uncommonly feeble and random thoughts

As I started my research on this segment of our astounding tour, I discovered that this frame (below), in music terms, has been "covered"... over and over and over. Same exact framing, different butts... OK maybe not everyone had a bald guy in the frame. But a humbling discovery:   But our target (Sistine Chapel) is beckoning, and we'll soon travel that hallway to the left (above). That hallway, part of the Vatican Museums, and leads to the Sistine Chapel. There's a security checkpoint at the entrance, and my reconstructed knee merited a sidelining and wanding, just like an airport protocol.   So as with most things Roman, there's a line, but with Tauk, there's a way through the clutter. Time and time again, we were learning, it pays to have pros in charge.  We weren't able to see everything we were slated to see due to the Pope's death, but we got to see a lot, and didn't suffer the oft-denounced wait times (sometimes three or four hours, we heard...

  Our first stop had to be the Colosseum... under construction, yet and still. It originally sported a gleaming white external facade, but that marble was stripped off to pave St. Peter's Square. We did not tour inside the structure, which was disappointing.  There are some blocks laying about, waiting for the reconstruction: It turns out there was a canvas "roof " for the Colosseum that required the efforts of a thousand sailors to deploy.   Nearby, the Arch of Constantine:   And on the other side of the Arch, a view from the Colosseum of the Arch of Titus, showing the Arch (of course), the Forum (to the right), and the crowd. Note that this is late April, at the beginning of "the season". Note also that the Arch of Titus, like the Colosseum, is under construction:   And a view to show context: on the right, the Colosseum, center is the Arch of Constantine, and to the left can be seen the columns of the ruins of the Forum. The Arch of Titus is just out of the ...

Cathedral of St. Andrew, Amalfi, inner courtyard Content will be forthcoming here over the next several weeks. I have built a structure, but... it will take some time to process photos and then to post the usual illustrated narrative... I'm reminded of the whole Rome-wasn't-built admonishment at this moment. I've adopted (stolen) the Tauk travel company organizational schema to report on the experience. First, it's chronological, and second, I'm so challenged to make sense of the whole excursion that I'd never achieve any clarity of expression on my own.  Not to assume that I now will... Thus, a series of twelve entries are scheduled to be crafted, and fear not: Linda's steady hand is on the wheel so that, as in life, I'm less likely to go careening off a cliff.  Please note that I am not an archeologist, anthropologist, art historian... the list is massive. I'm also not a professional photographer. I am, instead, a humble enthusiast. To navigate...

Just for visual starters... this is the second shot I took on the trip. It's looking out over the balcony of our room, over the Gulf of Naples. We hadn't even unpacked our bags yet. The very first shot was this exact framing, a minute or two earlier, but without the boat, and wake. Photography is sometimes about preparation, but I think more about luck. From the Grand Hotel La Favorita in Sorrento at 2:39 pm. "The Favorite" indeed. My immediate sense was "omg this can't be real".  And yet, here we are. We were met at the airport, at the baggage carousel, by a Tauk guide (naturally) and were whisked from NAP (Naples-Capodichino International Airport) to a waiting, black, Mercedes limo driven by Luigi... cue The Godfather theme music.   La Masseria Farm Tour We arrived in Italy a day before the official tour began, but Tauk is such an extraordinary company, they offered, and we took, a tour of a Sorrento lemon farm.  We met a small bus and somehow surviv...