Florence is... Florence

When I think of Florence... I think of... not all that much. I dunno. To me, it was just another Italian city. I guess it's main claim to fame is the renaissance art.
So all over Italy, especially in train stations there are these ads, everywhere! for this drink called campari. It comes in a little red glass, and it looks like soda or something. I thought, hey, I'm just as susceptible to mass advertising as anyone else, why not give it a shot, plus I can keep the bottle, because it looked pretty cool. Most disgusting drink I've ever tasted. I had about one shot of it, could barely handle it, gave Matt a taste, who refused to drink any more, so here's a picture of me muscling down the last of it. As you can see, it's painful.
Ok, onto actual tourist things. We checked out this church that I can't remember the name of. It is the 2nd largest cathedral in the world or Europe or something, after St. Peters. Having just come from St. Peters, it was hard to be impressed. What really stood out though was the dome. The construction of the dome was really quite amazing. It was done with a series of posts put into the side of the thing and entirely without scaffolding. Apparently the workers were so afraid of the safety of the structure that the architect actually had to jump up and down on the beams to prove to them it was safe. Quite a cool dome (Italy has plenty).

Afterward, we checked out this Leonardo da Vinci museum, that was kinda a low budget thing, not like a main museum. Still, I thought it was awesome, they had many reconstructions of da Vinci's machines are they are like 1000 years ahead of his time. If only he had lived today...


So we went to this one place that was recommended by Let's Go (our bible by this point), but the menu ending up being entirely in Italian, so I just impulsively ordered something that sounded nice in Italian, and ended up with Cow stomach. Not too good.


I think this is the only picture I took in the Uffizi (Florence's most renowned museum), as camera's were not allowed. I thought it was hilarious because there's a red button on the metal detector that just says don't push. Which is always just funny. But yeah, the Uffizi was possibly the most boring museum we've been to so far, and the audio guide was no help. We suffered through the rooms, and finally left when we felt we had our money's worth.

Afterwards we wandered around the city, and saw this replica of the statue of David, which is in the Museo d' Academia, which we meant to see, but didn't really get around to. Later we saw another replica of David, but in bronze, so we left Florence having seen two replicas, but not the real thing. Oh well, I gives me a reason to return to Florence, when I otherwise would have none.

I feel like kind of a loser, posting this picture of my ipod, but it was really quite cool. I was sitting at the balcony, listening to some Dave Brubek, while watching people go by, and it was quite a relaxing situation. One of those that just kind of makes you appreciate life. Also the ipod on the shelf against the background had a nice composition, but I don't think I really captured it.

This picture is out of place, but I guess I actually took two pictures while in the Uffizi. This is out of one of the windows, kind of a nice view of the city and Florence's main bridge, Ponte Vecchio. (sp?)



And here's a shot of while talking across that bridge with the million other tourists. At the end of trip, in a Rome-esk style, we went up this fat set of stairs that overlooks the city.

When in Rome, Roam

So after kinda being lazy about schedules and things to do in Nice and Barcelona, I was determined to not miss any of the important Roman sites, so we really did it all. Right when we got there, we went over and checked out the Colosseum, which was pretty awesome.











Afterwards, we headed down to the Palentine, which is the remains of what once was a giant Roman palace. So little is left, it's hard to get an idea of what was there, but you can kinda look at column stubs and use your imagination.

That night we checked out the Trevi fountain, which is amazing at night, unfortunately Matt and I didn't have our cameras with us, but I think Kyle managed to snap a few photos.


The next day we headed off to the Roman Forum, more roman ruins, but of a more gubernatorial nature, (I can't believe i spelled gubernatorial right on the first try). All the ancient ruins inspired me to watch Gladiator and that HBO series “Rome”, as well as perhaps learn about some legitimate Roman history.

Then we headed through this museum of this artist that enjoyed painting dead people. Really well done, and a lot of them kind of felt like Resident Evil, even though I actually haven't played it. This one kinda looked like Kevin Spacey from K-Pax, so I snapped it.


We also saw this sweet Roman statue, which one of our audio guides or tours or something talked about earlier. It has to do with the original Roman history, and the babies drinking are Romulus and Remus from the story about how they were raised by a she-wolf, or maybe a prostitute, whatever, it's a long story.

Then we saw enough Roman statues, frescos, and history to make anyone throw up, including this giant painting which Matt is standing in front of, to kind of give you an idea for the size of it. If yo click on it, you can see some of the detail.


Then we checked out the pantheon, which is pretty insane. In case you are unfamiliar with it, it is a fat dome with a hole in the center that with stood that huge earthquake that knocked down all that other Roman shit.

Nice shot of the Trevi fountain during the day, probably the most awesome fountain so far (and every city has like 10).



This is the way drinking fountains are in Rome. Every country has their own style of fountain, and for some reason the ones in Rome just flow constantely, I think it has to do with the aqueducts, or maybe just because it's freaking hot.




After a long day, we chilled by this fountain, and I started to put my feet in. Then we see this group of like 8 policeman pull up in their car and get out and start walking towards the fountain. There are way too many police in Europe and they're usually kind of driving around looking for something to do. So they start circling the fountain and two take each side and start walking around and we're wondering like what's going on, and if we should go check it out on the other side of the fountain. A good 15 seconds later, this guy runs right in front of us, soaking wet, carrying his soaking wet clothing and trying to run across traffic. Yup, the police have so little to do that they send a squad car of 8 people to find out about some guy swimming in a fountain. Sad.


That night we chilled out on the Spanish steps after paying some rediculous amount for a meal. They're really not all that exciting, really just a bunch of steps. I guess its the longest or widest set of stairs in Europe or something... woo hoo!



The next and last day, we made a half attempt to get up early, but didn't get out of the door until 10 or 11 or something, and got to wait in a good two hour cue for the Vatican museum.


We walked through this hall way with enough Roman statues to make you sick.
There was this pretty tight ball thing in the center of the plaza. I really don't know what the meaning of it was... which kinda sucked, no audio guide for this one.



Not the real thinker, but a pretty sweet replica. Hopefully we'll see the real one soon. You can really see the attention to detail in the muscles and position of the whole statue and how it all works together for this pose. Quite cool.

So yes, the Sistine chapel. That famous picture of you see of man touching God's hand is actually just one of the many paintings. Personally, I don't know if it was because the entire Vatican Museum tries to build you up to the Sistine Chapel, by putting direction signs in every freakin' room or if it was because I was tired, or maybe just not a religious man. I wasn't all that blown away. It's pretty cool though that like the entire old and new testament is done out in picture form all over the church, so yeah.





Unlike the Sistine Chapel, St. Peter's Basilica really blew me away. Largest cathedral in the world, and it is really just awesome, as in you are just in total awe. It is amazingly huge, amazingly lavish, and just incredible. Yeah. For like 5 euro or something you can climb up 200 stairs to get to the top on the dome on the inside, so you can look down on all of
your people, which is pretty awesome. And then theres another like 322 stairs where you can get to the very top of the dome, and you can see how the stairs and the walls curve very strangely as you get close, and yeah the view from the top is just amazing as well, you can see all of Rome. It was the perfect finale to a such a historic city.

Nice! (niece)

Despite having messed up in Barcelona, and promising to do more in Nice, it didn't really end up being much of a problem, simply because there is not much to do in Nice. One thing that kept me fairly entertained was constantly saying “niece” in a south park style fashion. By the time we left, I think Matt was ready to go just based on the annoyance of this alone. So the first day we decided to catch up on some much needed laundry, Matt hand washed a few things, but I just handed it all over to the front desk. After getting situated, we wandered around the city, including passing by this pretty cool fountain, where I'm now holding the “French: at a glance” book, ready to finally switch over from Spanish. More wandering and I found an H & M, which I have to go into whenever I see one, and they're all over Europe. I put on all the Euro crap I could and tried to look as pretentious and chic as possible. Shortly after a security guard told us pictures weren't allow, but we got away with this one. Having not done any legitimate sight seeing in Europe, we decided to check out the supposedly famous Chagall museum, which ended up for me being one of the more hilarious museums in terms of how little effort it really takes to have an entire museum built after you. I was literally crying when I saw this first photo. You should click on it to enlarge it. Yes, it is a man in a bathrobe whistling, with a house on his head, I kid you not. This shit gets in museums. There's hope for all the struggling artists of the world. There was also this equally poorly drawn photo with a lady with a house on her head, clearly part of some posh euro art movement. After being disappointed with the greatest museum that Nice had to offer, we headed off to a bit to eat, and Matt struggled through some French ordering, but we got our food all the same, and it was delicious. After having a bite to eat, we headed through Nice and found this little cafe center with this guy playing that seemed decent at the beginning, but really was quite mediocre. He was playing rhythm, lead, and bass all by himself, by using a looping machine. The funny part is his wife or girlfriend or whatever just tries to look cool the entire time by first holding his instruments for him while he's playing, and then just dancing and blowing bubbles. It was kinda sad. [stupid guy video]
and yes, I did get shat on.

After being thoroughly unimpressed with this man, we headed toward the beach front, and walked through the beautiful Nice riviera.

Our cultural entertainment continued to be the free street side performers, which there are plenty of, and some are even quite talented. These Beatles marionettes were quite good, make sure to watch the drum fills, as they are fairly accurate.

We also encountered these pretty crazy Jamacian roller bladers, and this guy totally reminds me of Eddie from Tekken.

The nice coast line is quite a view as well, although the Mediterranean will never quite give you those sandy So-Cal beaches.


Day two we took a day trip over to Bealeau Sur Mer or something, and decided to have a nice relaxed day chilling on the beach with this German guy were were staying with Corby.

We got to swim in the Mediterranean for the first time, which was saltier than I expected, and then spent a while tanning on the beach.

Afterwards we went for some tasty gellato


and then got back to our hostel with some time to spare before our train headed out. So we went up and down the streets looking for Wi-Fi, trying Starbucks, a random place where the password didn't work, and finally walked by McDonalds, and noticed they had Wi-Fi, of all places. We sat down with the computer, and Matt was able to talk to Kyle over G-mail chat, and we got a reservation with Kyle and John in Rome for the next day, totally last minute, managed to save us a good 40 euro. I left Nice with a little less disgusted for the fact that there's a good three McDonalds in every city and couldn't help being appreciative of our little American Embassy.