Byzantine Tour 2011 Day Two: Rome

The plan was to sleep for as much of the flight to Rome as possible.  Sadly, I woke up around half-way there and could not go back to sleep.  Not so sadly, the screen in front of me offered around fifty movie titles to choose from, including almost all of the Harry Potter movies.  Well... you might know this but I have never read one page of a Harry Potter book nor seen one minute of a Harry Potter movie.  My niece learned this fact over the summer and informed that my cool status was revoked until I had seen every Harry Potter movie.

I watched the first hour, fell back to sleep, then watched the rest when I woke up again.  Sure, it was fun to watch.  But the most fun part of watching it was knowing that I was going to get to tell the Pottermaniac niece that her uncle had taken her advice to heart.

Do you remember the hoodie rule?  A hoodie must be worn on all flights.  It not only keeps you warm, but that hood can be pulled over the eyes to help you sleep.  A hoodie is a wonderful thing.

Another sunrise!  This one over France.  Two sunrises in two days on two flights.  Holy rigatoni.

Roma, she is greeting us with a rain.

Welcome to Rome.  Welcome?  We basically feel that we never left.

A few dozen people in matching Brazilian flag safari hats.  Poetry does exist in the real world if you look for it.

I confess.  I took around a dozen pictures from the car, trying to catch a Roma sign.  I never pretend that all the pictures I take are good, but I take enough of them that I am able to present you, the loyal waster, with some quality shots.

I wanted you to see the rain drenched streets of Rome, and I like this picture best because it shows a few intrepid tourists who care more about sightseeing than staying warm and dry.

Rome, she is not so prepared for the rain.  It was coming down in buckets and there was flooding and terrible traffic.  The ride from the airport to the city felt like Los Angeles's 405 at 5:48 PM on a Thursday.  And if you live in Los Angeles, you know that is a terrible, terrible thing.

We arrived at our hotel, the Hotel d'Inghilterra.  Yes, that translates to Hotel of England.

It is always a little annoying to arrive in a city in the morning, knowing full well that the hotel is likely to not have your room ready.  I sat at the end of the hall while Barbie did the heavy lifting with the hotel staff.

Just around the corner from our hotel...

The Spanish Steps.  Now... time for a photographic nerd-out.  Look at the above picture.  One fact about rainy days is that regular photography loses all detail in the sky, because exposure adjust to the main subjects in your photo and the moisture in the air scatters the light.

To correct for this problem, and let you see what I see, I chose to use HDR photography.  You know, High Dynamic Range imaging that takes the same photo twice at different exposure levels an then merges the two.

Voila!  How do you like that?  Beautiful, no?  I take no credit for the magic.  All I did was download an app to my iPhone, Pro HDR and use it.

I figured I would go deeper on the photonerd scale and show you the two exposures that combined to create the shot above.  Yeah.  I think this is about the coolest thing, ever.

Since we had time to kill, and we were hungry, and there sits a McDonald's right next to the Spanish steps...

How is this for innovation?  Have you ever seen this in the USA?  I have not.  How could our country, the land the birthed super-sizing, not have fast food joints with carts to handle multiple trays and drinks?  I may not be able to sleep at night knowing that McDonalds is simply more innovative in Europe.

MFTW.  That means McNuggets For The Win, for those of you too old to dig the acronym.

A picture of people takings pictures of the Spanish Steps.  I am who I am.

Our room at the Hotel d'Inghilterra.  We planned to do a thing or two in Rome today, for tomorrow we hop on a train and head South to Amalfi.  Guess what?  We laid on that bed in the early afternoon and that was all she wrote.  No dinner.  Just a few minutes of CNN International's coverage of Ghaddafi's capture and killing (yay) and we slept straight through the evening to the morning.

See you tomorrow.