my new camera

Whilst in Italy recently we visited Pisa, 

to see the famed Leaning Tower of course.    

So silly, but when we rounded the corner and caught our first glimpse of it we turned and looked at each other, and we each had this huge goofy grin!

I mean, this is an iconic structure, you hear about it your whole life, and most of us think we'll never see it outside of print.  But there we were, in the presence of this awesome site.

 from this angle the lean is to the left,  which is the most pronounced,

 but from one side it actually looks in vertical alignment

As you can imagine we walked with eyes lifted to the soaring 55.86 meter (183.27 feet) height of this incredible structure.   Prior to the restoration work which was performed between 1990 and 2001, the towers lean was at an angle of 5.5 degrees.  The tower now leans at about 4 degrees. Which means that the top of the tower has a horizontal displacement of 3.9 meters (12 ft 10 in) from where it would be if the structure were perfectly vertical.  Incredible, eh?

We started taking pictures, each of us taking probably the same shot with each of our cameras. We walked without care, without regard, and with complete and utter conviction.   

That is until we turned towards each other without bothering to look.  We collided, hard.  

No damage, unless you take into account the complete destruction to my camera, because it went flying. The lens is stuck part way out, the latch on the battery door snapped off and the door no longer aligns with the opening, and there are several rather large dents and scratches.

This camera I purchased about 3 years ago, hard for me to believe I've had it that long.  I think I paid about 120USD, so to try to repair it just isn't economically logical, especially after I was already jones'ing over a camera that does Panorama Shots!

So here you see my old camera!

Et voilà, my new camera arrived last night via my friends.  

Pretty!

Just in time too, because tonight is the Paseo de las Animas here in my neighborhood so I'll give this baby a test drive!

isn't it funny that colors are cheaper than silver or black?  

Not that I mind!