» Photography - Simon Lau

Rome Travel Pictures

Rome was the last city in our Italy leg before flying to Paris for 12 nights. The city has a ton of things to see and do, definitely a must visit for anyone thinking about heading to Italy.
After checking into our apartment in the early afternoon we headed to the Spanish Steps. The area was packed with people and not nearly as nice as what the postcards show the steps to be. Moving on, we stopped by a Ferrari store for a quick photo before making our way to Trevi Fountain.

The story is that if you throw one coin into the fountain it’s for good luck. Another coin if you want to get married and a third if you want to come back in the near future. Whether it’s true or not, I have no idea!

Not to far from Trevi Fountain is the Pantheon. It’s quite massive on the inside and is even bigger when you get inside.

While strolling through the city was also went to Piazza Navona where I took this picture of a church.

No trip to Rome is complete without making a stop at the Vatican City. We went into St. Peters and to the top of the cupola. We didn’t go to the Vatican Museum. I hear it’s really good, but by the time we got into Rome, I was pretty much ready for a break from museums as Paris has a ton for us to check out.

Getting to the top of the cupola requires climbing just under 540 steps, 537 comes to mind. You can take the elevator for the first 200 steps at a cost of 2 extra Euro’s per person. It is definitely not worth paying for. We walked up and the first 200 steps are the easy ones. It’s more like walking up a ramp with half steps. The last three hundred is more challenging, requiring you to lean with the curve of the cupola and hold onto ropes up winding staircases.

The other most important place to visit in Rome is the Coliseum. The best way to get in is to buy your ticket at Palentine Hills. The same ticket is used to get into both places and there is no line up to get into the Palentine Hills.

The hills are great to walk through if you like checking out ancient ruins. The last picture was taken outside Palentine Hills but shows what some of the ruins look like. However, nothing beats the Coliseum.

Another great thing to do in Rome and all of Italy is to eat Gelato!

The last gelato picture actually has a store in Toronto – Mount Pleasant and Eglinton. The shopkeeper in Rome said they use the same recipes as their store. You can bet I’ll be checking out that place sometime soon!

Since our flight to Paris was at 6:45AM, we skipped out on 1 nights stay and hung around at McDonald’s until 3AM before taking a cab to the airport. After a long wait, it was time to board the plane and fly to Paris!

Tags: Coliseum, Europe 2008, Gelato, Grad Trip, Paletine Hills, Pantheon, Rome, St. Peters, Trevi Fountain, Vatican City

. 20 Jul 08 | Photography, Travel | Comments (0)

Pisa Travel Pictures

There’s not a whole lot to share in the little city of Pisa. Everyone knows about the Leaning Tower and that’s all there is to that place. We spent 1 night in Pisa, arriving around noon and taking a train out the next morning.
In this city we did a fair bit walking, approximately 10KM, first from the train station to the ex-monastery where we stayed, then to the Leaning Tower, then back to the ex-monastery, then back into the city for dinner and a night glance of the tower before making the trip back to the ex-monastery to call it a night. This excludes the additional walking around to find a place for dinner, walking in the park and through the streets to see what the locals do.
There aren’t very many pictures, but here’s what I have to share:

Climbing to the top of the tower is not easy task, not because it’s tall but because the stairway is tiny!

I also find that climbing up the tower gives you a really good feel of how much the tower is leaning. It’s definitely worth doing if you’re visiting the Leaning Tower. My only advice is to show up early, buy your ticket and then make your funny pictures. They only allow 40 people up at a time and let people up in 40 minute intervals.

Tags: Europe 2008, Grad Trip, Leaning Tower, Pisa

. 19 Jul 08 | Photography, Travel | Comments (0)

Florence Travel Pictures

Florence was probably one of the most scenic cities we visited. The sky was blue, clouds fluffy and the landscape was breathtaking.

After arriving by train, we walked around town on the first day. One of the major sites is the bell tower by the Duomo. Surprisingly, I don’t have a good picture of the Duomo and we also didn’t go up the Duomo. It costs a couple of euro’s and there are better places in Florence to get a view of the area.

On the next day we went for a very long walk up to Piazza Michelangelo. It was a windy road uphill, took about 1.5 hours, but had a lot of places to stop and look out into the countryside. You could cheap out and take a 15 minute path from the city, but this way is far more fun and rewarding.

In addition to the panorama views, here are some other pictures we took:

It wouldn’t be complete without a picture of me staring through closed binoculars or a picture of the David as it is named after his creator.

On a more educational note, we rounded out our museum trips with a walk through the Academia for the David, the Uffizi and the Galileo museum. The David is definitely worth checking out, it is mighty impressive how you approach it and the podium that it sits on.

Here’s a replica of the David by the Uffizi.

I’m including a picture of the food at this local diner we ate at. The restaurant opened at 7PM and there was a line up when we arrived at 6:50. We got in and got the last free table. After ordering, the food would be served 5 minutes later. It was really good home cooked food and definitely worth visiting. The place is called “Le Mossacce” and its located at Via del Proconsolo 55r.

Another great place for dinner is “Trattoria da Benvenuto” at Via Mosca 16r. Right around the corner from the Trattoria is a gelato place called “Gelateria dei Neri” and it is absolutely amazing!

Tags: Academia, Bell Tower, Florence, Gelateria dei Neri, Le Mossacce, Piazza Michelangelo, Trattoria da Benvenuto, Uffizi

. 15 Jul 08 | Photography, Travel | Comments (0)

Milan Travel Pictures

After 4 days in Venice, it was time to move on and our next city was Milan. It would be our first train ride of the trip and I was surprised at how nice the train was. It was modern looking, spacious and clean. A stark change to how some of the VIA/GO trains look like here in Toronto, Canada.

Milan is not a very popular city for grad trip travelers, but I’m glad we got to check out the Duomo.

Milan is obviously known for its high-end fashion and it doesn’t disappoint. Right beside the Duomo is Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II. The shops open up into the street which is covered by an glass ceiling. I consider an outdoor shopping area because there are no doors to get into the galleria. The types of shops you’ll find include Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Prada etc. There’s even a Gucci cafe but the best view of the action inside the galleria can be had from the McDonalds.

From one of the McDonald’s, you get this amazing view of the Duomo.

There was one McDonald’s across from the Duomo, that’s the one in the picture above, and there was another in the galleria. Both were packed and had a long lineup to the counter.

Another well-known place to visit in Milan is the Castle (Castello Sforzesco). The property includes a fairly massive park.

I found this piece of art rather interesting in the city.

I’m not quite sure what it is.

The last two pictures are from the same day. We went to Piazza San Carlos thinking there would be a cool park to check out but it was close. So after a day of walking, I had to kick back and relax a bit before the next days train ride to Florence.

Tags: Europe 2008, Grad Trip, Milan

. 14 Jul 08 | Photography, Travel | Comments (0)

Venice Travel Pictures

Venice is an incredibly beautiful city, it doesn’t take very long to get lost or to walk through the entire city. The best way to get around is via Vaporetto, basically the public transportation system of Venice. People hop onto one of the water buses and get off where they need to. The Vaporetto’s cover the main island (Venice) as well as the outer islands in the area.
We arrived in Venice early afternoon and took the time to wander around. On our first full day we took the Vaporetto across the island to San Marco. Here’s the view:

Here I am sitting on one of the many bridges that dot the city.

From San Marco, this is the famous Bascili. There are a ton of pigeons and people love to feed them and have them crawl over their body. Not my cup of tea.

If you looked at my panorama photos, you will have noticed a bunch taken of Venice. Those were all taken from the bell tower and here’s a view of the piazza from the top.

Back on the vaporetto, we kept passing by this museum with a skull made of our different pieces of metal, a photo just had to be taken.

The Grand Canal during sunset is truly a beautiful sight, here are a few pictures during dusk.

This picture was taken on the way back from Lido, one of the islands near Venice. Many of the workers in Venice don’t actually stay on Venice because it is too expensive, instead many of them live on the islands like Lido.
We spend one day on Murano and Burano, two other islands near Venice. Murano is famous for their glass work and Burano is famous for their colorful houses and lace factories. There are very few lace factories around these days.

No trip to Venice is complete without a Gondola ride so we took one. It cost 60Eur for 30 minutes but our Gondola guy also sang and give us a history lesson of the area while he rowed us around.

Tags: Burano, Europe, graduation trip, Lido, Murano, photos, San Marco, Venice

. 04 Jul 08 | Photography, Travel | Comments (2)

London Travel Pictures

I promised I would share some pictures of my Europe Grad Trip, so let’s finally begin. The journey begins in London so that’s where the pictures will start.

After arriving in London around 7PM we made it into town and wandered with our bags until we could check in. Our first stop was at Piccadilly Circus:

We then moved onto the Big Ben where I observed how the clock was a few minutes fast.

Wandering along the waterfront we were able to see what the London Eye looked like, we didn’t actually go up.

From here, we continued wandering through St. James Park and made our way to the front of Buckingham Palace where we watched the guards changed. This is an hour long event and not a 2 minute job that I thought it was!

By this point it was approaching noon and we had been up for most of our flight and walked around for a few hours with our bags. After a quick lunch at Cheers we checked into our Hotel – Hilton. Outside the hotel was this yellow Lotus so I took a picture.

The next day we went down to the Thames Rivers and checked our the Tower Bridge, Tower of London, looked at HMS Belfast and a random piece of artwork in the area.

We also walked to the Globe Theater which we went back to later in the evening to watch King Lear from the 5GBP standing area.

On our way to dinner we passed by the Court house.

Our on next day we went to Regents Park.

We also stopped by at Camden Market and picked up panoramas of London.

Here’s a view looking down one of two elevators required to get to the tube from our station.

The day after that we went to Hyde Park, the Orangerie (where I stole an orange off their tree) and the Science Museum.

Early the next day we made our way out to Stansted Airport and flew with Ryanair to Venice.

Tags: Buckingham Palace, Changing of the guards, Europe 2008, graduation trip, Hyde Park, London, London Eye, Lotus, Orangerie, photos, Ryanair, Shakespeare, St. James Park, Venice

. 03 Jul 08 | Photography, Travel | Comment (1)

Europe Trip 2008 Panoramic Photos (Photomerge)

In sharing my manually pieced together panoramic photos with Nivedh Manohar of Overclockers Online we started to discuss ways the different panoramic photos we had done. He enlightened me with a feature in Adobe Photoshop that automatically merges photos into a panoramic, hence the term photomerge.
In total, I discovered I had 38 panoramic photos. At the original size, the combined size is exactly 200MB. To spare the ridiculous loading times, I have compressed them to a manageable 1024 pixel dimension. Click on the small 350 pixel wide thumbnail for a slightly larger. If you would like the full size image, drop me a message and I’ll make it available to you.

Venice