Ciao, Milano

  • Aperture: f/14
  • ISO: 200
  • Shutter Speed: 1/200 s
  • Focal Length: 24mm
  • Camera: NIKON D90
show gallery Ciao, Milano link
Ciao, Milano

Our last stop was Milan, Italy’s industrial and commercial hub. If that doesn’t sound like a ringing tourism endorsement, that is only partially true. Yes, Milan is a big city with all the problems of any other big city – traffic, crowds, a bit of grittiness, grafitti, etc. But, there are some tourism gems here…

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Cinque Terre – 5 Lands, 1 Beautiful Place

  • Aperture: f/13
  • ISO: 200
  • Shutter Speed: 1/160 s
  • Focal Length: 20mm
  • Camera: NIKON D90
show gallery Cinque Terre – 5 Lands, 1 Beautiful Place link
Cinque Terre – 5 Lands, 1 Beautiful Place

In Italian, Cinque Terre means ‘The Five Lands’. To anyone who’s visited, it means a drop-dead beautiful section of  coast with five picture-perfect little villages perched on the edge between land and sea. The Italian region of Liguria is a narrow strip of land that stretches from the border with France to Tuscany. To the…

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Medieval Siena

  • Aperture: f/14
  • ISO: 200
  • Shutter Speed: 1/200 s
  • Focal Length: 27mm
  • Camera: NIKON D90
show gallery Medieval Siena link
Medieval Siena

Siena is my favorite city in Italy, at least of the ones I’ve visited so far. :-)  The renaissance art and architecture in Florence is spectacular, but there’s a line for just about everything – kinda like Disneyland. But Siena is every bit as beautiful and it feels like a real city rather than an…

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Wines and Vines of Montalcino

  • Aperture: f/9
  • ISO: 200
  • Shutter Speed: 1/320 s
  • Focal Length: 70mm
  • Camera: NIKON D90
show gallery Wines and Vines of Montalcino link
Wines and Vines of Montalcino

It’s probably no surprise to most of you that my favorite day of the trip involved wine. I thoroughly enjoyed the day-long wine tour that we took to the Montalcino area. Our tour guide, Marialuisa Cesani, picked us up at our hotel in Siena and drove us through the beautiful countryside to a pair of…

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Renaissance Florence

  • Aperture: f/4
  • ISO: 200
  • Shutter Speed: 1/2500 s
  • Focal Length: 18mm
  • Camera: NIKON D90
show gallery Renaissance Florence link
Renaissance Florence

Florence, birthplace of the Renaissance, and the first stop on our tour of central Italy. Kathy had never been to Italy, but she’s been dreaming of visiting ever since seeing ‘Under the Tuscan Sun’.  So Florence was the obvious starting point for our trip. Our only worry prior to departing was the weather. When checking…

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