had never been to Leavenworth during the summer (for some unknown reason, since summertime is by far the warmest and the prettiest...)... and this was a wonderful opportunity. Usually my family's trips to Leavenworth are more along the lines of "passing through Leavenworth" or "dinner in Leavenworth," so this was the first time we were here to actually spend some time exploring it. I looked up trails to possibly hike, and found events that were in town during our stay.

In the end, we went on three hikes, two with the whole family, and one with just my brother and I. We also went to an outdoor play, which was absolutely beautiful, though I don't have any pictures from it, unfortunately.

The first hike was around Blackbird Lake. It was a nice family hike, but still afforded some lovely views. 

    

This was one of my favorite views (and picture) from the hike. This is the Wenatchee River, and as as you can see, the weather was beautiful. I like the dip of the mountains and the clouds leading you off into the distance in the center of the picture.

I really liked the pure-white-ness (now a valid word and description) of this flower, though unfortunately my camera seemed to lose the details in the center.

We passed these kids having some fun in the water. The boy was very enthusiastic about acting out a scene in his imagination, while his sister was a little more cautious about the water.

Our second hike was just The Brother and me. I'll be posting a separate post about that one, in an effort to keep this from being a gigantic post, and because that hike in itself was one of my favorite memories from summer.

The last hike was a short nature trail:

It was a combination of trees, a river, a plain, and mountains. Here, you can see three of the four. I thought the little cloud in the dip of the mountain made for an interesting composition. Now that I look at it, it reminds me of the Eye of Sauron. Any Lord of the Rings fans?

Hope everyone is staying warm!

Winter Nature

My family went to a nature garden in Vancouver, B.C. in December. It was wonderful (we love gardens like this, and they had plants from all over the world; everything blooms and grows at different times).

This is a Lebanon Pine Cedar tree. I loved the bark, and the way the needles grow. They grow exactly opposite each other, in small bunches.

This black squirrel was small, black, and fluffy. It was quite cute, and stood still for awhile while I got a picture of it amongst all the fallen leaves.