Edinburgh

In November I did a whole heap of travelling around the UK to see a certain band play ( more on that at a later date) I hadn't been to Edinburgh for about 15 years but its a place I feel I should know. My parents lived there for several years around the time of their marriage, my dad did his PHD at the university. My Grandmother also came from a small town not far from there and started her working life in Edinburgh.

 I only managed to spend a few hours in Edinburgh and all my pictures are taken in the dark with no flash but it is a rather pretty city

Pisa

Way, way back in October, while I was living in Rome, I went to to sweet little towns of Pisa and Lucca in Tuscany with two lovely ladies, Allyson and Jordan.
Allyson and I left Rome early in the morning before it was properly light and caught the train to Pisa, we watched the sun rise over the countryside and the coast.

 We met Jordan at Pisa. It was our first big trip away from Rome for both Allyson and I and all three of us were happy to be spending a weekend away from our au pair host families. However fun being an au pair is and however great the family is, it still feels a bit stifling after awhile not really having the freedom to come and go as you please and having to worry about getting home at a certain time.

We wondered around and poked into little shops and markets and got coffee and chatted about Beyonce.

We were not exactly sure where the tower was, Jordan had a map that we were sort of following but mostly we just wondered through the town and spotted it looming over the place.

We went and took all the touristy pictures and bought tickets to go up the tower for later in the day.

After walking back through town and taking pictures of cats and fancy buildings we had lunch and then walked back to the tower to climb it!

I was a bit nervous climbing up, I know I'm a bit rubbish with height, especially if I'm not holding on to anything, Doing the Go Ape challenge earlier in the year made me expect to be terrified but it wasn't really too bad. (although maybe that's my memory two months later, I was pretty scared up there, and had to have dark chocolate and wine later in the day)
The view was spectacular, I don't think we could've had a better day weather wise.

About half the walk up the tower is inside, a spiral staircase then the top levels are out in the open.The tower is so slanted that I did feel a bit as if I might slip off the tower on the outside parts. After all the excitement we wondered back through Pisa to catch the train to Lucca. We got slightly distracted by this beautiful shop

 But whats that in the top left hand corner? A pile of rusty metal objects? This required further investigation.

The shop also had fancy cakes and drinks and ice cream, but I wanted a key.

My key broke before I took a good picture, It was rather nice dark chocolate with cocoa powder rust, yum yum. we ate it on the train to Lucca.

New Year 2012

I celebrated the new year with a dear friend Kathleen at home. We ate peculiar things and spoke about what we'd been up to in 2011 and what we hope to do in 2012. We also spent about an hour chatting to another friend who lives in Ghana- the wonders of modern technology. After midnight we let off one of those paper lanterns, it was a lot trickier than we thought it would be! The rest of my family had been out at other parties and both my mum and Grandad and my brother came back with disaster stories of lanterns stuck in wires or trees. Kathleen and I also had sparklers, it took us about 20 minutes to get them lit- I think they were rather elderly.
We both created a list, not so much of resolutions but things we'd like to happen and would be fun in 2012.
I thought I'd write mine up here so I can keep a check of my progress.
2012

• Get provisional driving license
• have driving lessons
• see a film at the Plaza
• join Slimming world
• work as a teacher
• finish couch to 5k plan
• go to the whitworth
• have a big haircut and donate hair to Little Princess Trust
• experiment with different drinks when out
• go to a girl geek event
• go to a dance class
• see live music
• try internet dating
• go to the outside cinema in Spinningfields over the summer
• climb Kinder Scout
• swim in open water
• watch a new film every month
• read a new book every month
• write letters- try two a month
• go to a new country
• finish Ruth + Luke's wedding present
• read the Bible
• phone a different friend every fortnight for a chat
• keep a diary

It looks like an awful lot, but really it should be quite manageable. A lot of the things are ongoing projects and things like reading a new book every month I think I do normally read about that many books but hopefully this will encourage me to read new books and to keep track of what I've read.

Shadow puppets

The Sunday before Christmas I went to my old Church in Bradford, they were doing their nativity service. The church doesn't really have many children but does have a lot of very talented teenagers. They put together an amazing shadow puppet nativity with power point back drops, such a simple idea but so clever.

Noses

 

Strolling around Villa Borghese a week or so ago, I noticed these fine gentlemen.

I'm not entirely sure who they are or their significance but they all seem to be suffering some sort of nasal problems.

Two have completely lost their noses and the other two have slightly miss fitting noses.

I love on the broken nosed men that they have a small spike on which to attach a new nose and I'm quite taken with the idea of having several spare noses to wear whenever the mood struck you. A bit like Mr Potato head, you could swap pieces over to give you an entirely new look.

Playing with my camera

I realised a week or so ago that my camera can do this amazing magical thing where it sews pictures together all by itself- each picture takes a couple of tries from me to line things up but its so great. I love having these bigger pictures and I really like the way the first one plays with your sense of perspective.
First two pictures are in the Pantheon, the last one is the column in Piazza Colonna- there is another very similar column near to Il Vittariano, neither of them is mentioned in my guidebook so I don't really know anything about them, they're so different from other columns and relief work I've seen and I really like them

Peaceful

Today I'm about being peaceful and thoughtful, a later start to my working day and a walk in the park should help that