After the camping we visited two villages in Tuscany on our way to Rome. Now things like 'Geography' or 'facts' may prove that there is no possible way we drove through Tuscany on our way to Rome, but I'm just calling it how my fuzzy memory remembers it. My diary isn't much help because the guy writing it is mentally unstable from what I can tell, or just has a serious case of ADD, either way I can't rely on that either. So. Tuscany was nice, although I wanted to experience it differently than most of my friends. I wanted to take the wander around and explore route, while they preferred the sit down and take pictures of attractive strangers route. Seriously, whenever I think I'm the creepiest of creepers someone else takes it to a whole different level. Although I did enjoy listening to the birds and contemplating the landscape I hoped that the Basques would be more active when we got to Rome, and they were, although not by choice. You see in Rome when you sit down the Italians do not understand it as 'I am tired and need to rest,' but rather 'Please harass me.' Do you have half a dozen pamphlets in your hand already? No problem, you don't have this fucking pamphlet, it's so much better than those fucking pamphlets, you can tell the food at this restaurant is of higher quality because of the mother fucking font we use, and if you try and ignore us we'll just swear at you more.
In Rome we stayed in Idea Hotel. It had a beautiful design, comfortable rooms, and a great breakfast buffet (although our standards weren't exactly high after the plain cereal and coffee of the camping). In fact it was so aesthetically pleasing that the owners must have decided that maintenance would just be silly, half the lights were burnt out, several showers had cold water or colder water, and many hairdryers were broken. Luckily I'm a good person so I was not punished with stepping into an ice shower, but one of my roommates must have done something to anger the maintenance staff gods because we had to pass the nights by reading lamp light or bathroom light. Now for a run down of the places we saw. As a group we visited an ancient Roman market. It was a multiple story, open air, well protected, collection of beautiful edifices. If modern farmer's markets were like that one I think they would get a lot more business, there were great views of the city and a comfortable feeling as if the Roman's wanted to say, 'Yeah we built this place because it suits our needs, it was not meant to be extravagant or anything, but it gets the job done,' and they would tell us that in a completely not douchebaggy tone.
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| Also many more dark corners to play hide the organic hotdog in the whole grain taco shell |
The next day we visited the Colosseum. It was impressive, although it is one of the structures that a person sees so many times in their life time before actually visiting it there is a loss of pure shock at the grandeur. It is replaced by shock at all the ways they extort money out of tourists. Besides gift shops and photos with gladiators there are secret rules, like how your entrance fee only allows you to visit two levels of the four floor structure. Some people want to go to the basement, which would be cool, you get to imagine the pants-soiling fear the gladiators faced without actually having to fight a jungle cat with a piece of folded metal. Almost everyone wants to go to the third floor which is where you get the best views, but here's the catch. You enter at ground level, you have no choice, then you climb the stairs, to the second floor, then you encounter the typical working Italian who needs to fill his daily quota of ripping off tourists for the day (Americans count double) and explains even though you did not want to see the ground floor you technically set foot there and therefore have to pay an extra fee to go higher. You then imagine yourself kicking him in the balls and running up the stairs to experience five seconds of great view before getting tazered, Itlaian style (read: Italian taser=baseball bat to knee caps).
Later we went to the Vatican. I'm not a fan of the 'great' classical artists, mainly because they all look the same. Same style, same subjects, same themes, ugh. Also not a fan of religion, I don't mind it, but it's sort of tough to avoid sometimes. Quick side track into why I'm an atheist because I've had to talk about religion a lot while talking about Rome. It's not science, or what can be proven and what can't, or any of that. It's for the morality. Religions all seem to say, be faithful, be a good person, and make lots of babies so they can all be good and faithful whatevers. If the world slowly gets worse and worse don't worry about it there is totally a plan behind everything. Heaven will always be waiting for the faithful. But for me, if I ever want to see heaven I have to make it here on Earth. How will I be comforted as an old man knowing nothing is waiting for me (or some sort of hell/underworld at best), I will be comforted by being able to look at the world and say humanity, and the planet as a whole, is better off because I made some positive changes. There is no plan (according to me, please don't take any offense) so we are making it up as we go, and so far we've made a steaming pile of pollution and war. So that's why I plan on changing the world in a major way. So, in a totally selfish act to ensure my own happiness, I would like to take this opportunity to announce my candidacy for president... in a few years, and as far as I can see I've got a fairly strong base in Fairport NY, Ontario Canada, and San Sebastian Spain. So I can work the international angle. Back on track. In the end I found the Vatican and the Sistine Chapel cliched even though they were probably the originals (I'm not so good with history). The Chapel did not even compare to some of the other huge ass churches I've seen. Anyways time to move towards a subject less likely to get my house firebombed, so basically anything but religion. Dead people. Specifically dead Popes, but I won't be talking about them.
On our last day, before going to the airport, we went to a cemetery. Well actually a crypt. Or perhaps it was just a labyrinth of terrors that someone decided to fill with bodies to brighten the place up a little. Normally I'm the exploring type of person, most of the time like breaking away from the group to go explore on my own and get a different perspective than the average tourist receives. However, most of the time my tourist groups do not visit zombie dungeons. Normally I'm all for fighting the living dead, there is no foe with less compassion generating power, but when I imagine myself destroying hoards of zombies I'm not trapped in an underground, under-lit, rock maze. The caverns were amazing and we had a great guide (a chubby Spanish guy), I just had no desire to see anything he did not want us to see. He did tell us stories about kids getting lost and starving to death, but I'm sure those were just made up stories to keep the kids from wandering off and getting torn apart by skeletons.
After we re-surfaced it was off to the airport where we boarded a plane back home. Kind of. It was a strange experience for me, going from a double foreigner to just a regular foreigner again. The calm that comes from returning to normal life, but not exactly. It has me thinking about going back to the U.S, my original home, a land a slushy winters and slushy springs, followed by boiling hot summers before a slushy fall. I've been here for seven months and would be comfortable in saying that I'm at home here, but I'm also at home in Rochester. I'm not going to tear apart security by saying that home doesn't exist, but rather that no matter what differences we try to imagine about different peoples and different cultures, home can be anywhere you want it to be. We owe it to ourselves to not judge people based on color, gender, or religion, or would you rather that your only home be the city you grew up in? I will be using this new philosophy to my advantage. Tell girls, 'You wanna come back to my home baby?' She'll think 'Oh he has a home here, he must be doing well.' Take her to a public park, 'Planet Earth is my home.' 'Oh he's sensitive and sweet.' Then we could sit quietly a foot apart so as to not break any of the Rotary rules. What, you were expecting a different ending? Can't break Rotary rules for another two and a half months, also the girl is imaginary, real ones don't like getting lied to like that.
So that concludes my Italy trip. I left home to return home where I have April, May, and June before I go back home.
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