We didn't build this tiny Stonehenge, but we rather wish we had
This is the last day of this part of our holiday. Tomorrow we head back to Hull and real life. We stayed in Swansea at an amazing guest house and had a really good time. We were revisiting places that we last went to over 20 years ago and seeing what, if anything, had changed.
Quite a few things were different, but the lovely scenery is still there and the weather was very kind to us.
Peter Capaldi doing the signing thing...
..we interrupt this holiday sequence with a Dr. Who report. You may not have noticed this, but there is a new Dr. Who coming. He is being played by the actor Peter Capaldi who is just about a contemporary of mine. I made the mistake of mentioning to number one son that I was only slightly older than Dr. Who. He replied with "What, 300 years?" which didn't put him in my good books.
Anyhoo. Today we stopped off in Cardiff on our holiday travels. On the way through the town to the castle we noticed a bunch of folks waiting by barriers. Some of them were wearing rather familiar clothes. Turned out that the world premier of the first new Dr Who episode was taking place later in the morning and the stars of the show were going to be walking through the town.
So we thought we'd stick around and see what we could see. Number one son stationed himself close to the barrier, whereas I wandered around seeing what photographs I could get.
Jenna Coleman explaining stuff
I got some quite good pictures, number one son ended up with better ones, plus he managed to snag Jenna Coleman's autograph, which was nice.
Turns out daleks don't do autographs
Neither do Cybermen..
All the other stars of the show were there too and the weather was lovely. Sometimes you just can't beat being in the right place at the right time..
Quipomatic 5000 narrative: "He was thinly disguised as a toothpick."
On holiday this week. Which means that there will be nothing but pictures and some humour from the "Quipotronic 5000" which will be generating the written content for the rest of the week. Just as a taster (*click*)
"The dish was getting very concerned about the way her father kept introducing her to spoons."
This is exactly how much holiday money we had left when we got to the airport to fly home.
If you are feeling a bit annoyed about my endless parade of photographs of good weather and happy times, please bear in mind that I’m writing this back home on Monday evening and it is cold, dark and raining… But on Saturday it was none of those things, so we went on a little boat trip.
This is the view back up the lake to where we were staying. Torbole is on the right hand side. I bet that bit of rock made a great noise when it fell down.
Nice church
Part of a nice castle
Wind surfers making the most of the excellent conditions.
The bridge has these padlocks all along the railings. Perhaps they symbolise undying love between two people. Perhaps they are from tiny bikes that have been expertly stolen.
Lakeside excavations
Lunchtime macro photography
This is a far better picture than photos taken with a mobile phone have any right to be.
Mountains
Waterfalls
One of the great things about being on holiday is that you don’t have to worry precisely what day it is. As far as we’re concerned, today was “Verona Day”. In other words, we got on a bus and went there.
They have a proper Roman Amphitheatre. Apparently “One Direction” have played in this very place, so we are obviously in an area with a lot of history.
According to local folklore, this is the actual spot where a bunch of nineteenth century marketing men got together and decided that they should get themselves a piece of balcony based “Romeo and Juliet” action.
The evenings here are rather pretty.
Today we took a walk along to Riva del Garda, a town just a couple of kilometres from Torbole. Very nice place. Great museum (I like museums) and a castle thingy half way up the hill at the side of the town. The guide book said it was a 20 minute stroll from the centre of the town. Which it is. For Superman.
For us mortals, arriving a somewhat exhausted forty minutes or so after setting off, it was well worth the trip though. I made the picture above from four shots taken with the Lumia 1020.
I also took a few panoramas while I was there.
The good news is that I can speak Italian like a local. The bad news is that it is a local of East Yorkshire, UK. I’m trying to pick up words where I can, it seems the height of bad manners to expect everyone to learn English just because they might one day want to speak to me.
It is not going too well. I usually have this unnerving habit of speaking French whenever I go abroad. It’s the only foreign language that I know more than a bit of and it sometimes works in France. In Italy it is more of a hindrance though, serving to massively confuse the person I’m speaking to and massively annoy any French people in the room at the time. Oh well, but I did manage to order the right kinds of coffee today, which must count as some kind of progress.
We are staying in a lovely little hotel in a place called Torbole, which is at the top of Lake Garda. It is quite a nice place to take photos.
Today we went for a walk along the edge of the lake. The weather was the comfortable side of hot and the light was lovely.
I’m starting to get this holiday thing.
Rob Miles is technology author and educator who spent many years as a lecturer in Computer Science at the University of Hull. He is also a Microsoft Developer Technologies MVP. He is into technology, teaching and photography. He is the author of the World Famous C# Yellow Book and almost as handsome as he thinks he is.
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