Best of Italy 2004

Welcome! In September 2004 Rachel and I celebrated our recent marriage by going to Italy for the first time! After thorough research (including a visit to Edmonds to meet the Man and attend his classes) we chose to embark on a Rick Steves Europe Through the Back Door Tour and plunked our money down.

We had an amazing time--every day we wondered, how can it get better than this?--and then, it would get better. If you're thinking about going to Italy, I cannot emphasize this enough--GO! GO! You will not regret a single minute. And what better way to go than on a Rick Steves Tour? They got us to every point we'd want to see...plus more! We were regaled with great information and history, had comfortable accomodations, and LOTS of free time to enjoy as we saw fit (like a certain Chocolate shop in Florence and an early morning on St Mark's Square in Venice). It was actually hard to leave all of our new friends when the tour ended!

I love to take photographs, as the tour group knows--and I took a LOT on this trip, with the idea that I'd have a lot to pick and choose from when I got back. So I took over 5000 photos (check out the "about" page here to read what I use for equipment) and wish I could have taken more. Of those, I saved about 3000 as "keepers"--ones I don't mind showing. And of those, a little over 1000 made it onto my website for everyone to see.

A Note on Viewing the Photos

My pix are hosted by smugmug.com, a great way to organize your photos (no sell here, just think it's great). I set the default so that when you begin to view the pictures, you'll see them in "Journal" view. This is a great way to quickly scan through them. If you have time and a fast connection, though, click on the first photo in each city and view them as a slideshow--the pictures are bigger and look that much better with more detail.

So: click on the Andiamo link below. Choose what city you'd like to see, and click on the link or thumbnail photo. View them in this fashion or, if you have time, click on the first photo and view them in slideshow format. You'll note some folks have left comments on some of the pix--I'd love to hear your thoughts on them too!

Ready?

Andiamo!