What an incredible trip! Que fantastico!
One of the greatest benefits I've had on this trip is the ability to slow down. I plan out slow mornings so I can wake up over the course of 30 minutes instead of at the beep of an alarm. I leave myself room to stretch, meditate, and plan out my day. Also just having more free time has been a blessing in itself. I feel my brain and spirit at peace. I'm much more at ease with the inequities of life right now :)
Alright, so the stories:
Roma: We showed up to find that they don't give a DAMN about traffic there. Scooters flying by you on the sidewalk, cars parking perpendicular on the road (smart cars of course), and the best part of the crazy traffic?: being a pedestrian. So many many many of the intersections of Roma don't have lights for pedestrians. The technique? Just walk. We showed up and about 4 intersections from the train station we met our first non-light crossing where cars were coming so fast and often that you couldn't run across it if they didn't stop. We had a kind of staring contest with these cars until a nun walked by us and just stepped out in front of the traffic and low and behold THEY STOPPED! We huddled behind the nun the first couple of lights but after that we grew the cajones to jump out by ourselves.
We visited all the sites: piazza navona, piazza di popola, piazza republica, a bajillion other piazzas, the parthenon, palentino, the coloseum (wow), circus maximus, the vatican museum, st. peter's square and basilica, the trevi fountain, a good handful of parks I already forgot the name of, the spanish steps, where caesar was killed, a handful of well selected pubs, and many more that i'll only remember when i go back there.
I found the city too crowded, too busy, and too packed to enjoy at first. It was tough to enjoy the coloseum when you had 10 different guys come up to you and offer you the same damned things or when there's thousands of people there looking at it just like you. It was incredible to see all the sites but the saving grace for the city FOR ME (big emphasis on this one kids) was the pub crawl. I got to see the city at night in a new light, meet lots of fun people, and really let loose. We met 3 fun girls from UGA of all places and we crawled with them for most of the rest of the night. We met them the next day at Piazza Navona for lunch and at night we had a crazy african styled improv dance session with the locals in the circus maximus. It was pretty unreal dancing to savage drumming in the tracks where thousands had come before and thousands had died. I would love to have seen Caesar's face when I traveled back in time and told him that it'd one day be a good place to dance and party there.
The absolute best part to see of Roma was easily... easily the Vatican. You don't even have to be religious (it helps) to appreciate the 100 ft tall walls absolutely covered with decades of sculpture, artwork, and dedication. St. Peter's Basilica was HUGE. It had enough seating in there for thousands upon thousands and they still needed St. Peters Square. I just conversed with my good buddy wikipedia.org to find out that the basilica, NOT the square, but just the basilica seats 60,000+. Yea...
So go see that basilica. Spend some time in there.
You find special people all over the world...
Firenze:
Florence was pretty alright. It has a TON of art so its definitely worth the visit but many people say it equals Roma in quality and on that I, in my most professional manner, have to call Shenanigans. It was dirtier. It did have a TON of shops to go to and alot more art but since thats not my cup of tea, it didn't matter too much. The Duomo was pretty incredible on the outside and so so on the inside. Rick Steve's takes a rough stab at it and says that the best part about the Duomo was the shade. Hurts deep, doesn't it? One pretty cool part about the duomo is the huge tower next to it. Christina and I climbed it and saw Florence from the top of the world.
Did the pub crawl there with 50 crazy college americans instead of 160 like Roma... not nearly as good. A good bit of it was the pool we were pulling from. There were 20 of them in a party that said they were 21 or 22 but in fact were 17 or 18 which makes the partying dynamics very different and much more saddening. You better believe that this was the group I spent most of my time with in the beginning of the crawl getting to know and initiating friendships with. whoops.
David was indeed the best of the best. Of all the sculptures i've seen in italy and in my life he was the best. Surely there are many out there that look visually more impressive but the qualifying factor of david was his realism. I saw his stomach which wasn't a 12 pack but a loosely packed 6 pack. His back wasn't a scaled down outlay of the himilayas but instead had a moderate amount of definition. It might be vain, but I saw more of myself in David than any of the other mythical sculptures and that might be a pretty sizable contributor to my opinion.
3rd weekend I was supposed to go to Cinque Terra. Joaquin made it and said it was incredible. The group who went before said it blew their minds but I am very happy I stayed. It gave me alot of time to get good work done on the documentary, it let me relax a little, and I had the room to myself for the weekend.
I'm all for fast paced life and experiencing as much as I can in this little life o' mine but goodness I love relaxing enough to watch life drift by sometimes.
I'm going to work on getting the rest of my 251 pictures up for you guys. Keep harassing me.
One of the greatest benefits I've had on this trip is the ability to slow down. I plan out slow mornings so I can wake up over the course of 30 minutes instead of at the beep of an alarm. I leave myself room to stretch, meditate, and plan out my day. Also just having more free time has been a blessing in itself. I feel my brain and spirit at peace. I'm much more at ease with the inequities of life right now :)
Alright, so the stories:
Roma: We showed up to find that they don't give a DAMN about traffic there. Scooters flying by you on the sidewalk, cars parking perpendicular on the road (smart cars of course), and the best part of the crazy traffic?: being a pedestrian. So many many many of the intersections of Roma don't have lights for pedestrians. The technique? Just walk. We showed up and about 4 intersections from the train station we met our first non-light crossing where cars were coming so fast and often that you couldn't run across it if they didn't stop. We had a kind of staring contest with these cars until a nun walked by us and just stepped out in front of the traffic and low and behold THEY STOPPED! We huddled behind the nun the first couple of lights but after that we grew the cajones to jump out by ourselves.
We visited all the sites: piazza navona, piazza di popola, piazza republica, a bajillion other piazzas, the parthenon, palentino, the coloseum (wow), circus maximus, the vatican museum, st. peter's square and basilica, the trevi fountain, a good handful of parks I already forgot the name of, the spanish steps, where caesar was killed, a handful of well selected pubs, and many more that i'll only remember when i go back there.
I found the city too crowded, too busy, and too packed to enjoy at first. It was tough to enjoy the coloseum when you had 10 different guys come up to you and offer you the same damned things or when there's thousands of people there looking at it just like you. It was incredible to see all the sites but the saving grace for the city FOR ME (big emphasis on this one kids) was the pub crawl. I got to see the city at night in a new light, meet lots of fun people, and really let loose. We met 3 fun girls from UGA of all places and we crawled with them for most of the rest of the night. We met them the next day at Piazza Navona for lunch and at night we had a crazy african styled improv dance session with the locals in the circus maximus. It was pretty unreal dancing to savage drumming in the tracks where thousands had come before and thousands had died. I would love to have seen Caesar's face when I traveled back in time and told him that it'd one day be a good place to dance and party there.
The absolute best part to see of Roma was easily... easily the Vatican. You don't even have to be religious (it helps) to appreciate the 100 ft tall walls absolutely covered with decades of sculpture, artwork, and dedication. St. Peter's Basilica was HUGE. It had enough seating in there for thousands upon thousands and they still needed St. Peters Square. I just conversed with my good buddy wikipedia.org to find out that the basilica, NOT the square, but just the basilica seats 60,000+. Yea...
So go see that basilica. Spend some time in there.
You find special people all over the world...
Firenze:
Florence was pretty alright. It has a TON of art so its definitely worth the visit but many people say it equals Roma in quality and on that I, in my most professional manner, have to call Shenanigans. It was dirtier. It did have a TON of shops to go to and alot more art but since thats not my cup of tea, it didn't matter too much. The Duomo was pretty incredible on the outside and so so on the inside. Rick Steve's takes a rough stab at it and says that the best part about the Duomo was the shade. Hurts deep, doesn't it? One pretty cool part about the duomo is the huge tower next to it. Christina and I climbed it and saw Florence from the top of the world.
Did the pub crawl there with 50 crazy college americans instead of 160 like Roma... not nearly as good. A good bit of it was the pool we were pulling from. There were 20 of them in a party that said they were 21 or 22 but in fact were 17 or 18 which makes the partying dynamics very different and much more saddening. You better believe that this was the group I spent most of my time with in the beginning of the crawl getting to know and initiating friendships with. whoops.
David was indeed the best of the best. Of all the sculptures i've seen in italy and in my life he was the best. Surely there are many out there that look visually more impressive but the qualifying factor of david was his realism. I saw his stomach which wasn't a 12 pack but a loosely packed 6 pack. His back wasn't a scaled down outlay of the himilayas but instead had a moderate amount of definition. It might be vain, but I saw more of myself in David than any of the other mythical sculptures and that might be a pretty sizable contributor to my opinion.
3rd weekend I was supposed to go to Cinque Terra. Joaquin made it and said it was incredible. The group who went before said it blew their minds but I am very happy I stayed. It gave me alot of time to get good work done on the documentary, it let me relax a little, and I had the room to myself for the weekend.
I'm all for fast paced life and experiencing as much as I can in this little life o' mine but goodness I love relaxing enough to watch life drift by sometimes.
I'm going to work on getting the rest of my 251 pictures up for you guys. Keep harassing me.
posted by Bucci at
2:33 AM
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