Vroooom...Ciao

I arrived in Rome on Sunday around 10:00am, and I only had a day and a half to spend there, so I needed to check out as much as I could in the shortest amount of time.


My first stop was Vatican City becaue it was all the way on the other side of the city, close to a metro stop, and I could walk my way back to my moderately-shitty hostel and see a bunch of stuff. As you can clearly see, the Vatican was mobbed that day. I figured it was like that all the time, but then I realized that it was late morning on a Sunday. I remember reading something that mentioned late Sunday mornings at the Vatican in one of my guide books, but I forgot what it was.

I quickly remembered what it was when Pope Benedict XVI popped out of a window and blessed the entire crowd. Now, for those of you keeping track, I (one of the most heathenistic and godless Catholics ever spawned), during my short 5 months abroad in Europe, have gone to an evening mass in Westminster Abbey on a citywide snow-day, have gone to an Easter morning Catalan mass in Barcelona around 9:30am, and have been blessed by the pope himself. I am officially set for life. Not only will I never have to step foot in a church again for the rest of my life, but I can probably stab a few infants and still have St. Peter open the pearly gates for me.

I passed Castel San Angelo as I walked along the Tiber River, trying to find the Pantheon. Popes used to go here when people tried to kill them...not so much anymore.

La Piazza Navona: I forget why this is significant. I just thought it was pretty.

Ah, the Pantheon...the most well-presevered building of antiquity.

I walk in and discover it was turned into another church. I must have developed a kind of church-radar since leaving New York.

The dome even looked like God was coming in to say hello. This dome was actually constructed out of a single solid piece of concrete, which one of the popes wanted to put on top of St. Peter's Basilica...which would have been physically impossible. Michelangelo actually came out of retirement so that he could tell the pope he was being an idiot and to design a separate dome so that they didn't destroy the Pantheon. You'll soon discover through the course of this blog entry that the Vatican was, is, and always will be utterly insane.

La Fontana de Trevi: this is by far my favorite sight in Europe...mostly because when I build my dream-house, construct a temple to Poseidon in the backyard and have an enormous pool built inside the temple, this is the statue/fountain I want overlooking the deep end...possibly with a diving board somewhere on it.

Under the many asses of tourists is the Spanish Steps...are the Spanish Steps? I don't know. Fuck grammar. Here be the Spanish Steps. No, now I just sound like a pirate. Here...Spanish Steps...too many tourists.

By the way, if you ever go to the Colosseum, don't take the metro there. It's much more impressive to walk there, seeing it towering in the distance.

I somehow managed to find a tour group to go into the Colosseum with for relatively cheap, so that was cool.

This is actually the only remaining original pavement in the Colosseum. Gladiators walked on top of this.

These are also the only remaining original ornate wall decorations, which used to be painted bright colors and covered the interior walls and ceilings. Gladiators walked under this.

And, of course, the inside. Gladiators died in this. By the way, did you know that until almost five years after the Colosseum's openning, the gladiatorial matches were rigged? They used to post who was fighting who the day before the match so that people could bet on who they wanted to win and based on the number of bets on each person, they determined who would win and who would lose. WWE at its earliest.

I believe this was the Temple to Venus. There's no need to go inside of it, though...you can see the inside from the outside.

Roman Forum Fun-Fact #1 - Did you know that Romans had a primitive toilet brush that they used to wipe their asses which was essentially a sponge on a stick? The bathrooms were usually in the basement of the building (the one you're looking at in the picture is acutally the remnants of Caesar's Palace...yes, the casino...smartass). Because they had no form of lighting down there, it was very dark and certain uncomfortable injuries could occur. Hence the phrase: You've got the wrong end of the stick.

Roman Forum Fun-Fact #2 - Did you know that the average Roman stood around 4' 6" tall, and the average Goth stood around 6' 4"? And people wondered how the Roman Empire fell to barbarians. Side note: this is the supposed hill upon which Romulus founded Rome.

Roman Forum Fun-Fact #3 - Did you know that Roman soldiers used to be paid in salt? They would give their wives the salt and they would go to the stores to spend it. To indicate which stores accepted salt as a form of payment, shop-owners would put a big sign front. The Latin word for "salts"? Sales (SAH-less).

The Forum. Funny things happened on the way here.

There's a little balcony-type thing above the forum that gives you a great view of the city. This is only a part of what I saw up there.

The Arch of Titus. Interesting thing about this arch: it disproves Raiders of the Lost Ark.

If you can see here, on the interior of the arch, it clearly shows centurions carring the ark of the covenant into Rome, so the ark in the snake-pit could not have been the real ark...just a box filled with face-melting ghosts.

The Church of San Lorenzo. The Forum, at one point, was stuffed to the brim with dirt and garbage. When they cleared all of that out many years later, they discovered this old temple. Not willing to completely dig it out, they just built a church on top and put the door where the dirt was at that point. When they dug out the rest of the temple, people stopped using the church. 10 points if you can guess why.

Yep...that's who you think it is. And yes...I stabbed the statue 23 times. It felt like a good idea at the time.

Il Palazzo Venezia was rather impressive, although I have no idea what it is.

If I spoke Italian, I could guarantee that I would be coming back to the States with a full suit of centurion armor.

On Monday, I met up with the same tour guide who led us through the Forum and took a bunch of people around the Vatican. This wall is actually a secret passageway for the pope to escape to that castle I showed you before. They stopped using it when the Vatican realized that it doesn't work so well when the enemies have guns as opposed to swords.

It takes about a day to see the entire Musei Vaticani. We saw to good shit in about two hours. I liked the man's efficiency.

You see a lot of cool shit in there, like Raphael's Transfiguration.

When you see this, you're about halfway there to the Sistene Chapel.

Michelangelo loved this statue so much, he made his own version of it. All he did was move the left foot forward and to the side a bit, put the right arm down at the person's side, and bent the left elbow and bringing the hand up around the shoulder. Do that in a mirror or in front of someone who wont laugh at you and see if you can guess what Michelangelo called his version of the statue.

Because a lot of antique statues got destroyed in some sense, sculptors tried to recreate what they looked like before the destruction, based on the artist's own perception. I won't tell you what the most famous recreation of this statue was, but I will tell you it was one of Rodin's most famous works.

The papal study, an elaborately decorated hall with stunningly accurate maps of Italy. This will lead you to...

La Capella Sistina. Note: everyone enters from the rear of the chapel. Keep your eyes down and head to the front before you look up at the paintings. It's worth it.

I only had about 20 minutes left in Rome, but I dropped into St. Peter's Basilica for a quick few snapshots.

Michelangelo's original La Pieta.

The altar of St. Peter's.

And finally, the pilgramage statue of St. Peter with the shiny foot that everyone has either touched or kissed. Because of the recent outbreak of swine flu, and the fear of me bursting into flames upon touching it, I settled for a photo.

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There will only be a few more entries before I discontinue the blog, but I have definately saved the craziest shit for last.

Bagno Pericoloso! Bagno Booma!

Welcome to my wonderfully exhausting, lost-in-translation expedition to 5 Italian cities in 6 days. Please keep all arms and legs inside the blog at all times.


This was the bed & breakfast I stayed at in Venezia Mestre (or Mainlaind Venice). Looks like an ordinary room...


...but this was what I walked out onto when I immediately left my rom each morning.

It was essentially the most Italian location I could imagine. It was beautiful, but there were two major drawbacks. Firstly, the woman who owned the place didn't speak a word of English. Secondly, there was a guest there that I had a tremendous issue with.

Yes, he's real, and yes, they do exactly what you think they do. 6:10 in the morning.

It was only a 20 minute or so bus ride into Venice, so it wasn't a terrible commute. I first stumbled into the old Jewish ghetto where Shylock of The Merchant of Venice supposedly lived. Very small...very Jewish.

Yes, Venice really is a city where the roads are canals. They have sidewalks in some areas, but not always. But it was pretty.

The first night, I had dinner here on the Rialto.

The restaurant was right by where a bunch of ondoliers kept their gondolas, so it was cool to look at them for a while. I wasn't about to ride in one, though, seeing as how they were very small and it would make for a very awkwardly intimate boatride.

Taking the ferry was a much better option. Also, it was signifcantly faster.

Saw the Rialto Bridge from the water...

...also saw Santa Maria della Salute Church...

...and Ca' d'Oro, which I felt was too short of a name for a building to have that many apostraphes.

The ferry takes you to la Piazza San Marco and il Palazzo Ducale, the Duke's old palace.

Right next door is the Basilica San Marco, which is filled with stunning gold mosaics all over the ceiling. Unfortunately, you can't take pictures anywhere near them.

It's a good thing you can climb up the thing for 4 Euros and take a great shot of la Piazza

By the way, if you're interested in comedia dell'arte masks, come to Venice. They got a shitload of them and they're having a liquidation sale city wide...

...and by that, I mean the city will soon be submerged in liquid, so buy them or they'll be destroyed.

After two days in Venezia, I took a train (the preferred method of Italian travel,second only to the Vespa scooter) into Firenze (which is Florence in English...how we got that spelling is beyond me).

Now, as you can see outside of il Duomo Cathedral, there are lines for EVERYTHING here. That's mostly because Firenze has EVERYTHING. I'll explain later.

My hostel was a few blocks away from la Piazza de San Marco. Apparently, Italians are quite keen on San Marco and they love to name piazzas after him.

I met up with my friend Elyssa who has been studying in Florence for the semester through NYU and we went through this big market thing.

My better judgment made me steer clear of purchasing a Japanese sword on the streets of Italy from a creepy Indian dude. I believe in multiculturalism, but I want my katanas sold to me by a Japanese man in a bamboo forest in Okinawa, thank you very much.

Gelato: eat it. Papaya and mango rocked my fucking world. You don't like it? You suck.

I forget what this piazza is called, but I'll refer to it as la Piazza Carnivale.

Something about that piazza made me think of home, but I couldn't figure out what it was about it. Just an ambience, I think...

Ran into this poster...made me laugh. If the Italians didn't understand any of the Japanese arts, the big Mortal Kombat symbol would give them a hint as to what this was all about.

Anyone who goes to Firenze must go to la Piazza della Signorina for multiple reasons:

1) Worship Poseidon at his fountain shrine.

2) See a fake David.

3) Walk outside the Uffizi Gallery and see the Ninja Turtles. You got marble statues of Donatello...

...Leonardo...

...Michelangelo, and of course...

...Raph--wait...what? Machiavelli? MACHIAVELLI?!?!? The fact is, they didn't have a statue of Raphael outside of the Uffizi gallery. This was my biggest European disappointment of the semester. To be fair though, Raph always was the renegade. Maybe the artist was a loner douche as well and just didn't want a statue of himself.

Every major European city is built on a river or a large open body of water. London has the Thames, Berlin has the Spree, Barcelona has the Mediterranean, Venice has fucking canals everywhere, and Florence has the Arno.

Out there is the Ponte Vecchio, the only bridge to survive WWII. I would have explored it that day, but I needed to get to la Galleria dell'Accademia in the morning, so I decided to do that later. By the way, before I got into that gallery, saw some great graffiti on the walls of the museum.

Word.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the David. THE David. You're not allowed to take pictures of it, but I said fuck it. I wait in line, I pay the entrance fee, I'm taking a picture damn it. What, are you afraid the paint's gonna fade? Fuck off.

Right after seeing Dave, I hopped the next train to Pisa.

There's a little church by the river called Santa Maria della Spina. It is the only other sight to see other than the Campo dei Miracoli.

Now, there are three things you should photograph at il Campo dei Miracoli. First, take a picture of the Duomo.

Next, take a shot of the Leaning tower. It really is crooked, but you can climb up it now.

Finally, take a picture of the stupid assholes taking pictures of themselves and making it look like they're holding up the tower. The guy in the red, however, deserves some credit, as he is currently pushing the tower over; however, it is not a unique idea and a large crow should pluck out all of their eyes.

Santa Maria Novella church...ironically named after the train station and not the other way around.

Stopped by the Palace of the Medici family on my way to Ponte Vecchio...and I was somewhat underwhelmed. I didn't go inside, though...line.

Ponte Vecchio...why is it so crowded and why are there so many women there? Well, due to a Medici law several hundred years ago, only one kind of vendor can hae shops on the bridge.

GOLDSMITHS! GOLD! GOLD! YUHHEE HYEH HYEH HYEH HYEH! GOLD!

After laughing like a mad prospector for several minutes, I stopped in at my last visiting spot in Florence, la Basilica Santa Croce. Also, the last "visiting spot" for a few other people:

Galileo Galilei.

Michelangelo Buonarroti.

Dante Alighieri. This one is actually my favorite out of all the famous tombs I've seen in Europe. Dante just looks so badass on top of his tomb like that.

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(My Italian adventure continues in the segment soon to come, entitled "Vroooom...Ciao.")