Photo Adventure: Trail of Lights and Mozart's, a lit extravaganza

The last 48 hours of my life have been filled with more individual Christmas lights than I'm pretty sure I've ever seen before. I'm not sure if there's really a better way to engage your inner child and escape from the oppression and overwhelming cloud of distress that is our upcoming finals week.
On Friday night my family, along with my good friend Nalani, headed to Zilker park, located in downtown Austin. Every December Austin Electric company wraps, hangs, and connects thousands of Christmas lights to form a beautifully lit trail throughout the park.
We chose to take a shuttle over to the park as to avoid the chaotic experience that is parking. The shuttle passes cost a mere $5, which was offset by the temporary free admission.
I took my camera as well as my tripod and took about 200 photos. It was challenging to continually adjust for changes in light and intensity, as well as handhold for the duration of the evening. Surprisingly, it was a whopping 75 degrees in the middle of December, which was equally enjoyable and distressing.

 From the inside of the tree above

Of course, Texas is outlined, and Austin is an extra bright dot on the globe, as it is in reality.

 It's Nessie!

This rainbow only illuminated for about 5 seconds every 2 minutes, and I was only able to capture this one image, but I like it. It looks like rainbow confetti. And confetti is good, as are rainbows.

The congress bridge!

 Nalani and I.

Alright, these next 5 images are 8 second long exposures (I used my tripod) I've been dreaming about creating images such as these since I saw a picture like these entered in the Big Fresno when I was about 8. So, childhood dream fulfilled. And they look even better than the one I saw way back when. Maybe I am a little biased. Maybe.

So many kinds of trees!

And here's a creepy strawberry.

 I like the way the stars explode out from the blob of light.

On Saturday, after a solid afternoon of studying for chemistry with my friend Hannah, we ventured to Mozart's, which is a coffee shop located on Lake Austin. They put on a magnificent light show each Holiday season, which is free and open to the public. We enjoyed the light show before wandering around the nearby restaurants and going for a jaunt down the dock.

Hannah and I being cute little red aliens. 

It's Austin!

Here's the view from across the lake.

SO. MANY. LIGHTS.

And such joy. Great people, happy little lights. 

Christmas is coming, yall. 

I can't wait. Now I've just got to trudge through 8 tests covering 18 weeks of material, and I'm free to marinate in Christmas spirit, 24/7. Or maybe even 25/8. Who knows.