Italy - Tom's Prefacing Remarks

Italy has a long and complex history … geopolitical, religious, art, architecture, etc.  With little to no background in these topics, it was hard for us to grasp the full meaning and significance of the things we were seeing.  And we were seeing LOTS and LOTS of things.  In order to keep this blog manageable, therefore, it won’t be a complete tally of all we did and saw, nor try to give the full background or context.  Instead, I'm visualizing it as a random array of thoughts, mostly from memory (of course, I reserve the right to change as I go).  So, certainly don’t take anything stated as gospel … it’s just our (sometimes untrustworthy) take-aways. 

Also, my photography interest and experience is primarily with landscapes and nature.  This trip was mostly the opposite … cities, people, buildings, and art … so it was a challenge for me to decide what to take pictures of, and how to best capture them.  And also to find a balance between the photography and just absorbing the experience.  To a large extent, the photos are just “shapshots” taken of random times and of random things, hopefully providing glimpses to revive our memories (and entertaining you, of course).