[gary88]

In the summer I spent two weeks in Europe. Four days in Rome, one day in Florence, and nine days in Krakow, Poland visiting family. Took 1447 pics overall, so here's the best (Lots of pics ahead)

Waiting in line to have a fatty check my passport at ORD


After a 9 hour flight into Warszawa we stopped for some coffee in the airport before the two hour flight to Rome.


Chopin Airport


View of Italy from the air. Saw soooo many nice looking roads laid out like pieces of spaghetti.




Hotel room, stayed at Hotel Mediterraneo. A nice four star place in an awesome location.


Romans


We got pizza at a small restaurant right down the street. It was unbelievably good.




And it was right across the street from Santa Maria Maggiore.




Colosseum








Ruins of Ancient Rome


Roman Forum




The Pantheon










Gelato!


Monument to Vittorio Emanuele II, absolutely massive.




CL65, I assume once it gets dirty enough the guy will just buy another.




View from the top of the Spanish Steps


Spanish Steps

[gary88]

Piazza Del Popolo






TRUCK OF THE YEAR 1993


Another neato church






View from the 10th floor restaurant at the hotel where I enjoyed my complimentary glass of champagne


Vatican museum


Sistine Chapel. Since the paintings are copyrighted by the Japanese company that helped clean them you weren't supposed to take pics. Live view and silent shooting mode 2 shot from the hip FTW.


Moon rocks




Florence




Santa Maria Novella








Florence from the top of the church (climbed 200ish stairs to get there)








Giotto's Bell Tower










High speed rail station


St. Peter's Square

[gary88]

Swiss Guards




St. Peter's Basilica












Inside the Colosseum


















Alfa FTW

[gary88]

And now some shots from Poland. It rained almost every day I was there but I caught some breaks.

Krakow airport


Wisla River




Market Square at night






"Save water, drink beer"








X1














Wisla River after it rained a ton




Wawel Castle. This is where the Polish president who died in the plane crash not too long ago is buried. There was a huge outrage over burying him here since nobody in Krakow liked him, and they didn't think he deserved to rest in the same place as Polish kings and saints.












The Jewish District






Thanks for looking

[Mr Tonka]

You need a new photo host. I can only see about half of each pic. From what i can it looked like a fun trip.

[Chewy734]

Gary,

Those are some awesome photos! What camera and lenses did you use? It looks like you had a phenomenal time... I hope to visit Italy one day. What/where was the most favorite part of your trip?

Thanks for sharing...

[E90PAT]

STUNNING!!

[AllydNYC]

Thanks for sharing, trip looked like a lot of fun!

[gary88]

Thanks all Was definitely a lot of fun.

Originally Posted by Chewy734

Gary,

Those are some awesome photos! What camera and lenses did you use? It looks like you had a phenomenal time... I hope to visit Italy one day. What/where was the most favorite part of your trip?

Thanks for sharing...

I used my Canon 50D with an EF-S 10-22 f/3.5-4.5 and EF 70-200 f/4L IS USM. It's really hard to pin down one part as being my favorite since it was all so great. Though I think figuring out how to navigate everything myself rather than taking tours everywhere helped give me a better experience. Taking the train to Florence and seeing the Italian countryside on the way was beautiful.

[Quick6EF]

Did you create your own itinerary (for the days not spent with family in Poland)?


You did a fantastic job on the pictures! Here are my two favorite:








Who's in the pink?

[06E90Rostik]

Originally Posted by Quick6EF

Who's in the pink?

I think the more important question is: Why the one in the gray is stealing your candy?

[06E90Rostik]

Awesome pictures Gary!

Question: Can you take a small rock from those ruins? Like a souvenir. Is there guards/policia on those ruin sites? Do they look for that stuff at the airports when you leave? If I would go to Europe I would want a piece of it to take home.

[gary88]

Originally Posted by Quick6EF

Did you create your own itinerary (for the days not spent with family in Poland)?


You did a fantastic job on the pictures! Here are my two favorite:

Who's in the pink?

Thanks! For each day we just decided on 2-3 major things we wanted to see and budgeted time for each along with studying maps. It was fun just walking around and finding things along the way.

Sister is in the pink

Originally Posted by 06E90Rostik

I think the more important question is: Why the one in the gray is stealing your candy?

Got me when I wasn't looking

Originally Posted by 06E90Rostik

Awesome pictures Gary!

Question: Can you take a small rock from those ruins? Like a souvenir. Is there guards/policia on those ruin sites? Do they look for that stuff at the airports when you leave? If I would go to Europe I would want a piece of it to take home.

No there's no airport-like security or anything, just buy your ticket and walk right in (only exception being the Vatican museum). At the Colosseum you could probably snag a rock if you acted quickly, but there is security scattered around and most of the loose stuff is fenced in.

[TL]

thanks for sharing

[Jason]

Awesome set of photos! Brings back great memories of backpacking around Europe. And agreed, the best way to explore it is to just wander around with a local map and have a loose itinerary/schedule.

Thanks for sharing.

[FStop7]

Did you collect all the feathers and Borgia flags when you were in Rome and Florence?

[BillLee]

Great images. Rome is an awesome place to visit.

[bosstones]

Nice! Thanks for sharing those. I'd love to go back to Germany now that I'm older. I lived there for a little when I was little and didn't really appreciate all the places we visited back then. Back then, the crown jewel of our trip to Italy was me eating real pizza. lol