Hmm, napping yesterday was a bad idea. Made it hard to get to sleep last night. And, then, of course, it made it hard to get up this morning. Must ... not ... sleep ... during ... the ... day...
We don't yet know what churches are here, so we'll just try to look for one (or more, visiting new churches is worthwhile and fun) later. Today, our main task is to be here around 11:30 for when two Romanian students arrive in order to give them their room keys.
* * *
They arrived and Kim gave them their keys.
A bit later, we went to the botanical gardens. At f7,50/person/day,
I don't think I'll go every day, but I'm sure we'll go again.
It's a very interesting garden made around an old fort, with several
different sections. Lots of rock gardens,
including botanical sculpture,
a highly structured garden with a
hexagonal motif, a theme garden, tropical plant
greenhouses, and some less intensely-cultivated land that is just nice
to walk through.
A meta-diary note: I'm finally learning how to use the GIMP to improve photographs, particularly photographs that are either somewhat poorly exposed or have poor color balance. Some I just can't seem to fix, like this one of a magnolia trained to climb a wall (!), but most of them are greatly improved by the GIMP's Image -> Colors -> Levels tool. I can change all the levels at once to correct for mildly overexposed (more common at least with my Canon Powershot S10 than underexposed) pictures, and can change individual channels to correct for bad color balance. In particular, narrowing the blue channel can help pictures taken in sunlight that look "washed out".[later: try Photo Touch Up and Enhancement in the GIMP and Grokking the GIMP for more great tips!]
