 |
| Venice by night |
It is the first time this has happened to me, honestly. I am embarrassed.
I failed to find skiing on a trip.
Granted, this trip was more difficult than most. Venice is a hot place in the summer. Due to some other travel and work I was unable to spare extra days or even hours to do the detour via the summer ski places in northern Italy. And the two days that I was there were filled with meetings from early morning to dusk.
But still. All I had after driving around a couple of hours was after-ski in the hotel bar with my miniskis:
I did have a great plan, however. Last week I found some snow from the Matinkylä indoor ice rink. My idea was to find an indoor ice rink near Venice, gather some snow to plastic bags, drive to Venice and park my car at Piazzale Roma when they are empty at 3AM. And then I could have spread the snow on one of the small bridges nearby, and skied on the bridge.
But I failed to find an ice rink. WTF? Not a single open-in-the-summer ice rink in the area? I can only conclude that Matinkylä tops Venice as a tourist destination, if it comes down to availability of snow and ice. Who cares about those canals anyway?
 |
| After-ski (but without the skiing) |
I did have a great plan, however. Last week I found some snow from the Matinkylä indoor ice rink. My idea was to find an indoor ice rink near Venice, gather some snow to plastic bags, drive to Venice and park my car at Piazzale Roma when they are empty at 3AM. And then I could have spread the snow on one of the small bridges nearby, and skied on the bridge.
But I failed to find an ice rink. WTF? Not a single open-in-the-summer ice rink in the area? I can only conclude that Matinkylä tops Venice as a tourist destination, if it comes down to availability of snow and ice. Who cares about those canals anyway?
 |
| Driving to Venice on the rental Fiat 500. Cheap, small, and very nice! |
Photo credits (c) 2012 by Jari Arkko
I'm not that much of a Skier, but I really like your photos ;)
ReplyDeleteHow did you take that last shot? Extended arm with an very wide angle? That must have taken a few tries to get right.
Thanks.
ReplyDeleteThe last photo is a self-shot that is pretty typical for me. I travel with many great friends and family a lot, but I'm also sometimes alone. But getting a person into the frame usually improves the picture. So what to do when I'm alone?
First off, I usually shoot with my 10mm super-wide angle lens in most situations. If I extend my arm and hold my camera the lens is wide enough to get part of me and the surroundings into the picture. I have to extend a bit too far, and holding and pressing the button in the camera is difficult though. SLRs do not have good handles for this.
And then I usually repeat the shot 50 times :-) with varying directions. I did so in this case as well, and this was the only frame that had reasonable balance between the different parts of the picture.
And all that was at 130 km/h...