Scavenger Hunt 2nd link up

Joining in with Mary Lou for the next link up in Scavenger Hunt 2018!  Are you joining in?  It's not to late to pick up your camera/phone and get started!

I was so pleased to find quite a few more pictures to tick off my Scavenger Hunt list when we went to Lake Garda earlier this month.

 4 Wings
I took a few pictures at the airport of the wings of the plane we flew out on but I wasn't very happy with them and then when we arrived in Italy there was a market in the town and I noticed this stand with model aircraft and was much happier with that as my subject.

 5 Pedal Power
Seen outside a shop selling lavender

 6 Glorious Green
Limes growing around by the pool at our hotel.  The perfect accompaniment for a gin and tonic ;-)

7 An unexpected reflection
OK, you have to look hard for this one but if you look just to the right of the armchair beside the larger horse's head you will see me, reflected in a mirror on the wall taking a photo of the window of this art gallery

 9 Looks smaller than you
I'm not going to lie, I'm not happy with this one.  Do I look bigger than the castle in the background?  I may be revisiting this prompt!

11 Pretty in pink
I took this earlier in the month when our grass was still green (it's like brown straw nowadays since weeks of heatwave and no rain!) This little flower grew in my mum's garden and I brought some to my home when she died.  It's popping up all over the garden now, but is one of those flowers that only opens in the day time and then closes in the evening.

12 Bell
On the ferry that goes from Desenzano to Sirmione

 13 Equal portions
After being up since 5am and not really eating until 2pm this bruschetta was a sight for sore eyes, but I managed to restrain myself from eating any until I'd taken the photo.  The cafe provided no cutlery so it was very lucky that they had cut it nicely into squares for us to dive in and eat with our fingers!

14 A trilogy of three
Saw this water feature at the end of a shopping mall in the town and loved the glass circles behind the fountains

 15 Out of the blue
Back to Hertfordshire for this one!  These flowers also close at night and reopen in the daylight and are in a long swathe by the lake near to our house,  we thought they had died while we were away as we walked past on an evening dog walk, but the next day they were back.  A whole wall of blue, and completely humming with bees.

19 Picture postcard perfect
I can't think of one thing I'd change about this area of Desenzano, the architecture, the atmosphere, the boats, the flowers.  Fantastic!

Scavenger hunt - 1st link up

I've mentioned in previous posts that I'm taking part in the Photographic Scavenger Hunt organised by Mary Lou over at Patio Postcards.

Quite often I find that over the course of the summer I take more than one photo for each category and then choose my favourite so just because these ones have made the cut so far, they may be replaced by the end!

The Rosiness of Red

 Stripes

 A framed view

 A pile of

A field of plenty

 Something that could be from a favourite book/movie/song

Currency

Mellow Yellow

Are you joining in too?  It's not to late to start!

Me on Monday

This is my first day of not really having anything definite planned which probably means that I have no excuse for not doing some housework 😉 {well of course I can't do anything before I've written this blog post can I?}

Last week flew by and I happily ticked another picture off the Scavenger Hunt list (and absolutely no doubt about this one filling the criteria)

3. A framed view

We went to Cambridge on Wednesday which is possibly my most favourite place to go shopping.  Just love the atmosphere there and as we passed Corpus Christi College I realised that this is a perfect example of the wonderful university architecture in the city.  It makes it look as if we were the only people there doesn't it?  Well we weren't - I had to wait for dozens of Chinese tourists to move out of the way so I could get a picture of the building framed nicely inside the archway.  Because Cambridge is so popular with visitors, this time of year you can often feel that, apart from the university students, you are one of the few English people there!  

I also love going to Cambridge because there is a tiny Sicilian restaurant there called Aromi where they do fabulous snack lunches.  You have to get there early as by 12.30 all the tables are full.  It's not smart and it's not fancy, you sit on stools up at wooden trestle tables but the flavour of the food - oh wow.  I can never manage anything sweet after I've had my favourite - Spianata Saporita (pancetta, provola cheese, roasted peppers, caramelised onions and parsley sandwiched between glorious Italian sourdough bread and toasted) but Paul always manages one of their occur di bue biscuits - two rounds of thin shortbread with pistachio cream in the middle.

I realise now that I'm home again that I missed a perfect opportunity to tick off another picture for Pedal Power. Cambridge is a real cyclist city - and I could easily have found a photo opportunity.  Oh well, a perfect excuse to go back again soon!  Talking of cyclists, the lady who takes my Zumba class was in London last weekend and while walking back to the tube station, was passed by dozens and dozens of cyclists - but not any ordinary cyclists, they were all naked 😳 How uncomfortable would that be?  She showed us a couple of photos she took as proof - there was one exhibitionist happy to have his photo taken, let's just say he had indulged in some rather clever body art in the guise of an elephant.  I'll leave you with that image in your mind ...

Scavenger hunt photos

I mentioned in yesterday's blog post that I am starting to search for photos that fit the categories in the photographic scavenger hunt organised by Mary Lou.  I joined in with my first photo hunt several years ago now and it was so much fun to try and find a slightly different take on some of the challenges rather than the obvious.  Yesterday's finds are filed under 'taking the category literally' - a red rose for The Rosiness of Red and a bottle of oil with the right name for Mellow Yellow.  Today I have something a little different.

Number 18 on the list is Currency; Coinage or Paper (the odd, the different, the beautiful.       I set about the house searching for something that would fit the bill.  My son went Interrailling around Europe a few years ago and has a pot of random coins from his travels, a Hungarian Forint, a Zloty from Poland and many different versions of the Euro.  There was even an old Peseta from the days before Spain introduced the Euro.  Then while paying for something in a shop, I remembered that a about 10 years ago they designed something a little bit different much closer to home.  The Royal Mint designed new coinage which, when you placed the back of one of each type of coin in formation, it would make a picture of the shield which was on the back of our old style pound coins. 

The real challenge was to find one of each of the coins as they change the designs on our coins quite regularly and while I can't show a picture of the pound coin with the whole shield on (they were withdrawn from circulation last year when they introduced a new 12 sided coin) I have managed to track down the coins that make up the jigsaw.

Another picture to tick off the list!