Nocturnal

Those guides, you know the ones, the online travel blogs, always say that the best way to adjust to a drastically new time zone is to get out and wander around in the daylight. It's supposed to trick some temporal chemicals into doing their daytime/nighttime routine so you settle into it. Now, I don't really get jetlag, other than being an hour or two out of whack for a couple of days, and I suspect I'm genetically lucky. But I do also like to walk and walk in the outside until it is finally dinner time on the first day I land.

Let me tell you, those travel blogs, with their handy tips, are definitely written for the beach holiday crowd. Not the winter holiday troopers. The sun setting at 4:30pm does nothing for resetting circadian rhythms. But it does make it more pleasant and safer (feeling) for taking nighttime photos.

At the end of a long day that included a walking tour and a couple of museums, I planned to have a quiet evening in with my book. But for all my reservations about the ye olde buildings (see yesterday), it did look very pretty as I walked by at 5:30pm. Of course, I didn't have my tripod, having left the hotel hours and hours earlier, so I had to be my most stable and still self. Take a deep breath, clamp the camera to your face, ground your feet, and click click click.