Tomorrow afternoon I'm flying to Phoenix to visit Park #26. Fortunately, Chase Field is air-conditioned, because the forecast calls for 38°C at game time after a high temperature of 41°C earlier in the day.
Photos and a frank assessment of the weather conditions to follow this weekend.
For no reason other than it was out last night:
Weather? Check. Photography? Check. The dog? Nope. The National Weather Service photo contest winners are very cool, though.
Part of the reason one stays in an Agriturismo is to go hiking. This is a state highway (scala provincale) near the closest village:
Despite being as far north (46°27') as Quebec City and Portland, Ore., Dosso del Liro is surprisingly warm and dry, the perfect environment for these guys, which we saw all over:
These guys (common Italian wall lizards) are about 8 cm nose to tail, and very fast. We didn't even try to catch them. But they're also hard to photograph; I got lucky and moved very slowly for this shot.
Northern Italian Alpine lake village, go:
This is another example of how a little HDR makes a big difference.
Tomorrow: photos from Thursday, including lunch in Lugano.
When you're crossing Lake Como from Cadenabbia to Bellagio on a sunny day, it looks like this:
I've also uploaded a full-sized JPEG (15 MB) to Azure storage. Enjoy.
I can imagine why the Catholic Church build Gallio Palace on the shore of Lake Como:
We didn't make it to the palace because we were distracted by food. I'll have more to say about Wednesday's dinner in my next couple of posts.
The Venetian church, viewed from the terrace of the Hotel Danieli:
I took 324 photos on Monday, so I'm not all the way through them yet. I'll just start with a photo of our hotel's lobby. We stayed at the Hotel Danieli, a 193-year-old hotel in a 600-year-old building:
This was our one hotel splurge. I do not know the exact bill, except that it was approximately the same as the next four nights' lodging combined.
I'd have photos to post already, but Adobe Lightroom 6 keeps dying on my Surface. It works when I install it, but the next time I try to open it, even after a reboot, it gets to the splash screen and stops loading.
I hope to resolve this later today.