4th July

In the USA, you seem to be able to go anywhere with a camera. Sports events, the symphony in Boston, airports... But not the 4th July celebrations in Mountain View. They don't allow SLRs (although lots of people inside the event seemed to have them) so I had to check mine at the door. Stupidly I left the little camera at home, so all I had to take pictures with was my HTC TyTN II Mobile. Not much of a camera, so you get a little montage of scenes from the celebration as none is good enough to blip in it's own right.

The San Francisco Symphony Orchestra were playing at the event and I eally enjoyed most of it, especially Mars and Jupiter from the Planets Suite and "God Bless America". The fireworks were good, but compared with the Festival Fireworks in Edinburgh with the castle as the backdrop and carefully coreaographed to the music, it all seemed a bit half hearted. Made me look forward to being home.

Also (and this is darned uncivilised IMHO) the pubs were mostly shut for the holiday when we wanted to stop for a pint on the way home... Only the 3rd pub we tried (the "British Bankers Corporation") was open!

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Update: At least this blip affords me one distinction - it is the ONLY blip on the WHOLE of blipfoto.com taken with a HTC TyTN II Smartphone (codename Kaiser during development).