italy.

i’m listening to… daphne loves derby’s new album, the strength of all convinced. i’ve listened to this album probably about 80,000 times. also, ruiner by a wilhelm scream (whatevers).
july 1st, day one, milan
ghetto. chinese tour groups are ghetto. they will try to rip you off however they can. but more about that later.

i am currently @ holiday inn, where there is wireless connection but i cannot figure out how to connect to it. most most tragic. :[

so it goes like this... 40,000 hours of plane ride. watched "million dollar baby" which was an alright movie at best. no idea why it won so many awards at all.

finally got here. got picked up to go to milan. blahblah. ate gelato, which all seem to be owned by asian people and don't taste as good as one would imagine. saw the duomo cathedral, which is one of the largest - got partially destroyed during world war ii, blahblah. lots of trendy ass people in milan (fashion capital of italy, pretty much)... seems like the social class discrepancies between the rich and the old are really huge. me and sherry are wanting to have a contest to see who can gain the most weight. then we both went to eat another gelato. the second one i got was a banana one, and i had forgotten - banana gelatos are freaking gross. they're calling gelati here... wonder why they're called gelato in the u.s.

also this freaking chinese lady... she's not in our tour group - she was just in the huge square outside of the cathedral... BLEH!!! horrible... she had a son and a daughter. the son kept capturing pigeons, and she kept grabbing them for him and putting it in his hands in a "certain way" as if it looked right... it looked like the pigeon's wings were going to snap off. at some point, she put the pigeon in a plastic bag. i thought she was going to take it home and eat it or something, my god. turns out she poked a hole in the bag and put the plastic bag with the pigeon in it to her son. and her son dropped it. and it was just flopping around in a plastic bag. the woman reached for it and then thought, nevermind, and just left it there flopping around there on the ground. there were seriously so many people looking at her. finally an old dude went to tell her to let it go and she did, smiling and shit, thinking she was cool.

onwards... chinese tour groups suck. they don't include tickets into the tour. they were supposed to book us in rooms of two but instead put us in a "three bedroom" room, which in fact is... two beds and one cot, which i assume will be mine.

also - we're in italy. we're only eating non-chinese food for two nights. the hypothesis? they get something for bringing all of these stupid tour groups. tonight we went to this nasty ass chinese place. seriously, the only people who were there were us and another tour group that came later (that had the same meal as us). that restaurant seriously only made like 6 dishes or something. we had three cabbage dishes. GRANTED they were three different KINDS of cabbage, but still. what the hell.
july 2nd, day two, verona & venice
juliette's balcony is lame. verona is kind of cool looking, but beyond that, there's nothing more but the myth of shakespeare's play being held place there. and a couple streets that looked like cs_italy, but we later found that to be true (if not more true) in siena as well.

venice is cool, though. st. mark's basillica doesn't necessarily even have st. mark's bones (just some dude's)... and the italians made up some story about stealing it out of istanbul and covering it with pig meat so that the people would be digusted when they were checking through customs. no idea. umm lots of poeple, 2x the number of pigeons. expensive living. we saw a glass-blowing presenation (though i've seen one before in seattle, and this one was lame in comparison) - it was still cool though. found out how colors are put into glass... from infusing it with different metals. manganese makes the coolest purple color, copper = green, red = gold...

moving onwards... went on a gondola ride. it was like 30 euros a person for a 45 minute things. euro = more than the dollar, so it was quite a bit. my mom thought the gondola man was good-looking because he looked like jack nicholson. WTF. didn't stay for long... went back and went to dinner. the food was definitely better, but still pretty bad.

afterwards, we went to our hotel all early and shit, and the kids (there are 10 of us, 11 if you count the girl di who came seperately with her family but hung out with us sometimes)... anyway, the 10 of us went out to dinner again, at this restaurant near our hotel. we got two tables, and the five people at the other table shared a pizza. the waitress got pissed. at our table, it was me, sherry, andy, nancy, and fontaine. we played some game where everyone has ten fingers up, and then we go around and peoplesay, "i've never ____" and if you have done the thing, then you put your fingers down. me and sherry were teh losers. :[ for the whole meal i got eaten by mosquitos, and my hand got all inflamed and itchy an shit. because it always does.
july 3rd, day three, pisa & florence
drove to pisa. pretty. lame. didn't do anything, and it was hot. we just ate, but at least there was a cute waiter. me and sherry's parents thought he was ugly, though, but my mom has no credibility since she thinks jack nicholson is good-looking. the parents made me put on like 10 kinds of medicine (okay, literally 5) - so a couple of them turned all rashy and shit. on the way back to our bus we took this bus, and sherry's mom met this kid from south africa. they came with their school on a whole freakin trip of europe. LUCKY. left pisa. drove to florence.

saw the cathedral of santa maria del fiore, maria of the flower or whatever. the dome was painted by brunelleschi, and while it was inspired by "the last judgment" by michaelangelo in the sistine chapel, i'd have to say that brunelleschi's was cooler, symbolically and just visually. anyway, the santa maria del fiore was a nice gothic-styled church... blahblah most people think that goth means like devil-worshippers and death and shit, but in-fact real goths are actually christians who made these immense, huge-ass churches that were only lit by outside lighting through stained glass windows, and their attribution to the darkness was actually because their churches were so dark. *NOW YOU KNOW. anyway.

bought a neato bracelet for 5 euros. there's a long corridor in front of an art museum in florence, and it has sculptures of all these different artists, philosophers, architects, etc... like galileo, giotto, many others. it was pretty rad, even though i didn't know most of them. also saw dante's "girlfriend's" family church (although from what i learned in class, she wasn't actually his girlfriend, and the two barely even knew each other - he was just in love with her anyway). that was boring. walked through this corridor "rapidly" because apparently people were shooting other people with straws and toothpicks hahhaha. but we missed them.

then we went to a leather factory for literally 45 minutes. tours always make you go to little places where they can profit... so that they can make money off of comission and shit. that was boring. real boring. and they FEIGNED a demonstration. they just rolled some gold leaf on a leather trashcan instead of really giving us a leather demonstration... it was freakin lame as hell. they just wanted our moneh! anyways. afterwards, we went to eat at this ghetto chinese hole in the wall... but it was better food, for sure. stayed at the worst hotel ever at the night. had to sleep on this pull-out bed that was all freakin lumpy and shit, so instead i slept on the floor. woke up halfway through the night, though, cause the floor was too hard and it was owning my back, so then i had to go to sleep on the pillows... and my back hurt for the rest of the trip since that night ugh. in the morning, the hotel refused to give people seconds of eggs. italian people are freakin nazis. but more about that later.
july 4th, day four, siena & rome
in the morning, there was briefly free internet, so i got to check deviantart for ville's number. was supposed to meet up with him in italy because he happened to be there @ the same exact time (he's from norway). but i had no way of calling internationally, so that pretty much just sucked. turns out he wasn't in siena that day anyway, because he ran out of money to leave florence. whatever.

siena was interesting. lots of brick buildings with an outer wall surrounding the city that is built on a hill (siena was originally a different country from italy... but it got conquered. owned, biatch... would have liked to see how they got conquered, though, considering the ownage location). found a spot on the outer wall where you could climb up... would have climbed up more but it's just um scary. narrow ass streets. didn't really do much, though. once again, we just ate a meal, which was the best one we had in all of italy. yummy ummy yumm T__T then we left and went to rome. four hour drive of doom. for two of the hours, me, sherry, and bonnie were brainstorming up a castle. this was all sparked by my desire to be married in a castle. many people helped. the picture will be scannd later, but basically, our castle had vin diesel as the shrek of a swamp outside of our castle, rocket man who helped carry people over the castle walls (the dragon who lived in our castle also helped carry people over), bow man and arrow man (who were in the watchtower), noah's ark (in the moat), and um... you'd have to see it.

rome was pretty freakin rad. at night we went up to a lookout point the hotel told us to visit. we felt like "real" italians because it's a hangout for italians... minus the fact that our parents came oo, and the result was that we were travelling in huge packs of chinese fob tourists. i suppose. got a crappy cot for sleeping in at night sigh. my dad took the sleeping, though, cause he claimed it was comfortable huk T__T
july 5th, day five, rome
went to the vatican city. BORING. st. peter's basillica is fucking ridiculous and mostly just pisses me off. the place is so freakin nuts. gold on the ceiling, huge sculptures, marble everything. made in 120 years. how creepy. you'd have to see it to belief how pompous and how ridiculous it all is. the "pieta" is there. who cares. the only cool thing about this place was the golden altar. it's like a relief sculpture with these rays of sunlight or something coming out of it. looks really abstract and pretty rad. but the church is truly disgusting. i was so disgusted by it the whole time - just wanted to leave and talk shit about it, really. the catholic church only looks so nice because when they were losing power back in the day to other branches of christianity, they decided to commision all of these hardcore art pieces and awesome looking churches to "attract" people. OBVIOUSLY it worked, but how pretentious is this? on the floor of the church, in the CENTER of the church, it shows how "small" other churches are in comparison to that one. to make it worse, the vatican shop sold shot glasses and candles with the pope's face on it. talk about ridiculous religious iconography.

afterwards, we went to the trivoli fountain which is SO FUCKING AWESOME. the most awesome fountain i've seen yet, that's for sure. and we also went to the pantheon (which is seriously, absolutely whatevers... who the hell cares. it is probably the MOST boring place we went to on the whole trip). then we went to the vatican museum. this was OPTIONAL. it was either, go to the vatican museum and the sistine chapel, or go to SHOPPING. everyone went to the vatican museum, i'm pretty sure, because it OWNS THE FUCK OUT OF SHOPPING. vatican museum was the best part of the whole trip. lots of awesome little tapestries and paintings and crap, mostly of bible stories. or just stories in general. the raphael room wins all. each wall represented a different thing: theology, poetry, philosophy, and justice (random). very awesome. wish i could have spent a whole day in that museum actually, minus the hurting neck (because there were so many paintings on the ceiling and shit). there was also a constantine room which was cool too - each wall depicted a different portion of his life. there was also a modern art portion, which were like eight rooms, and SHERRY AND I WERE THE ONLY PEOPLE THERE. we saw probably two people the whole time, and they just walked really briskly through. saw a lot of crap pieces and a couple of awesome ones. there was a painting by renaldo guttuso which was soooo awesome. i tried looking for it online and couldn't find it, but his art is something like this:

lots of crap out of his good art too, but hey, whatever. there was this one piece that was like stained glass, but it had a backlight to it, and i dunno, i totally tripped out on it like i was hallucinating. it was so weird. there were a couple of other pieces that tripped me out too, but whatever. the sistine chapel took pretty much forever to walk to, but omg, it is freakin sweet. bought a book on all of the symbology, so i look forward to finishing reading it. too bad i forgot everything i learned from my two classes on italy / italian art.

we actually had italian food, though, for ONCE. we had an accordian / guitar / opera singer too, who had a CD with a place where they could sign their signatures. hah. weird. people actually bought it. WHY I DON'T KNOW. the pasta was gross, though. i could have made better pasta out of cream of mushroom soup, but the atmosphere was cool i guess. after dinner we walked to the coliseum. it was quite the walk. quite the walk indeed. met a guy named secundo who was missing a finger and keptspeaking just italian to us like we knew what he was talking about or something lol. but he was nice. there was also another dude who was like, "okay, walk to the end of this street, make a left, and then ask someone else." auntie ruby asked a bunch of tourists for directions, lol, and they were just like hell if i know. climbed shit to take awesome photos of the coliseum (damn trees)... walked the ruins. saw an awesome guy who made fucking awesome art out of spraypaint. wish we could have stayed to watch it for longer, but no one seemed to care really. good shit. rome is humbling in a way. sure, the whole roman empire was a bunch of jackasses, but at least they were amazing jackasses.
july 6th, day 6, pompeii
saw the ruined city. pretty interesting, but they should definitely keep the plastered people... i guess people stole a bunch of shit from there, so they hide all of the cool stuff and put it into museums :[ what's left there now is just the buildings, mostly. umm how they make plasters of the dead people is... the people get buried, and then the hardened lava makes a shell around their bodies, and then the interior decomposes, and you're just left with the bones and a shall around the bodies... so then they inject plaster into the shell to make hard, movable people. quite the interest. ummm... yeah there's nothing much to say other than that. +__+ at night we almost walked like 45 minutes to go eat gelato, but then decided to turn back and just ate ice cream at some place across the street from our hotel. [[NOTE APRIL 2008 -- I'M NOT SURE WHY I WROTE SO LITTLE ABOUT POMPEII CONSIDERING IT WAS PROBABLY ONE OF MY FAVORITE PLACES ON THE TRIP T__T NOTABLE POINTS INCLUDE THAT THERE WAS A RED LIGHT DISTRICT THERE AND EVIDENCE OF STOREFRONTS WITH SLIDING GLASS DOORS]]
july 7th, day 7, capri, naples, & rome
my last day in italy. went to capri, which is like this island. on the way there we took this bumpy ass big boat and somehow i fell asleep, but most people felt pretty sick afterwards. then we took a boat on a tour around the island, and that was pretty rad. the sunlight / limestone combination makes the water this really pretty green color… and at some places the limestone turned into sheets of marble, and the light turned the water into this really green emerald type color. after that, we took a bus to the top of the mountain, and the streets are hugely narrow… they all have the most nuts driving skills. ate dinner at the top of the mountain with a view overlooking the water sorta. it was a whatevers meal, and my last italian meal of the trip :[ on the way down, it took probably about half the time, and most of the people on the bus were scared out of their minds lol. on the way back we stood outside because there weren’t any good seats on the boat, and just were there for 30 minutes with the seasalt and wind blinding our eyes and stuff. but somehow it was fun. afterwards we stopped briefly in naples (which was not intended, i don’t think) and had a bit of time to walk around – the only thing around was this castle nueva… but we coudn’t go in because it is now a museum :[ is naples named after napoleon? does anyone know? because the houses look like… french. and everything seems frenchish. we ate CHINESE FOOD for dinner. can you believe that. the last day of the tour in italy and they take you to eat chinese food?!!! at night people just came over to our place and we played cards, and that’s that!!!
july 8th, day 8, goodbye italy!
hello 24 hours of consecutive airport / airplane time!!! DEATH. lenny picked me up at the airport (HE ORIGINALLY THOUGHT IT WAS 10 AM AND WAS THE AIRPORT WAITING OFR LIKE THREE HOURS HAHAHA HUK) and we just sat around and stuff with liz, eva, and alex… and then josh kept calling me to tell me to go to dante’s (bar), so i went there to watch people drink and stuff, and it was alright. afterwards, lenny and i went over to cynthia / chol / jennie’s, and we watched part of “hitch” (which i had seen on the plane earlier that day, along with “robots inc.”) but we didn’t finish it cause josh and cyn fell asleep, and we just went home instead and um stuff.
SUMMATIONS OF THIS TRIP:
- ate a lof of watery scrambled eggs (because that’s how they make em).
- saw a lot of graffiti… italy has an INSANE amount of graffiti on old-school buildings. it’s seriously nuts – a lot of people didn’t like it, but i thought it was mostly rad, despite the fact that a lot of it was relatively shitty and a poor excuse for artwork. if you want to see some cool artowrk, check out http://www.brosart.com/. they tagged their address in a lot of places, and they had some awesome stuff. not the best out of all of it, but some really good stuff nonetheless.
- italy is a weird country – from city to city it looks completely different, and it might as well be a different country altogether. inbetween the cities is nothing but farmland and bits and pieces of ruined old castles and shit.
- lots of people with trendy ass clothing, especially in milan.
- my mom bought way too many “pi jian” which are like those giant scarves you drape over you. why, i don’t know. other moms too.
- learned how to play hearts. i SUCK.
- ate a ton of hazelnut spread (ie: nutella).
- ate a ton of gelato, but i was not impressed really. i found that a lot of places in america have better gelato / gelato flavors. >__<
- listened to like 3 CDs 80 times each. at least 12 times each, i’d say. the CDs were new albums by the myriad, facing new york, and daphne loves derby. i had a couple others too, but they weren’t really worth listening to more than once.
- saw very few hot guys… i was counting, and i probably saw only about three.
- mullet mohawks are all the rage. r0x.
- my dad told me my belt looked punk (WTF?!) and asked me if i was trying to be a punk. i said no, but i like their clothing. he said, they’re the ugliest. i said, i like it. when i came back to seattle, my mom was like, try not to be too punk, okay?