Jaymie Darden Photography

Snow day

Jaymie Darden — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 00:54:11 +0000

From one of our recent snow days here in Seattle. We’re gearing up for another tonight and tomorrow. I realize this is not that much snow compared to many other parts of the country and world (I spent a lot of my childhood in South Dakota so I’ve experienced much more), but for Seattle it’s a lot so the city tends to shut down because of it. I must say I do kind of enjoy that a bit . As long as I’m not stuck in 4 hours of traffic due to a “snow storm” like last year, that is.

Anyways, enjoy!

I remember this guy from last year…

Italy part 4: Rome

Jaymie Darden — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 21:54:27 +0000

Talk about history. Rome, as you know, has so much of it. It was so cool to be able to see all these things in person. I can’t believe people live in places like that with history that old all around them. Rome was the last leg of our trip and I’ll be honest and say when we got in we were a little cranky with all the people flooding the streets. You could not move. I thought it was only that bad in the summer, but I was wrong. It was a bit of a shock after visiting the almost deserted Cinque Terre. Obviously we knew it’s a big city and it would be crowded, but I didn’t know it would be that crowded. Even still, it was an amazing city to see. My favorite part was definitely the Colosseum. I was in awe the first time we caught a glimpse of it down the street.

I actually used my iphone 4S for a lot of the photos in Rome. I probably should have mentioned this in the beginning of this Italy blogging series, but what does it really matter? There are quite a few pictures I posted that were from the iphone. I guess that just proves that the best camera is the one that’s with you. I’ll admit I got a little tired carrying around my big camera all day everyday (I’m not used to it as much I guess) and the lens I brought wasn’t quite wide enough at times so I used my iphone a lot in Rome.

So here it is. The end of the trip… Rome.

The Spanish Steps and Trevi Fountain

The Vatican… St. Peter’s Square

St. Peter’s Basilica

Vatican Museum

Piazza Navona

The Pantheon

Victor Emmanuel Monument… one of the coolest ones I think.

Our first sighting of the Colosseum. And it’s all decorated for Christmas.

Arch of Constantine

Palatine Hill

Italy part 3: Quaint and beautiful… Cinque Terre

Jaymie Darden — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 03:24:32 +0000

We spent one day in Cinque Terre. We started off early so we could see as much as possible in the short hours of daylight we had. We arrived only to find that all of the trails between each village had been closed down except for the trail between Riomaggiore and Manarola, also called Lover’s Lane. Cinque Terre experienced really bad mud slides just before we went to Italy so they were still trying to clean up after it. So we decided to stroll along Lover’s Lane and then take the train to each village after that. We had the benefit of being the only tourists around for quite a few hours (or at least that we saw) so it felt like we had the town to ourselves minus a few villagers here and there. We actually only saw a handful of other tourists the whole day since Cinque Terre isn’t really popular in the winter and most things are closed. We still loved it. Everything was so charming and it was our favorite city (or clump of cities I should say). Fortunately the sun was out all day so we lucked out. The saddest part of our time in Cinque Terre was that we were not able to visit Vernazza… well, we weren’t supposed to visit Vernazza that is. We did make it there, but only because we kept thinking maybe you had to be in one of the front cars of the train to get off at that stop. We tried twice and couldn’t open the door in the tunnel where it stopped. I was determined to get there because I heard it was the “gem” of Cinque Terre and everyone’s favorite village. We got off because the conductor manually opened the door for us and a bunch of other people. This should have been our first warning. We stepped out of the train to a bunch of construction and people waving us down trying to stop us. They said only residents of Vernazza were allowed and any tourists could not visit. Vernazza got the most damage from the mud slides sadly and everything was covered in dirt and mud . We tried to get back on train but it left without us. We saw on the schedule that the next train didn’t come for another 2 1/2 hours… but fortunately for us one did come and we made sure to get on it. It would have helped if the information office at the first town would have told us Vernazza was closed to tourists when they told us about the closed trails. I’m sure it also would have helped if we spoke Italian because we’re pretty sure they kept talking about Vernazza but we had no idea what they were saying.

So we had a couple hiccups, but we saw all of the other villages (well, not much of Monterosso as we wanted to be sure to get to Vernazza… )and still had a great time.

Walking on Lover’s Lane waiting for the sun to peek up over the villages.

There were tons of locks on Lover’s Lane. I talked about the locks in my last post (Florence). It’s an old tradition to affix a “love lock” to something to symbolize a love’s forever bond. This was the first trail that was built between any of the villages. It’s called Lover’s Lane because residents from Riomaggiore and Manarola would meet each other, fall in love, and keep meeting between the villages to see each other.

Have you ever seen Friends? Well, if you’re as obsessed with that show as I have always been you’ll know about the lobsters. I thought this was cute because I always liked the story Pheobe would tell about how Rachel is Ross’ lobster and they’ll be together forever… because lobsters fall in love and mate for life… and hold claws in the tank. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, see it here

Manarola

My view of the sun rising over Manarola…

Josh’s view… he’s quite the photographer, don’t you think?

Corniglia. The highest of the villages. We walked up 382 steps to get there. I only know this because there was a sign at the top greeting us and telling us how hard we worked to get there

Then since we couldn’t get off the train at the next village (Vernazza), we walked around Monterosso for a bit and had lunch.

Il Gigante

We decided to stop in Manarola again by train so that we could walk the only trail we could walk (Lover’s Lane) for the sunset.

This might have been the cutest thing ever. We imagined a story for them… that they had been one of the couples in love who would meet up between Riomaggiore and Manarola and they still walk the trail at sunset as an old couple .

Always look behind you… hello, Moon.

We wandered a bit through the first town, Riomaggiore, that we skipped over in the beginning…

Italy part 2: Florence

Jaymie Darden — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 23:29:16 +0000

Aah, Florence. We arrived in the afternoon and headed straight over to the Galleria dell’Accademia to check out the amazing Statue of David. I think we stood there staring at it for a half hour. It truly is a sight to see. Sorry, I didn’t take any pictures there because well, you’re not supposed to and it wouldn’t do it justice anyway. The next day was quite a rainy one as you’ll see in a lot of the pictures. At first we figured, eh… we’re from Seattle this is nothing really. Then it really started coming down. Our feet were soaked and we were starting to get a little crabby, but decided to push on because we were in Florence and when else would we get to see all this? We checked out some of the squares and wandered around. I think we got a little lost too. Then we made the trek up to Piazzale Michaelangelo for the picturesque view of all of Florence. It was still pouring at that point so we found cover under a tree for a while before walking up the long, steep steps to the top. I’m glad we waited because as soon as we got to the top, the rain stopped. Just in time for us to see the amazing view. The rain didn’t come back after that and it was even gorgeous and sunny the next day. We went to the Uffizi Gallery, checked out some of the famous graves of Machiavelli and Michelangelo (to name a couple) at the Basilica di Santa Croce, and of course enjoyed the delicious gelato, food and wine. Florence was our second favorite city.

Enjoy!

Mmmm… gelato

A little caprese salad

The Duomo and the moon

Ponte Vecchio Bridge

The view from Piazzale Michaelangelo

An old tradition called Locks of Love where couples affix love padlocks to something to symbolize their unbreakable bond. We kept seeing them everywhere in Italy. Especially Cinque Terre, but we saw a lot in Florence too.

Italy part 1: Venice, wandering in a dream

Jaymie Darden — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 04:03:23 +0000

We arrived in Venice by train and it felt like we were headed into a dream world. Josh called it Disneyland for adults. It almost didn’t feel real. The buildings, the colors, the textures, the alleys of water everywhere… it was amazing. I couldn’t stop taking pictures of course. We didn’t really have an agenda here. We basically wandered the streets, got lost, and saw some amazing things along the way. This was the first of 4 places we visited while in Italy (well, we flew into Rome, but at night and only stayed the night there to recover from the long travel day). I will blog each place in a different post, though it may take some time.

Enjoy Venice!

I loved how all so many windows were filled with cute plants, flowers and pots.

It did rain a little each day we were there, but we’re from Seattle so it really didn’t bother us much.

Such good little sandwiches!

Quintessential Italy

Unfortunately there was that big thing in the way of St. Mark’s Basilica… but it’s still pretty.

This was kinda cool because there was a movie being shot here (not sure what movie though). See the guys to the left wearing top hats?

That huge yellow thing in the sky

Jaymie Darden — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 02:37:51 +0000

I know it’s been a while since I’ve blogged and I have Italy pictures to post, but I’ve only been back a few days so that may take some time with the holidays coming up and all. Until then, here’s a shot of the moon I took last night. The moon has been pretty amazing lately as well as the sunrises and sunsets. This winter seems to be bringing some pretty skies.

Enjoy for now!

pretty colors

Jaymie Darden — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 00:28:43 +0000

I’ll try to remember days like this throughout the long, wet, dark months to come… thanks for having pretty fall trees for a short while, Seattle. I’m sure they’ll be gone soon once the rain takes all the leaves off the trees.