Greetings, everyone!  This is the first post of the year and it's also the first for the new home.

As you may have noticed, our website and blog moved into a new place.  While some of the "unpacking" is still underway (excuse me for the dust, while we are working on the grand opening of our new galleries of Italy and China, and many more to come), I wanted to start sharing some of the work/developments for the new year. 

In the years of evolving and finding my own style, I learnt that my heart, and eyes, gravitate towards things and people that are unique, beautiful and/or interesting, etc.  As I travel, I avoid at all cost where tourists tend to crowd.  To me, mass-tourism says nothing about unique, beautiful or special.  And I think that the word "mass" explains it all, something lack of character...

Nonetheless, unless I'm up for solely the physically challenging locations (i.e., end of the world type of places), I am doomed to witness tourism in action at times.

We visited Pisa in our recent trip to Italy, a city that, even a little kid stuck in an era of tight-fist country called China learnt about in her textbook, the Leaning Tower (Torre Pendente in Italian), and Galileo's experiment on it...  And the Leaning Tower seems to be on every visitor's agenda.  This fact alone almost made us miss this medieval beauty.  

After spending most of time in the small streets, by the river and on the university campus, we decided to face the un-avoidable - to pay the Leaning Tower a tribute.  After all, the Piazza dei Miracoli (Field of Miracles) where it's located is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site.  

We knew when we were close as the vibe changed, and the crowd, the incredible crowd that represents (I'm sure) as many countries as there are in the UN.  And all were not shy about exhibiting their excitement of being in the vicinity of the Leaning Tower, in their own way.  This is one of the tourists that we had the luxury of meeting with our eyes.  Hey, with the mass population brought in by tourism, doesn't it feel like a jungle out there and it gets difficult to maneuver?   

What's your experience when traveling?