To Tweak or Not To Tweak

On my recent trip to Italy, I was somewhat disappointed in some of the photos I took. Whether it was the camera, the time of day, or the difficulty of capturing all that I saw...expanse of hills and so on.... I am not sure.
I did a little tweaking and was fairly satisfied. I knew a particular picture was taken at the worst time of the day (almost noon) so I was happy to just have the memory and a somewhat decent picture.

Someone I know had seen this picture and said he could totally enhance it in Photoshop. Curious to see what he could do, I sent it to him. Lots of color in his version and an interesting exercise in what can be done to a photo. I would say reality was somewhere in between.

Before

After