Paris! Beautiful Archives Nationales and L'Eglise Saint-Eustache

I'm in Paris now with my friend Susan for a 2 week holiday exploring the city of light for future visits, what a marvelous place to be! Around every corner is another ancient and historically important building or square, walking around as we are, it's all very accessible. All you need is good shoes and strong legs with a sense of wonder! 

Our destination on this day was the information office off of the Avenue de l'Opera near the Louvre. The walk there was full of surprises! 

We stumbled onto the Achives Nationales in the Marais, free entry and gorgeous architecture, the details in the buildings here are so beautiful!

 Someone else who is also awed by what she is seeing...

 The Church of St Eustache or L’église Saint-Eustache is a church in the 1st arrondissement of Paris. The present building was built between 1532 and 1632.

It's easy to be moved by a church like this.

There are more cafes here than there are Dunkin Donuts in Boston. They are also used as gathering places, but I suspect Parisiens spend more time at them...

 Apparently a famous restaurant... the foot of the pig. And it's open 24/24!! Whatever that means :-)

 We ate here with a view of the comings and going of Parisiens, a busy corner at Rue des Pyramides.

  Just another good looking corner...The Louvre is on the other side.

Musicians on a bridge near Notre Dame. Closed off to traffic :-)

The Amazing Colors of Burano, Venice

We are now 6 photographers living and playing in Lucca with our cameras! On Monday we traveled to Venice for 3 days from Lucca and had a blast photographing the beautiful land of water and color. The short boat trip to Burano from Venice was well worth our time, so much wonderful color!! I'm thinking Manomet might look better if we all colored our homes like this :-)

More photos of Venice will be posted when I go through them, I found it and Burano to be enchanting places.

The colors were enhanced by the late in the day light, we arrived here an hour or so before sunset, the best time to visit if you're going!

Color and more color!!

My friend Linda with her camera... 3 of us have the Fujifilm X-T2, which has proven to be a great camera.

Lucca through a Lensbaby Lens

Joe and I are now 3 weeks into our 6 week stay in Lucca, and I'm still in love with this beautiful city! I'm now up to 22 days of making my way everywhere on foot without the use of any cars, or even bicycles, my feet are in great condition, and maybe even I am, too :-)  

The weather has been excellent, warm days for eating lunch al fresco, and plenty of sunshine. Around 70's the last few days and always a treat walking around with my camera taking it all in.

These blog post images were taken with my Lensbaby Composer lens attached to my Fotasy adapter that fits my new Fujifilm X-T2... this way I didn't have to buy a new Lensbaby for my Fujifilm, as it was originally designed to work on my Canon dslr.  The Lensbaby works fine with the adapter, as it's a manual focus lens anyway. The trick is the get the focus on the right part of the image!

The outdoor market just outside of town is full of photo opportunities, as is the walk there. The Italians are very fond of their flowers and so am I!

The iconic Vespa, full size.

The shopping street, Via Fillungo.

Working on getting little hearts as my aperture shape on the points of light. Nice looking dessert, too.

The top of the Church at Piazza San Michele. Note that each column has a different design.

At the music school piazza.

Benches are liberally distributed throughout town.

Shopping at the outdoor market flowers.

Taking a break from mowing the extensive grassy area outside the walls.

Very active population here, especially on the wall.

A beer at lunch on the wall.

Panini are very popular... I found out panini is plural and panino is singular, now you know, too :-) And they are not always grilled.

Enjoying Lucca with Susan and Scott and a Little Rain

Our good friends Susan and Scott from Maine joined us in Lucca for a week, we've traveled together before and have the same ideas of exploring a foreign place, taking our time savoring our new location, enjoying the local food and culture and ourselves.. always :-)
 Ours is a slow method of travel, no rushing or overbooked days, and so far we still haven't been in a motorized vehicle of any kind. At 16 days that must be some kind of record for Joe and I! Our feet have been doing an excellent job of getting us everywhere we need to go, and it's easy to walk 8 miles in a day without even thinking about it.

Susan and I met when our children were much younger, nearly 20 years ago. It's wonderful to see her and Scott happy here in Lucca!

Scott enjoys playing his harmonica in the many tunnels of Lucca and the sound is awesome.

As we finished lunch outside in the Piazza Dell'Anfiteatro, the Amphitheater, this school group came through before it started clouding over.

A piece of ancient history randomly found on a wall.

This kitty seemed hypnotized while gazing out the window.

 Some small park tucked away in the back streets.

The rain made for some great umbrella images.

One of the larger camellia trees, many blossoms all over town.

A pottery shop off of Piazza San Michele.

A very intense bicyclist!

Students from Spain.

Still looks good all wet, Piazza San Michele.

Greeting an old friend....

...and spending a few minutes catching up.