Italy | Florence back to Rome
It took me a bit longer than expected, but here I am with your second of two Italy updates! (You can see the first half of our trip here.) We left off with the tiny town of Castellina with a super-creepy entire skeleton "relic." And though I put Siena in the title of the post, there were no photos of Siena. Well, so it goes. I didn't take many and we were only there one afternoon. So we move on to dah-dah-DAH-dah Florence! Florence was really really great.
Oh that? That's just the original Birth of Venus by Botticelli. It's in the Uffizi. I realized about halfway through the museum that you're not supposed to take pictures. Oops. Below here we have the Duomo - an enormous crazy-looking cathedral in the middle of Florence. We paid to go up in the dome and it was one of the coolest things we did.
It's also the only place I handed my camera to a stranger to try to get a photo of me and George together. Take #1. No, I'm not sneezing - I just look like that.
Yeah, great. Take #2: success! After the disheartening take #1, I had the girl stand where she was going to be for the photo, focused on her then set it on manual so we'd at least be mostly in focus. It worked! Here we are at the top of the Duomo.
Here's what the outside of the Duomo looks like. Crazy, right? And this is a side-part. The facade was even more impressive.
Okay so we were in Florence for five days. So we had a steak. But also we learned all about the Medici family, who seem to singlehandedly have funded the Renaissance. Michelangelo, Galileo and lots of other super-famous dudes were funded by these guys, who basically ruled Florence. They ended up as Popes, too. This bridge connected their two palaces - they didn't want to have to walk amongst the common people so they had a higher-level walkway built. But they were annoyed that they had to smell all the bridge businesses - fishermen, butchers, etc. - so they declared that the only businesses that could set up shop under their walkway were jewelers! This is the jewelry district to this day.
Pisa. Because, well, we were only an hour's train ride and I figured we had to go freakin' see Pisa.
And also George inside St. Peter's (which, yes, is completely out of chronological order but you can deal.)
Back in Florence.
Florence has art everywhere. Seriously, everywhere - it's those Medici people! Right next to one of their earlier palaces is an arcade - just a covered patio - chock-full of original sculptures by super-famous sculptor-people. Just because the Medicis were thinking "hey, let's put some art up for people to look at." Yeah, they were super-loaded.
And I was about to say it's one of my favorite things about "us", but there are just so many many things I love about us. But this is one: we are an eminently practical couple. We will literally discuss the total benefit or inconvenience to our unit for a given situation to determine the course of action. This makes it sound like we don't have fun - which we do - but we've sorta faced up to what is actually fun for us (random adventures, board games, cooking) vs. what we're supposed to think is fun (going to loud bars/clubs, movies, the beach). We're just two years in and some before that, but we've been stripping away what is not good for us and building a life of stuff that is great.
Too many things to say about George, so I'll just share a little family anecdote and hope it tells you something about who we are.
We're wine drinkers. Not fancy-schmancy wine-store wine. No, we drink Trader Joe's wine. And we exclusively drink the $4-$6 bottles because I read somewhere that they are actually much more expensive wine when sold under private label. And who can tell expensive wine from cheap wine anyway? In any case, we drink wine on a regular basis. And after dinner, where I've been dutifully sipping my glass, we'll retire to our "living area" (there are no "rooms" in our efficiency) and I'll bring the wine. And never touch it after that.
But every single morning after we've been drinking wine, I'll be putzing around and find two empty wine glasses. Two because at some point the previous night, my husband finished off my wine. He didn't ask or make a big deal out of it - he just picked up my glass and finished it off. To me, that is something very intimate and sweet - that he a) knows me well enough to know that I won't finish the wine, b) knows I want the wine to be consumed, so as to reduce waste and best yet c) doesn't bother to ask if I'm done.
To me, this is the best part of marriage (or any long-term partnership) - you get to know this other person so well. I thought I knew George soooo well 
So to my enormously gracious husband, who supports absolutely everything I am and want to be, happy anniversary! It rocks having you on my team.
And sometimes he's not expecting it.
And though I have to remind him sometimes that he needs to put the "little black square" on my face and even so, there are major focus issues (yes, George, major focus issues!) he can still manage to make some very nice compositions. You know, when I force the camera in his hands and say "make me a new 'about me' image."
This one I love. Who knew George had a knack for "moments"?
And, finally, some fun and how I can't tell the difference between two ridiculously different colors. Soooo about my jacket. See up there how it's red? That's the color it is. But when I was in the H&M getting excited about it, I was completely sure that it was "Amber Wilkie Photography" orange. I even tweeted about it! It wasn't until the next day when I looked at the jacket in the bag that I realized "well hey, this jacket looks really red." No, no, I thought, it's just this lighting. But after careful photographic analysis, I have to conclude that the jacket is, indeed, very much red and I am ridiculous.
But then in comes the magic of Photoshop! One red-orange hue slider, a copy of the layer and a mask to bring back the red in my face and glasses and voila! It's an orange jacket! (PS: Isn't it weird having two of me staring at you? We know things...)
And for those of you interested in the whole photography thing from a technical standpoint vs. just looking at nice pictures - these were shot at the edge of an overpass. There is bright, bright sunlight hitting white pavement right in front of me and George, just out of camera. Sun is camera left, but I'm standing in the shade of the overpass. Yeah, boy, natural reflectors!