Veni, Vidi.... Roma, Italia !

Roma, Italia. The Eternal City of Rome can charm you no end if you can walk the streets of the Empire with a sense of history.

(This pic was shot in the Foro Romano/Roman Forum, with the remains of buildings from Julius Caesar's time, 1st century BC, and beyond, in the very heart of Rome, next to The Colosseum)
This cute kid was attracted by the size and shape of this cute Fiat, parked in the compound of the ancient Roman Forum . She was going around it, peeping through the glass and admiring it, and her body language seemed to suggest that she felt something like.. "well, this looks like a toy car.. May be even I can drive this car.. Looks perfect for me.. But hey, this IS a real car!!..".

I wanted to click her, lost in her own world, admiring the car, before she noticed my presence at all. I moved stealthily, as if I's looking elsewhere and moving in some other direction. By the time I got near and composed the frame, though I tried my best to click before she noticed, she became conscious and I lost a good photo op.

This frame could confuses your Sense of Dimensions!. The car is dwarfed even by a kid. Then there was this potted plant in the background, and the terra cotta pot was really huge, which has this effect of dwarfing the car even more, and it kind of dwarfed the kid as well!.


Here's my Italy album.. including Roma, Pisa and Firenze(Florence)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dream-catcher/sets/885514/

Did DaVinci tell her “SMILE, MY LADY” ?

[With some insights about Lady Lisa, gleaned during the summer trip to Italy.]

It was the strangest creole version of English I’ve ever heard- a young black couple got into the Trenitalia coach and started off very animated conversation. I closed down the book I’s reading as there’s more interesting stuff to listen to. The brain strained and stretched trying to decode their English, while pretending to enjoy the Tuscan landscape in shimmering summer heat. Then I pulled out the mp3 player and pretending to listen to the music, recorded bits of that for brain-teaser-fun with friends. It reminded me of the fun I had reading Bill Bryson’s “Mother Tongue” about the origin, history, growth, diversity and tons of trivia about English, when he mentioned about a creole (in Papua New Guinea, I guess) in which “gras-belong-fes” is the word for beard!. : ))

About an hour after I boarded the train from Pisa to Firenze (Florence), it reached Empoli, modern industrialised town 32km W of Firenze. If I had one more day to spare, I would have got down there to head for Vinci town, supposed to be on a picteresque vine- and olive-planted hill-slope 10km N of Empoli. Apr 15, 1452, Leonardo was born in Anchiano nearby Vinci.

Abt 30km south of Firenze in Tuscany province is Villa Vignamaggio, set amidst formal Italian gardens at the centre of a beautiful old estate founded by the Gherardini family in the 14th c. In 1479, Antonio Maria Gherardini celebrated the birth of a new baby, Lisa, at Vignamaggio. It’s believed that, around the age of 24, Lisa sat for a portrait by Leonardo, one of Tuscany's most celebrated artists of the day, shortly after her marriage to the wealthy Florentine silk merchant Francesco del Giocondo. The likeness famously captured the smile of La Gioconda, whose noble title was "Ma Donna Lisa"(My Lady)- Shortened to Monna Lisa or Mona Lisa.
[See the tag-plate of Mona Lisa at the Louvre below]