Christmas in the land of her majesty the queen

LONDON~!!!!!!




My buddy inside the Tower of London outside the door for the crown jewels. I tried staring this guy down for like five minutes before I gave up. He didn't smile or budge, but every once and a while he would blow up the fur from his hat so it wouldn't cover his eyes. Then on second thought I'm glad I didn't push him further... it is never wise to piss people off who have automatic weapons.


Tower of London


Leicester Square


Piccadilly Circus

Christmas at the Hostel



Christmas at the Hostel Pic nombre deux


Cat guy outside of Ripley's Believe it or not! See link: http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?Man_turned_cat_is_worlds_%91most_modified_man%92&in_article_id=291749&in_page_id=34




Oxford street... I think???





Me and Ben





Me at the Buckingham Palace Gate.


Monument outside Buckingham Palace




Me waiting for her majesty to invite me in for tea. And maybe crumpets. mmmmmm crumpets.




Buckingham Palace



Self Explanatory




Big Ben





Me at the Tower of London in front of a rack of pistols at the old armory in the white tower. I asked an Italian girl to take my picture and I think that might be her dad staring at me, wondering how the white Irish looking guy speaks Italian.




Tower Bridge



China Town!



British colonialism may have failed, but American cultural colonialism is alive and kicking.

Instead of Christmas in Paris I eventually decided on Christmas in London. In the end, perhaps, I chose London because of stories like Dicken’s A Christmas Carol that have firmly planted in my consciousness a more Christmasy feel to London than Paris, or more likely, after a week of writing papers and final exams I NEEDED to go to a place where English was spoken, it was a matter of sanity. I spent Christmas in London and left the day after for Dublin. In sum it was four nights each place, ten days, two hostels with four bunked beds, and a lot of travel.

I left my house at noon and arrived in London at midnight.

Traveling by air involves annoying security checks where my contact solution gets dumped out by irate security personal who tell me that I need to read the rules better because you can’t have containers of liquid over 100mL in a carryon bag. Air travel at its core is a game of hurry up and wait, you hurry to the ticket counter only to stand in line, you try to hurry to your gate only to have a man with a metal detector wave it around your periphery while you’re standing in a vertical spread eagle after a good old fashioned pat down….

But in the end your at your destination. I got my carryon out of the overhead compartment and stepped of the plane with this great feeling that I am in the land of Her Magesty!

After an hour long shuttle ride I was finally in London and took the subway, what Londoners call “the tube,” to Russell Square and from here, very slowly and wearily made it to my hostel which without a map or any sense of direction proved to be a tad difficult to find.

This was my first experience with a hostel and it was great. The reality that I was staying with some new people generally similar in age was refreshing and fun and allowed for single serving friends to laugh with, drink with, explore with, and eat and celebrate Christmas with. Traveling alone can sometimes get lonely and it was nice to have familiar faces around.

When I finally got to the hostel it was past 1:00am, I checked in and made my way to another building where my bed awaited me. Not wanting to wake up the two other people sleeping on the bottom bunks of the two bunk beds I didn’t turn the light on and instead got ready for bed in darkness and what I hoped would pass for silence. Of course that silence was soon interrupted when the metal from my belt buckle tumbled down from atop the cabinet where I had put my stuff and came crashing on the metal post of the bed sending an alarm-clock like ringing through the room. Ohh well.

The next day brought me to the Tower of London, the British crown jewels, and a plate of fajitas at a restaurant called, “Purgatory.” Eating food that wasn’t Italian was a welcome repose, even if the fajitas were below the standard of those which I could get back in Santa Fe. The tour of the Tower of London was fascinating and the gems and gold of the British crown opulent and incredible. Aside from the scepter with the largest, flawless cut diamond in existence, a diamond the size of my fist, one piece of regalia particularly striking was a large wine container about the size of a small bathtub made entirely of gold with a serving ladle of a conch shell with an intricate pattern of gold woven around it and extending up to a long handle. The queen’s coronation gown was a mesh of spun gold. I had only heard of spun gold in fairy tales and stories of treasure and almost didn’t believe it existed in real life.

After the Tower of London which took most of my day I took the tube to Parliament and from there walked past Westminster Abby to Buckingham Palace to see the queens official residence. By the end of it I coveted a position in the royal family and was crafting my future take over of Great Britain. I sauntered up to Trafalgar square to take the tube back to the hostel.

The next day my roommate at the hostel and I went to the business district and toured the museum of the mint where we got to hold a gold brick worth 300,000 pounds—that’s about $450,000 dollars. So much about London is designed to exhibit the wealth and power of the state. Next we toured the Buckingham palace museum. More priceless works of art, shields made out of silver and dripping with emeralds and rubies, swords made from silver with diamond encrusted hilts. Yet more diamond tiaras and impossibly elaborate stuff encrusted with…you guessed it…gold and diamonds and gems of all shapes, qualities and sizes. By the end of it you’re almost not really impressed anymore because everything seems so surreal, all the objects so distinctly outside the everyday for us plebeians.

Next we went to Harrods of Knightsbridge for lunch in the nicest food court I have ever set foot in. They were having a Christmas Eve sale and I was able to get one of those thanksgiving dinner sandwiches: turkey, cranberry sauce, stuffing, packed between two halves of a baguette for less than two pounds. Next was Piccadilly Circus, which is far more time square like advertising and retail shops and far less circus. Next a quick jaunt to Leicester square which strangely enough had a fair going on with amusement rides, carnies, and the like and was far more circus-like than I could ever imagine Piccadilly to be. Next nap time. Finally came the search to find an open restaurant on Christmas Eve for which we didn’t need reservations. Now don’t tell any of my Italian friends but we ended up eating at, “Pasta Hut,” a dining establishment that, like its Pizza Hut predecessor specializes in palatable, decent, economical, but far from good food.

The next day was Christmas and nothing was open so I spent my day eating and drinking and watching movies with the folks from the hostel. That day I watched, “Happy Gilmore,” most of “Gone in 60 Seconds,” before finally falling asleep to, “The Bourne Ultimatum.” This was certainly my most social day in London and it was fun but doesn’t give much to blog about.

The next day I was sure to have fish and chips, a meal that I had yet to have in London but had promised myself that I would. I ate it in a small pub near Victoria Station and then set out to Dublin…. You’ll hear about that adventure in the coming days.

Qualche Foto della Bellezza di Firenze

Here are some pictures of Florence absent from my usual post and explanations. But I'll give you a hint, the picture above is of the Duomo.

La mia vita più il gelato.

So it’s been a little while since I’ve last written and instead I left you with that last less than savory entry for long enough to let it stew…

So much has happened since that trip to Genova, and this entry was originally intended to be on a successive trip to Bologna in which the highlight was the most incredible gelato I have ever had in my life. I will tell you this, the food in Bologna is absolutely amazing and almost worth a jump across the 3000 mile pond simply to gorge yourself in the city where prosciutto, pesto, ravioli, lasagna, and yes also gelato were invented.

But no, instead of concentrating on the minutiae of my trip to Bologna I will instead ramble on about Italy and my life a bit, you will nevertheless not be spared my pictures from the trip which I present to you now:

All the pictures you see above this one were taken after a Heineken, and after i climbed the hundreds of steps in the tower presented on the right. From the height of the tower you could see the whole city.

Italy has already changed me, in ways more profound than I probably even realize. To begin, I can now speak Italian, I mean really speak it. I knew Italian when I came of course; the grammar and the finer points of conjugation, but now I see the difference between knowing a language and actually speaking it—using subtlety to explain a point, expressing joy and sadness, and using language in a way that isn’t just words but actually reaches people, convinces them, changes their minds’ and lets them see your point of view—this is the difference between speaking and knowing a language and the fact that I am now speaking a language that only three years ago was a vague aspiration gives me pause.

Beauty is a religion here for which I have become a believer. I went to the Uffizi gallery and saw such famous works as Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, Da Vinci’s The Adoration of the Magi, a self portrait of Michelangelo. Yesterday I went with my art history class to l’Accademia and saw Michelangelo’s David—il Davide—the fact that mankind is capable of so much evil and yet there are some among us capable of creating such mastery is enough to restore my faith in humanity and to inspire me to push to be something greater than I am.

Unfortunately this will have to be a short entry. Finals are next week. But after that I’ll have nothing but time.

Oh yea, and I’m thinking of spending my Christmas in Paris. Not a bad life uh?

From Italy, “Buona Giornata!”

La mia piccola gita a Genova (My little trip to Genoa)

(Piazza de Ferrari--Genova)

I once heard that house dust is 75% human skin. Keep that in mind. It’ll come up later as I describe my weekend trip to Genoa, (called Genova in Italian) located just east of the Italian Riviera.

I left Saturday on an early afternoon train from Florence’s Santa Maria Novella Station. Three hours later, after an hour long stop in Pisa—during which I regrettably didn’t have the time to cross the town to see the tower—I was in Genova.

Genova is unlike any city I have ever seen, which I guess isn’t really saying too much because every city I’ve been to thus far is unlike any city I have ever seen. The streets are narrow and labyrinth like and the buildings are tall—at night every street downtown, in every direction, looks like a dark and foreboding alley. I was only able to keep my bearings walking in this maze by knowing where I was in relation to Genova Harbor, where I sat on a bench for about half an hour watching schools of fish pass just beneath the surface of the water.

I went to dinner close to the harbor, just before the storm hit. The restaurant was elevated from the city street and I had to climb a flight of stairs to greet the man who stood in the doorway. He stood there with his apron on looking at the harbor, or maybe something just past it, and I had to ask him if indeed the restaurant was open. He said that it was and he led me to my seat in a restaurant that had three separate tiers. The entryway was in the center tier and I descended a small flight of stairs to go to the bottom. There were three people in the entire restaurant, the man who led me to my seat and then took my order, his wife in the kitchen separated from my dinning area by a cloth curtain, and myself. In all three tiers I’d say there were about twenty-five tables, all of them set, and all of them clientless. The man took my order, and was crafty in getting me to order more than I originally intended, but he was nice enough and had a grandfatherly feel about him. The place was decorated with paintings of ocean scenes with ships at sea, fruit baskets spilling their cornucopia, and the Virgin Mary.

I ordered a half liter of the house red wine, ravioli with meat ragu, and a salad. He leaned behind the curtain and shouted my order to his wife in the kitchen who then clattered pans and said something in dialect that I couldn’t understand. The steak was delicious and so was the ragu, very simple but good. I was going to finish only with an espresso but when I saw the rain outside I figured I’d stay for a little longer—in the end I had two espressos and a tiramisu. About halfway done with the tiramisu they get a second client. When I left it was still raining, but I was given a map and directions on the best way to return to my hotel room and still stay relatively dry.

And it worked, most of the way back to my hotel room was under cover of portico and by the time I was on the street of the hotel the rain had stopped.

Now a little about my hotel: Finding this place was the first thing I did when I arrived in Genova, but it has struck me that my process of finding a hotel may be drastically different than yours. I look for the biggest dump possible. I don’t care about little comforts. I don’t need a chocolate on my pillow or a turn down service. I am quite content without a continental breakfast. What I need is to pay as little as possible for a clean simple room so that I can rationalize my way to making impulse buys like gelato and wine. So having done this, I found a place called, “Hotel della Posta” literally, “Hotel of the Place,” and walked into the sparse lobby where a bearded man in his fifties was sitting at the reception and watching the T.V. show, “Monk,” dubbed in Italian. I asked him if there were any single rooms for the night. He said that—as luck would have it—he had one left. I gave him forty Euros, my passport, and he filled out the paperwork with my name, residence, and room number. He gave me back my passport along with a key and the television remote. I went up to my room which was about a third of the size of my room in Florence and had a shower stall and a sink conveniently placed about a meter away from the foot of the bed. Shower, sink and bed all in one room, a bathroom and bedroom all in one! There was no toilet though—it is never a good idea to shit where you sleep.

When I had first checked in I had taken a shower and then watched an episode of some MTV reality show with Italian subtitles while wondering if this were the only window other countries had to America they would think our lives are full of promiscuous sex and drunken fighting. And that’s it. Punto e Basta.

When I came back after dinner it was only to get my umbrella and venture out once again into the great unknown. My venturing was short and uneventful aside from the stinging feeling that in one of these dark winding streets lurked some sort of danger. But Freddie Kruger never jumped out from behind the bend to chop me up into little bits. In fact, the biggest excitement of the evening was the spotting of a mouse, which I histrionically identified originally as a rat, which scurried from behind a trashcan and into a gutter. I went by the Piazza de Ferrari, shown above courtesy of Wikipedia, and bought a Guinness at a bar. I did some people watching while sipping my Guinness and eventually sauntered back to my home away from home away from home…

Those of you who have never lived with me, which is most of you, wouldn’t know about the obsessive compulsive way in which I clean my sheets, punctually, every week. I've heard that dust is 75% human skin, leaving the other 25% up to dirt, pollen, various fibrous material, and… DUST MITES along with their feces. These dust mites feast on the organic matter in dust—your skin—and like most living things excrete waste. This waste is an extreme allergen and if you’re allergic to dust this is probably the culprit.

I slid my hand across my sheets before going to bed and I noticed they were slightly grainy. Fresh sheets are not grainy. As I tried to go to sleep the only thing I could think about was how I was practically bathing in the dead skin and dust mites of whoever slept here before me. I got out of bed the next day with the familiar feeling that I must have slept at some point because I wasn’t tired, but I couldn’t recall when.

Now that I was up and checking out of the hotel, I figured there was no harm in looking in the drawers… just to see what I’d find. The top drawer of the night stand had five hairs mixed with a grey/black dust that looked like a mixture of cigarette ashes and peeled black paint. One of the hairs had the appearance of coming from a different part of the human anatomy than the head. I stopped my investigation there.

After I checked out of the hotel I wondered around with my laptop bag bulging with dirty clothes, toiletries, and a notebook filled with homework; I knew none of this homework would get done but brought it along for the trip anyway with good intentions. I went outside the city center, beyond the city walls, and up to a height from which I could see a large portion of the city. The first skyscrapers I’ve seen in Italy have been in Genova. I remember seeing only two. For the most part the narrow streets curl together as storefronts and homes with clothes lines hanging outside the windows. These streets are dotted with beautiful churches made of marble, many of which are painted with frescoes. I walked back down to the city center, made my way to one of those churches where they were just finishing mass, walked inside, and listened to the closing prayer. When it was done I returned to the Piazza de Ferrari where I ate a croissant and drank a cappuccino while listening to my iPod and watching the people pass. I walked around a bit more, eventually got a gelato and then returned to the train station. I had to wait an hour for the train and the, “coming back” took nearly twice as long as the, “getting there.”
And there it is. Punto e Basta, last weekend’s trip to Genova.


From Italy, “Buona Giornata.”

un po' di informazione

So it has been about three weeks since my last post, but school happened. Although I’m not as swamped with course work as I usually am at Middlebury, this country has poisoned me with laziness. During my weekend, I hardly even want to go out anymore, I just want to take naps. Amidst my period of sloth I have had a few adventures.

Chocolate lovers, be prepared for a taste of envy, as I went to the largest chocolate festival in Europe, “Eurochocolate 2008.” This was last weekend, as I was recovering from a cold. I traveled, like my trip to Rome, alone and unprepared. However, this time a large part of that unpreparedness was planed. While on my trip to Rome I carried several items of importance, for this trip I packed nothing. The major difference, however, is that on this trip I found a hotel and thus many, “provisions” were provided. It was fun, I ate a lot of chocolate, I bought a bit of chocolate, and the city in which it took place was really cool. It was a medieval city called, Perugia, built upon a hill with all these winding steps to go from place to place. It didn’t hold a candle to my trip to Rome, however. Rome has become for me the benchmark through which I measure all of my other experiences here in Italy. I’m anxious to go back though I don’t know what I’d do this time around.

Apropos of nothing, I realized that many of the details of Florence and greater Italy have thus far gone undescribed.



This is an Italian exit sign. They’re everywhere. Most of the time you see these exit signs in clusters, as though the one ten feet away would escape your attention.

Eye contact is used differently in Italy. It is far more intense. I can’t imagine what it would be like to travel here as a woman because guys will literally stare at you unflinchingly from the moment you cross their field of vision to the moment you leave it. Between guys, eye-contact is more a game of dominance and figuring out who’s, “the man,” the, “alpha male” whatever you want to call it. This happens in the U.S. too, but in Italy it happens with a frequency and an intensity that is difficult to put into words.

Most of Italy shuts down between noon and two-thirty. The shops empty. Students are chased out of the library and the computer lab at my school becomes vacant. People go home to make lunch and take a nap. While this can be inconvenient for people raised in our 7/11 convenience store, 24 hour Wal-Mart culture, I’ve learned to appreciate the value of a good nap.

The Italian language is one of complexity and balance. Unlike the English language, it is not particularly rich in words; however, it makes up for it with a richness of structure that is tongue-tying. Articles, nouns, and their accompanying adjectives all agree in gender and number, which is why it is not uncommon for you to hear a sentence in which most words end with the same vowel. This of course is a bit of an oversimplification that presupposes a minimal knowledge of the language; however, suffice it to say that the richness in structure means that everyone speaks the language differently. Not to mention the regional dialectical differences. There are many words in Italian that don’t have direct translations into English and when I talk to some of you on the phone I often find myself stuck, wanting to use a word in Italian, but knowing it would reach the ears of the uninitiated. In the end, Italian has more facility when expressing emotions or desires, whereas English is more useful in getting a point across and describing events in detail, and exactly in the manner that you intend.

Everyone smokes.

I see public displays of affection on the daily.

In the grocery store they charge extra for each bag you wish to use and only offer one, no matter how many groceries you have. You have to ask for any extra. There is no choice between paper or plastic.

The idea that everyone in this country speaks English is grossly exaggerated. There are plenty of people here who don’t speak English. Without knowledge of Italian, my experience here would be drastically different.

Italian T.V is funny in an, “I’m laughing at you, not with you” way. Basic cable has about 4 different types of MTV and the worst music from ten years ago is seemingly very popular.

Above the stove there is a gas valve that you have to turn on to send gas to the burner.

If I started a Hooters franchise in Italy I would have more money than I’d know what to do with.

I’ve seen some incredible pieces of art. All of them were religious. The Catholic Church was clearly some power here in Italy, although now that power is largely diminished.

I miss apple pie, peanut butter, Vermont maple syrup, and Ribeye steaks. You can’t get those things here. Now I know what Jared feels like eating only Subway Sandwiches as I eat only pasta.

My expensive sonic-care toothbrush is probably dead after plugging it in during my first week without a converter. I just used an adapter which fixes the hardware issue but does not convert the whopping 220 volts that comes out of the wall into the American standard of 110… Now I know... Now I have to brush my teeth the old-fashioned way.

The U.S dollar is steadily gaining in value versus the Euro, but I still had to pay the equivalent of 4 dollars American for a soft-drink yesterday.

That’s all for now. I’ll try to write more often, but next week is the start of midterms so I’m not making any promises.

From Italy, “Buona Giornata!”

In Celebration of Bacchus

Last night the Piazza Santo Spirito and the Piazza Pitti were filled with little white tents and in each little white tent stood two or several Italian men or women with cork screw in hand. This was the Florence Wine Festival, a showcase for the best wine in the Tuscan region and an occasion in which I had the good fortune to participate. For 10 Euros I was given a wine glass and a card that entitled me to twelve tastes of wine. With each visit to a little white tent my glass was filled about a sixth of the way and my card received a hole-punch. As my card approached 12 holes I have to say the wine started tasting more or less the same.


From the Cantina di Montalcino vineyard I tried a nice, “vino rosso” made with sangiovese grapes. Cantina da Vinci offered a, “Chianti Da Vinci Riserva” that if I can remember through the wine induced fog that is my recollection of that evening was very nice. I sipped more Chianti’s, from more vineyards, than any uncultured oaf like myself has any right to. As the night progressed I found myself wishing my palate was more refined so that I could rightly taste the difference from one good Chianti to the next. I found a table in the Piazza Santo Spirito next to the fountain and listened to middle aged Italian men seated in a makeshift band stand play music and argue in Italian while smoking cigarettes in between sets. Several young Italian guys about my age sat on the steps under the fountain around a man about twenty years their senior who was calmly and effortlessly—surrounded by people—gutting a cigarette and mixing it with hash to prepare a joint… no one said a word or even seemed to notice. Everyone was too intoxicated by the wine, the music, the company of friends, to take much notice of anything.


At about nine in the evening I left with still two drinks left on my card. The nights in Florence have been crisp as of late, bordering on chilly and I had gone unprepared. As I was leaving I saw on the ground, unnoticed by the crowd of American girls clustered near it, another drink card with only two holes punched out of it. Ten drinks to go! But alas, I was cold and knew that that drink card could wait for the next day—today. The Florence Wine Festival is a weekend long event from Friday night to Sunday night. Perhaps I’ll go before dinner to take an, “aperitivo” before cooking a nice steak in a quarter stick of butter.

Terza Settima (Third Week).... My adventure in the Eternal City.

Picture Explanations from Bottom to Top:

1) View of the Tuscan hillside from the train.

2) The Colosseum.

3) The Colosseum
.

4) Me on my tour at...you guessed it... The Colosseum.

5) Saint Peters Basillica and Saint Peters Square.

6) The Pantheon.

7) The Spanish steps in the Piazza di Spagna in Sepia on a Saturday night.

8) The Spanish steps in black and white.

9) The Trevi Fountain.




.........................................................................................................................................................................

I could continue this blog outlining the progression of my first two weeks of classes. I could tell you about how because of a mess up at the consulate in Boston no one in the Middlebury program has as of yet been able to enroll at the Università degli Studi di Firenze for our sojourn in the Italian university system and classes alongside Italians. I could tell you about syllabi received, and incomprehensible moments breaking away into epiphany.

Or… I could tell you about my trip last weekend to Rome.

Santa Maria Novella Train Station; Saturday, 20 sept. 08; 13:20:

I step on a train alone to go to a city I’ve never been before. I’ve made no plans for accommodations, I don’t know anyone. I’m carrying a laptop bag with my provisions: a change of clothes for the next day, toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, a contact lenses case with fresh solution, a notebook, and my passport.

When I step off the train and exit the station in Rome every direction may as well have been the same direction so I pick a street and walk. I buy a map off a street corner magazine vendor and he tells me how to get to The Colosseum. He says it’s too far to go on foot and that I’d best take the subway or the bus, he points me in the direction of both of them. Trying first the bus I found the route system daunting and incomprehensible not knowing, of course, in which zone I could find The Colosseum. The subway was easier although I had to buy two tickets. The first ticket, after several unsuccessful tries to get through the gate and unto the blue-line, was crumpled and disposed of. With the second, however, I quickly realized that if I would only turn the card around before putting it into the machine it would quickly admit my entrance. I was relieved. My stop on the subway was called “Colosseo” and as soon as I climbed the steps out of the dark subterranean subway pit I could quickly see why. There it was, ancient and enormous, with a line wrapped around one small section of its girth.

I did the tour. I paid the extra Euros to go into the express line and smiled as I passed all the patiently waiting people fiddling with their cameras as I zipped to the front of the line. The tour lasted about forty-five minutes and didn’t really tell me anything the history channel hadn’t told me already. I left feeling culturally fortified.

With map in hand like any good tourist I began to scan for points of interest. And like any good American I wanted to make efficient use of my time. Seeking to maximize utility, I planed my journey in a linier fashion between The Colosseum and the Piazza del Popolo zigzagging to the sights I wanted to see along the way.

By about 7:30pm I was at the Trevi Fountain with tourists elbow to elbow eager to throw their coin and take their picture. I ate dinner close by. My waiter talked to me in a mixture of English and Italian. I ordered a half liter of red wine and a two course meal. When I got the bill something seemed fishy and I took out my pen to make the calculations myself. I was overcharged one euro. The mistake was remedied.

When I was done eating I was excited to go to the Spanish steps, hearing that that is the place to be in the early evening hours. Hundreds of young people sat on the steps drinking wine and beer and vodka. A group of American guys with a loud speaker were screaming out the slogan of their fraternity…or something of the like… and another group was responding. I made conversation with a beautiful Spanish señorita in knee high boots smoking by the wall. She spoke pretty good Italian. She asked me if I was here in Rome to Study.—No I study in Florence. She asked me if I was here in Rome alone.—Yes. She asked me if I had any plans for the night.—not really. She told me that she was waiting for some of her friends who were, like her, here in Rome to study. She invited me to meet her friends.

This was how I met over a dozen people here in Rome on, “Erasmus,” the European exchange program and our equivalent to study abroad. With the Irish students leading the way (seriously) we were off to find the best pub or party spot in the city that particular evening. They led us to the Piazza di San Lorenzo where a festival of sorts was going on. I decided not to drink. I hadn’t found a place to sleep for the night and thought it best I keep my wits about me while traveling alone in a foreign city. So while my new friends pounded shots of vodka some Irish blokes, some English chaps, and I stood on the piazza and discussed, of all things, American politics and economics. Hours later, at about 1:30 in the morning I decided that it was time to collect the contact information of my new friends and to begin the search for an open hotel or hostel.

This proved to be easier said then done. While in America it is quite easy to find an open hotel at 1:30 in the morning this, however, is Italy where everything, including hotel access shuts down at a particular hour. I walked. My journey brought me outside the ancient city walls and into a part of Rome which was beginning to look a little less like the picture books. So I hopped on a bus, the first bus I saw. I didn’t know where it was going and I didn’t pay for admission. I sat down looking out the windows for any sign of a hotel that might still be open or better yet a hostel so that I could save some money. The bus went back by The Colosseum and it was here that I decided to get off. I thought that if I could find a place to sleep here, near The Colosseum I’ll be able to take the subway in the morning to all the places I had yet to see. No luck. By this time it was 3:00am. It was cold. I had prepared for this adventure with only two pairs of shorts and two tee-shirts as I expected Rome’s balmy Mediterranean climate to apply also to the evenings. I was proven wrong. I walked past The Colosseum and sat on the steps of the monument to Vittorio Emanuele II (google it. It’s nifty). 3:30am. It was here on these steps that I decided, to hell with it—to hell with a hotel, to hell with a hostel, to hell with sleeping. I roamed the city all night long.

I returned to the Trevi Fountain at about four in the morning. Apart from one couple and a police woman I was the only one there this time around. Neighboring the Trevi Fountain whose water is continuously recycled there is a smaller fountain whose water comes from an ancient aqueduct beneath. I used it to brush my teeth. I walked back past the Pantheon, and approached the Castle di Saint Angelo. From here I made my way to Vatican City. It was deserted. I stood alone in Saint Peters square. I advanced to the Piazza del Popolo, where Mussolini gave all his most infamous speeches; with the exception of scattered traffic again I was alone.

When day broke I was hungry and at about 7:30am when the shops started opening I found a little café and ordered a croissant and a cappuccino. I returned to Saint Peters Square to find it inhabited and Saint Peter’s Basilica open to the public. I went in. By the time I left my neck hurt from looking at the ceiling. Everywhere was opulence and beauty. I took the bus from Vatican city to another bus stop (this time I paid) and from this bus stop I went back to the train station. The train ride was longer this time around but I didn’t mind, I slept for most of it. When I got back to Florence my bed was waiting for me just as I left it: scattered with course syllabi, articles to be read the next day, and half finished writing assignments. I cleared it all off and went to sleep, feeling satisfied.