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I mean, WHO STAMPS STARS INTO STUFF LIKE THIS, especially given that at the time it was a red-hot chunk of metal?

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Of course, by “upgrade” I actually mean “your job”

Florence is completely awash in detail. If you choose to look, orif you’re like me and you can’t help but look at *everything*, you’ll see that there’s interesting stuff absolutely *everywhere*

They had no street lighting (at least not in Pompeii), so they embedded chips of white marble in the streets between flagstones, so on moonlit nights the chips would reflect the moon, and the street would be easier to see and navigate along. I like these simple but useful ideas.

Yep. My airline tickets have a space instead of a hyphen, because reasons. Okay, hmm.

Then I’m on the train, and it had free WiFi. Oh cool. You need to register. Okay. Name, phone number, email address. Cool. Send me code via SMS. Gotcha. Please enter credit card details. What? For a free service? Hmmm, I guess it’s for hard-core ID verification.

Okay.

Card number. Tick.

Secret code whatsit. Tick.

Expiry date. Tick

First name on card. Tick

Surname on card. Tick.

“entry contains invalid characters” eh? What, the HYPHEN is invalid? Yep, it is.

So, hyphen replaced by: space, underscore, nothing (so my name is one long word instead of two short ones) all are bounced by the credit card company.

No free wifi for you. Enjoy the Tuscan scenery.

My phone’s broken wifi setup is completely crippling. I connect to an open network, chrome fires up …. and I’m looking at a blank page. The only networks I can connect to are hotel networks, or shops with wifi (pretty much every single shop in Europe, it seems).

I’ve uninstalled chrome. Nope, you can’t, you can only install updates. Really? And then it auto-updated itself, so, yeah, auto-updates are now off.

Now it asks me which browser I want to use, which is nicer.

UPDATE

I now have a Flickr account.

https://www.flickr.com/euro-ddraig/

Photos there are cropped, levelled (some are, at any rate), and, most importantly, presented in the order they were taken, which is especially crucial for photos taken in a museum, we’re a photograph of an item will be followed by a photograph of the description.

The Google Photos images are a straight image dump – unedited, uncropped, nor properly aligned, and in Google’s stupid random order. As I edit the photos, they will go up on Flickr. So far I’ve got most of Italy online.

photos are at: https://www.flickr.com/euro-ddraig/

Some people wanted to see the photos I’ve been taking, but at the moment I’ve only got my phone and a couple of cameras, so I can’t edit or crop any of the images, and there’s ZERO chance I’m going to caption everything using the phone keyboard. Which is also why this blog thing is sparsely updated.

So, after much experimenting, I finally installed google photos, as it lets me batch upload, something imgur and wordpress do not.

So here’s links to the raw photo dumps. Some of these will be blurry, sideways, pointless, a copy of the previous one (or four), you’re just going to have to cope until I get to London and buy an elcheapo laptop and can do this properly.

Rome, first couple of days, just general wandering and gaping:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/yVtPFBKVLfQKG2b66

Pompeii e Napoli

https://photos.app.goo.gl/otM2MET6sCjsggM96

The Pantheon, and the walk there and back again:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/sygWFxgHviHLm51d6

The Vatican

https://photos.app.goo.gl/8G6vqqHLtW6Ueved8

Florence

https://photos.app.goo.gl/HQCvYHRJSi9LBRJN9

London

https://photos.app.goo.gl/tL7TuRgCZdZVSgrf6

Prince Albert Memorial and Royal Albert Hall

https://photos.app.goo.gl/yZoEmkX2AuZixFHY6

The Queen Victoria Monument and Buckingham Palace by twilight

https://photos.app.goo.gl/2PhAtCxRe1B8D2qW6

The Queen Victoria Monument and Buckingham Palace at dawn

https://photos.app.goo.gl/dgTqmV3kjvBL9xrS7

The Tate Britain. Probably the most impressive thing I’ve seen in London so far.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/TzcHnpL88pZJUapNA

The Imperial War Museum

https://photos.app.goo.gl/iatgjtAQHcLvhhVNA

The British Museum

https://photos.app.goo.gl/AWicEpxqqMLW5mpF7

The Elgin Marbles

https://photos.app.goo.gl/wyevnbni6TyBPiDr5

The Australian War Memorial, Wellington Arch and Statue

https://photos.app.goo.gl/FArhnCZqTHaqFP269

The Monument, and views from the top

https://photos.app.goo.gl/WnFdxg7ys7oTdPtG6

The Victoria and Albert Museum

https://photos.app.goo.gl/AUBaC5Mho2yG5JFg9

Australia House, and various photographs from nearby

https://photos.app.goo.gl/CvoUL9yBoxxQk6aD9

The Tower of London

https://photos.app.goo.gl/BRo4XaScmC9tKJYP6

I’m fascinated by the details in a lot of these places, so you’ll see lots of closeups of tiny little features that I assume you won’t see in many books.

Enjoy! A proper gallery and captions etc will be online in a week or so. Or so.

Hmmm, can’t rotate images, can’t change image order, so the photos of the vatican I took with a different camera, on the outside on the way in (so the first photos I took) are at the end of the album. Well, google photos IS free – but it sucks.

I miss having a Gallery install.

Yeah that’s the wall of the room I’m in.

Anyway, it’s hilarious especially when they drive away from you and the sound Doppler-shifts lower :-)-