Well, I’m at Whir’s place now. And it’s about 5am Italian time, if anybody’s wondering. I’ve got an hour or two before bedtime.

There’ll be some substantive bloggage sooner or later. Probably tomorrow, once I figure out how I want to do it, and have actually slept. Because I haven’t in about a day now.

Also, O’Hare airport is dying, come the Revolution.

[edit]

Ok, here’s how it’s going to work. Probably about once per day or so until I’m out of ‘em, I’m going to start posting bloggage from the trip. I’ll backdate them to last month, so look somewhere below this entry for them.

[/edit]

Ostia, 6/27/04

The title of this entry presumes that I’m going to Pompeii, and in that context makes sense. However, since it seems fairly unlikely that I’m actually going to make it to Pompeii, for assorted reasons involving the amount of pain involved in the walk through Ostia, the general suckfulness of Italian trains, and me being a dumbass and not getting a ticket back in the day a ways.

Speaking of dumbasses, there are smart people in this world, and there are stupid people. There are people who retreat from the sun during the extreme heat of the day, and there are people who ignore the heat and just keep going. Consequently, there are people who get totally fried and overheated, and people who don’t. Given what you’ve just heard me say about the train ticket thing, which do you think I am?

Yup. I walked Ostia in the sun. But that’s getting a bit ahead of myself. I should start by mentioning that I essentially started today’s journey at the Porta Ostiense in the old Aurelian Wall. It’s all still standing, and looks really cool, as you might expect. There are also two things of interest nearby. One is the Pyramid of Gaius Cestinus, which, well, looks like an Egyptian pyramid, probably because it was supposed to. Also, there’s the Piramide metro station, from which you can take a train to Ostia and some other places that are essentially unimportant by comparison, but which people seem to want to go to anyway.

Or at least there’s a theory about taking trains to Ostia from there. There are maps on the wall saying you can, and signs. Lots of people got on the train expecting to actually go somewhere. These same people were fairly disappointed when the cops waved everyone off the train to another train. Since this other train didn’t leave for like half an hour or an hour, I was more annoyed than disappointed. Combine that with how the maid service woke me up at 8:30 am (what the hell maid service comes at 8:30 on SUNDAY, for Chrissakes?), plus the basically record number of hot sweaty people shoved like cattle into this train, I was not having an especially good day.

But eventually I got to Ostia. That was sort of a near thing, actually, since the Italians pretty much don’t believe in signposting their train stations for some screwy reason. Or rather, there was a sign, but it so small I could barely read it, and it was on the other side anyway. But knowing this, I counted stops, and jumped at the right one. Yay me. However, there’s not really a good sign leading one to the ruins, either, so I got to wander a bit until I found them. Since Ostia’s not exactly Manhattan, this wasn’t too hard, but still. I got there, though, plus got to see some random castle on the way.

And then, well, I walked a lot. Because, for those of you who have absolutely no idea what the hell I’m talking about, Ostia was Rome’s port back in the day, since Rome’s sort of up the river a ways and Ostia’s on the coast. Or was on the coast back in the day, since the shoreline sort of got up and left a while back. At any rate, there’s a great big ruined city there to explore. Not quite Pompeii, but still pretty nice.

So, like I said, I walked. Mostly I walked pretty much aimlessly, because the one map I had pretty much sucked the good suck. In fact, it super-sized the good suck, and tossed in a large drink and some fries for kicks. I may have had worse maps in my life, but I can’t conveniently remember any. Even Rick Steves doesn’t make maps this bad (probably why there’s no Ostia map in his book. Hrm). I visited a lot of random buildings, most of which were totally meaningless to me at the time, and since they’re likely to be even more meaningless to you, I’ll just skip the where I went portion of the commentary, and blather about other random stuff.

There were an awful lot of mosaics. More than I would have expected, in fact, and all over the place. All the shops, offices, houses, whatever, all had either mosaics, very nice colored marble floors/walls, or both. In fact, there was a surprising amount of marble, too – many many columns of various sorts and uses all over the place, mostly marble but with some brick ones too. Lots of the marble was colored, as well, which was pretty much it for color since only two or three mosaics had color – most were black and white. Since most of the Roman mosaics I had seen previously were in color, that was interesting. The Ostia mosaics are from all periods of the Empire, as well, and since I know colored mosaics came into fashion in the 2nd century or so, colored mosaics must have been even more expensive than I thought they were, or Ostians had odd tastes. In any case, lots of black and white mosaics, which actually sort of sucked. Ah well. The colored marble, on the other hand, was awesome, and I’m going to remember it for the palace I’ll build when I’m world dictator.

Lots of brick, too. In fact, most things were brick, with a stone door frame or floor, and for a few of the buildings a marble facade. Can’t really blame them, since marble’s not exactly the cheapest building material in the world.

Lots of baths. I think I was in something like five public ones and a couple of private ones. I knew the Romans liked bathing, but sheesh. Didn’t think Ostia could even support that many baths. It’s not THAT big.

On the other hand, not so hefty in the temple department. Mithras got a temple, which I didn’t get to see because it was fenced off; the Christians got a basilica; the Jews got a synogogue; Augustus gets a temple; and Magna Mater gets a pretty big complex out back with a great big courtyard with three different shrines at the corners. It’s a lot of temples, but since they were all pretty small and the baths were all pretty big… *shrug*

The roads were a pain in the ass to walk on. I assume the stones are all Roman originals, except that they’ve all had time to move around, so you have to watch your footing the whole time, which is a lot of fun.

I went down into this tunnel near the Forum at one point. I have no idea what it was for, but I went in anyway and poked around, gazing up at the feet of some of the really annoying tours from time to time.

Speaking of tours and tourists, it’s sort of funny. They all get in your way all the time – when you want to take a picture and when you want to read some sign somewhere in particular, and you think something like “Stupid American tourists!” before remembering that, by the way, you too are an American tourist. Stupid, well, sometimes. Stupid in the sunburn sense, certainly. Stupid in the sense of not knowing a damn thing about where they were, not so much. And there was a lot of that, actually. Always women, too. Not sure what’s up with that, but hey. In particular, there was one woman who followed her husband/boyfriend around, listening to him talk about the place, and he pretty much knew what he was saying, whereupon she would attempt to contradict him and make some wildly inaccurate guess, to which he would just shrug and keep going. The other fun one was this woman saying: “Oh, they put a well smack in the middle of the street. But what happened if their chariots got going too fast?” Those of us with some knowledge of how Rome worked will realize that the chances of a chariot ever seeing Ostia were pretty remote, and those of us with some knowledge of how horse-driven carts work, which is what Ostia WOULD have seen, will realize that the chances of them speeding over those particular roads fast enough to crash into that well are just about as remote.

This is why there will be enforced sterilization of stupid and ignorant people when I become ruler of the world.

So, anyway, I got lost for a while more, at one point emerging out of the ruins to some very modern buildings housing the cafe and bookshop. Very surreal, let me tell you. Felt sort of like that scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade when they’re in the sewers with the rats, and they come out of the manhole in the middle of a bunch of people sitting around drinking coffee. Same sort of thing – hot and sweaty me, tired after having treked the ruins of ancient Rome, comes out of this Roman street to find a bunch of people sitting in the shade drinking water and such. Screwy. Fortunately, there was a particularly handy fountain near the theater, from which I hooked myself up with some water. Too, at various points I stopped in the shady ruins of some dead Roman dude’s house to hang out and have a nice refreshing Coke. Yay Coke.

And all of that done, and with one whole side of my neck pretty much bright bright red, I decided that that was probably enough for one day. Almost went to go see the Forum some more, but no. I have two more days. One of those will be spent in Rome. What I’ll do with the other, I have no idea. Rome, probably. Maybe go see Hadrian’s villa in Tivoli, but probably Rome. Lots to do in Rome, there is.

—————–

Rome, 6/28/04

And on the 5th day, Dwip rested. Dwip didn’t originally start out to rest, but that’s what Dwip did anyway. There are a number of reasons for this. The first is that nothing but the Vatican Museum on my to see list was open. So I actually went there, but since everyone else in Rome realized the hours as well, the line was literally half a mile long, and I decided that, no, I really didn’t want to wait in that. Especially because it’s pretty much one of those days. The sort of day where you wake up nice and cool in the morning, because you’re indoors with the fan going, and then you walk outside and within 3 minutes flat your shirt is soaked through, sweat is running off you in rivers, and you’re thinking “On second thought, maybe not.” So that was pretty much that. I’d LIKE to go hang out in the Forum or something, but not if I’m going to die of heat stroke before I get there. So the moral of the story here, pretty much, is go in the winter when you won’t fry to death.

And on a pretty much non-travel related note, I’m occupying my nights with pretty much two things: My hella cool CC2 rendition of the biggest and baddest castle in the Castle Guide, which is essentially done and which leaves me with a whole one castle to go out of the four in that book; and my current Medieval: Total War game, which features me as the Italians, in Early, on Hard. Said game has seen a number of things, including:

Not one but two major naval wars, against the Sicilians and the French, for domination of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic.

Noticing the Danes not taking Sweeden, so sending some random guys up to do so, whereupon the Danes attack ME, forcing me to retaliate, which ends in me getting excommunicated.

Me not being up into excommunication, and so assassinating the Pope. Woot.

The French building gargantuan armies of nothing but royal knights and hobilars. Even Khan doesn’t use that many horses. Unfortunately for the French, Italian Infantry > Hobilars. Italian Infantry also > Peasants, which is pretty much what everyone else but me and the French are using in 1198. Strange game like that.

Sicily essentially running rampant on Byzantium, who fled into the wilds of Novgorod, then ran over Poland before being smashed by the HRE, French, and Novgorod, the last of whom is camped out in the east with a LOT of guys.

The Spanish NOT running over the Egyptians. In fact, the Egyptians are doing really good. That in and of itself is pretty screwy, not to mention the Turks are kind of getting rocked.

Me and the French fighting a decades-long war, with the Pope pretty much saying “Yeah guys, go on, have fun. No worries about me.”

So I’ve basically run over the greater portion of the HRE, because, well, when does the HRE ever do good? Too, I’m winning that war with France, after a fashion. Fought Sicily to a draw. Doing pretty good, thinking. We’ll see how 1204 treats me.

And then last night I got one of those turns. One of those turns where your generalship is just so good, Caesar, Alexander the Great, and Napoleon all rolled into one couldn’t beat you. The French King dies in a hail of arrow fire. His two biggest, baddest armies go up against two of your armies, and in a seriously hardcore fight, you basically crush his entire side, and you’re on the verge on winning, and…the game crashes. Argh. To quote the two Great Ones: Bogus. Heinous. Most totally non-triumphant.

On the other hand, I just had some really good ideas for redoing my Thurii map. This could be good.

Addendum:

So on replay of the crashed battles, I didn’t off his king, but I still routed that army. In the other battle, well, that was pretty titanic. 2000 of my guys against 1500 or so of his, and a lot of his were cav. We’re calling it the Battle of Lake France, for lack of a better idea, and because it was fought at this lake in Ile de France. And pretty much a whole lot of his guys ran over to my guys, and we sat in this big shield wall for a while, while I used my superiority in numbers and quality, combined with massed archer fire, to rip him to shreds. And this pretty much worked, and he lost a lot of guys, including three of his best generals, who he didn’t ransom. Ouch.

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Rome, 6/29/04

It was another home by 3 day here in Rome, because it was about like this: My metro ticket, little did I know, was a 3 day pass, not a 7 day pass, and it ran out. Fortunately, an all-day pass costs 4 euros, and all I had was 10 euros, and the machine gives maximum change of 4 euros. So of course it won’t rip me off, being a nice machine. And of course I can’t protest to it that no, really, I WANT to be ripped off, please take my 2 euros, I insist. So I ended up walking where I wanted to go. And walking in Rome is like walking through a sauna. Add in the fact that most of Rome is a polluted, traffic-ridden mess, and the walking part was not so fun. The bit where I walked into my hotel room, turned on the fan, got rid of some clothing, and just sat and panted for a while wasn’t so fun either, but that’s better now.

So anyway, I went walking. First stop was Termini Station, where in that handy little grocery store in the lower level, I picked up some nice, refreshing Coke for later. Walking by McDonald’s, I noticed there was a sign on those random old-looking walls I kept noticing. Yes, as it turns out, there’s a bit of the Servian Wall in the middle of the seating area in the lower Termini Station McDonald’s (as opposed to the upper one, or the one right outside – no problem finding a McDonald’s around here).

That having been chortled at, I walked over across the street to the National Museum of Rome, which is one of those sorts of places that’s pretty much THE final authority on where to see Roman sculpture, along with the Capitoline museums. So I checked out the statues for a while, many of which I’d seen pictures of before, or copies. Augustus as Pontifex Maximus, Caracalla, and that other guy who I’m not quite remembering just now. You know. That one guy, who did all that stuff. Him. I also jumped in on the guided tour of the second level, which was essentially them saying “Yeah, Roman frescoes and mosaics were pretty badass, weren’t they?” and us agreeing a lot. And while I’ve never been much of a fresco person, the mosaics really WERE that good. Some of them, in fact, were of very fine detail, using 2 millimeter bits of stone to create VERY lifelike portraits and such. Some of the very best mosaic work I’ve seen yet, which considering the location isn’t TOO surprising. There was also a coin exhibit, but I decided to skip it, because for some unknown reason coin exhibits bore me to tears.

So I decided to go hang out in the Forum and see some more stuff down there instead. Which involves a trip down the Via Cavour. It mostly sucked, except for two things: The Church of Santa Maria Maggiore, which is really big and cool-looking, and the assorted graffiti along the street, from hammer and sickles to “Stop War! Kill Bush!” scrawlings, to my favorite, “Stop Wars” made to look like the Star Wars logo. Hee.

In any case, the Via Cavour eventually dumps you out next to the Forum (in the midst of one of the Imperial ones, I might note), whereupon I walked the Forum to the sound of somebody playing a very eerie version of Hey Jude on a wood flute. I’m not sure why I think that’s so appropriate, but it is. So I hung out, listened to that for a while, got my picture taken, bought myself a paperweight featuring Wolfie and the Twins (tried for a coffee mug, but alas there were none to be had), and drank the forementioned refreshing Coke. Walking out, I happened to pass some random American tourists by the Arch of Titus going “Well, I think that’s the Arch of Septimus Severus. Or maybe Marcus Aurelius. Or maybe Constantine.” Whereupon, being who I am, I’m like “Titus. Septimus Severus is over there. Constantine’s over by the Colosseum.” I got rather profusely thanked for my efforts, and had I stuck around probably would have had an excellent chance to educate the masses, but I kept going.

Curious to see how much of the Circus Maximus was still around, I walked down there, and found that the answer is…not much. Almost nothing, in fact, though the depression is still there, and you can still tell where everything used to be. It’s a big open park now, though not many people were there in the heat of the day. There was, however, a wedding photography shoot going, using the Palatine as a backdrop. Good choice, I think, though a slightly more tranquil spot would have been my next stop, the Forum Boarium. Not much there, except for a couple of small temples, such as my favorite little one to Vesta.

And at that point, having braved the sauna for long enough, I went home. Back past the Circus Maximus. Back by the Colosseum. Back by the Forum. Back up the Via Cavour. Back into Termini for another store run. And then to my hotel. And here we are. And tomorrow I’ll be for Michigan. So that’s Europe. It’s been fun, but I’m just as glad it’s over now.

Final picture total: 1,705. 505 London (246 (!) British Museum), 78 Stonehenge/Bath, 77 Oxford, 25 Winchester, 7 Norwich, 17 Canterbury, 65 York, 26 Carlisle, 76 Hadrian’s Wall, 18 Fishbourne/Chichester, 3 Hampton Court, 25 Brighton, 11 St. Albans, 86 Brussels, 122 Paris, 45 Stockholm, 54 Venice, 65 Ravenna, 246 Rome, 153 Ostia.

Happiness is a warm camera.

Rome, 6/24/04

I’ve seen precious little of said power and glory so far, but then, I just got off the damn train and got a hotel. At 6 pm. Since I checked out of my hotel in Ravenna at about 9 am, that ought to tell you about what I did with my day. Spent it in train stations and on trains, pretty much. The 9:30 train to Bologna wasn’t too bad, and got me there in plenty of time for the 10:46 Eurostar to Rome. Unfortunately for me, I wasn’t taking the 10:46 Eurostar to Rome, I was taking the 1:46 Eurostar to Rome. So, like any self-respecting traveller who’s lugged a suitcase full of clothes, a laptop, and a backpack up a bunch of stairs, and who’s found a nice convenient, comfortable concrete floor to camp out on, I camped out until the train got there. Meanwhile, I read the first two books of the Illiad, summaries of same, and about 250 pages of yet another Bernard Cornwell novel, this one about the Hundred Years War. I also nursed a Pepsi and some Pringles I picked up in Ravenna.

It’s worth noting that Bologna must have the worst station in Italy or something, because every, and I mean EVERY train that went through there got delayed by at least 10 minutes. The poor bastards on the 10:46 Eurostar didn’t leave until 11:46. So, in amongst laughing at various unfortunates, listening to station announcements in Italian that I didn’t understand a word of, and reading, I passed a few fairly pleasant hours, until my own Eurostar pulled in, on time but on the wrong platform.

Whereupon I got to be bored out of my mind for a few hours. I was pretty much tired of reading at that point, and I desperately needed a drink, because that Pepsi was basically IT for the day. Not to be, unfortunately. Combined with the girl across the way with the most annoying cell phone ring EVER, which went off every 10 minutes or so, and which she let play EVERY TIME, it was a fairly annoying sort of trip. So I was pretty glad when I stepped off the train and set foot in Rome.

Feelings of goodwill didn’t last long, because Rick Steeves is pretty much the worst cartographer in the history of mapmaking. Guided by his, uh, efforts, I wandered around lost up north of the station for a while, lost in a sea of hotels, looking for one of the three decent ones. After an hour or so, I finally found one, except it was booked full. But she was nice enough to call around, and found a place with rooms left, which I am now sitting in. Finally cool again, because lugging all my crap around Rome for an hour in the sun isn’t exactly cool work. Can finally swallow again, after being excessively parched and getting that particularly annoying thing where mucous goes down your throat and dries out there. Fortunately, I’m not actually starving, which probably comes from eating pretty much nothing for a week, which is a particularly bad habit of mine when travelling, especially in places where I don’t speak the language.

All of this brings us to basically three morals. The first is something I talked about earlier: Rick Steves’ hotel ideas are pretty good, but his maps are pathetic. Simple things like, yknow, street names would vastly improve them. The corollary to the first is to book the damn hotel in advance, sort of unlike what I did for my entire trip. When it works, it works. When it doesn’t work, it REALLY doesn’t work, and today it REALLY didn’t work. The second is to pack light, because basically nothing is less fun than hauling all your stuff around not knowing where you are. Actually, it’s not much fun even when you DO know where you are, since train stations and the like tend to have a LOT of stairs to lug suitcases up. Third, when you get something to drink, get an extra or two, and put it away for later, because you’ll probably want it. Snacks too, but especially the liquids.

Also, suitcases on wheels are the devil. But I may just be saying that because I have way too much stuff in mine.

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Rome, 6/25/04

And, well, here we are. Rome. ROME, dammit. I forget how long it’s been since I first wanted to come here – a third of my life? Half my life? Years, anyway. And here I am. At last, in one sense of the word, but I suppose I’m fairly fortunate to be coming here at 23, and not at 43 or 63 or something. Anyway.

I started my morning with a metro ride down to the Colloseo station. I could have walked, but basically Roman drivers are the craziest people on the planet, and I say that after both London and Paris. Cars will sometimes stop when you cross the roads, but those bastards on scooters? They don’t stop for anything at all. So walking in Rome involves great acts of faith, which is probably one reason why there’s zillions of churches everywhere. So I took the metro.

And in a sense, that was a good thing. Because it’s like this. I’m walking out the door of Colosseo station, and I look up, and right across the road is…yep, you guessed it. Colosseum, right in front of me. And the Arch of Constantine. RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME ACROSS THE ROAD. That’s even better than coming out of the metro station in Paris and having the Arch de Triomphe right there.

I didn’t start at the Colosseum, though, for reasons I shall talk about rather later. Instead, I walked around the Arch of Constantine for a while, took some pictures, and then went into the Forum. Center of ancient Rome. Yup, that’s me. I’m there. Woot.

The Forum is sort of a sad place, now. Awe-inspiring, of course, majestic in its own special sort of way, but sort of sad. The buildings have more or less all fallen down now, and apart from the arches at either end, a few columns, and half the Basilica of Constantine or so, it’s pretty much all rubble piles. Still if you stand there long enough, you can get a sense of what it might have been like, once. And that picture is a pretty grand one.

Having walked the Forum for a time, I eventually passed under the Arch of Septimus Severus and took the steps up the Capitoline Hill. Anything Roman that might have been there once is now gone, sort of. In place of the Romans are a bunch of Rennaisance buildings, two of which are a museum, and one that’s pretty much the final word on Roman sculpture. If you’ve ever seen that big marble head of Constantine, well, that’s there, along with half the rest of the statue. Romulus and Remus with the she-wolf? That’s there too, along with a copy on a pedastal outside. Dying Gaul? Yup. Commodus all dressed up as Hercules? That too. All that and a couple three or four hundred more statues, and uncountable random inscriptions and things. All very impressive.

Speaking of inscriptions, they put “SPQR” (Senatus Populusque Romanus) on EVERYTHING here. And not just Roman stuff, either. There’s plenty of Rennaisance inscriptions that bear the title, and even the manhole covers have SPQR on them. It’s kind of funny, really.

In any case, having been through the Capitoline museums, I went out past a very famous bronze equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, past an enormous marble monument to the first King of Italy, and thence to the Column of Trajan, who in typical fashion still doesn’t have his own statue on top, but that of St. Peter. Poor Trajan. Builds all this stuff, and never gets to keep his name on it. But it’s a nifty column. From the Column, I took a fairly roundabout route, because it’s sort of off in the distance as modern Rome works, to the Pantheon. You approach from the rear, which is a decidedly uncool brick thing, but the marble front is quite amazing, and the interior…wow. Let’s just say I need my pictures to do justice to the interior of the Pantheon, and leave it at that.

From the Pantheon, I went back down to the Forum, on the way to which I got asked by some random tourist how to get to the Pantheon (heh). Browsed the Forum some more, because yes, it really is that sort of place, and then went up to the Palatine Hill to check out what’s left of the palaces of the emperors. Foundations, mostly, and a few walls. It’s sort of like the Forum, where if you have enough imagination, you can see what it might once have looked like, and come away amazed.

And from there, I finally went to the Colosseum. Why last? For one, the metro stop was right there, and I was tired and roasting and hungry by that point. For two, you can buy a combo ticket at the Palatine which covers a fairly big chunk of sites, and allows you to bypass the enormous lines at the Colosseum. So with ticket in hand, I cut the line and went in. And, well, saw the ruins. And walked around for a bit. And, well, that was that. It’s the Colosseum, and it’s big and it’s impressive, but there’s not much to do there, and it didn’t really put a big goofy grin on my face like the Forum or the Capitoline museums.

And then I went home. A bit early, but I figure 9 to 3 solid sightseeing is a lot for one day. But I got my power and glory, anyway. And with both Ravenna and the major sites in Rome now seen, I’ve basically fulfilled one of three or four major travelling ambitions for my life[1].

[1] – The whole list being Rome/Ravenna, Constantinople, Japan, and Washington DC. I’d throw in some of the major European capitols, except I’ve seen the bigger chunk of them already. I’d like to hit Paris again sometime, along with perhaps Egypt and a few of those other assorted European capitols.

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Rome and the Vatican, 6/26/04

So, today I did the Vatican. And by that, I mean that pretty much from about 9:30 or 10 to about 2:30, I was in or around St. Peter’s Basilica. One might, if one were inclined to understatement, which one is, might say that St. Peter’s is a fairly big church. One notices this straight off in the piazza outside, when one notices that the line, and it’s a big line, is sort of small in comparison to the building. It gets better inside, when the audioguide handily points out that there are nice little markers on the floor to show you where the next few largest churches in Christendom would fit inside.

The damnable thing about my trip inside is that there was a very handy map given to me with the audioguide which points out pretty much anything worth noting, but which I forgot to take a picture of, so I’m going to have a lot of pictures like “Well, I THINK this is Urban VIII, but I can’t really remember.” You might think that one of my two guides would fix that, but the LP guide isn’t worth jack for that, and Rick Steves only points out like 12 things of almost 50 the audioguide has. Nevertheless, I’ll hit a few highlights.

Aside from the fact that you walk inside and just sort of stand in the door for a minute or two going ooOOooOOoo (with or without multicolored blinking text for the Alsheroki among us), I was rather immediately amused by this woman kneeling smack in the middle of the porphyry coronation marker, whereupon people like Charlemagne were crowned various things like Holy Roman Emperor. Speaking of whom, there’s a rather nice statue of him just outside the atrium. They’ve got one of Constantine seeing the cross in the sky on the other side, too. Speaking of the atrium, it has, amongst other things, the Holy Door to one side, which they apparently only open every 25 years to mark Papal Jubilee years.

From there, I went up the right side, where I passed Michelangelo’s Pieta, which although I’m not an art historian, I seem to remember is sort of famous or something. ;) Also has a very famous dome overhead, but I managed to forget everything about it in amongst the other 45 commentary items or so. Anyway. The whole place is sort of a shrine to Rennaisance and Baroque artistry, much of it under the patronage of Urban VIII, and much of it done by a guy named Bernini. There’s assorted papal monuments all over the place, and assorted very good paintings which are actually mosaic copies of the originals, which I had no idea of until the audioguide was like “Oh, by the way, they took the original painting and gave it to somebody else. That’s a mosaic.” I love mosaics. There’s also the altar, which is sort of cool by itself, but also happens to have a great big canopy overhead by Bernini, which is really really cool.

St. Peter of course gets a lot of mention. Amongst other things is a statue of him which gets rubbed by the pilgrims, and a big statue of his throne by, and I know this will come as a huge surprise, Bernini. Times like this I wish I was an art historian. Don’t get that feeling often, but.

I also saw something of an entirely different sort. Smack in the middle of the basilica, almost under the dome, some mother had her kid on a leash. Now, the idea of kid leashes usually pisses me off anyway, but to see it in the center of a church, of all places, REALLY pissed me off. Christianity’s supposed to be all about compassion and love and whatnot, and you’ve got your kid on a freaking leash? Gah. And the poor guy’s kneeling there like a whipped dog, no less. Hell was invented for things like this.

Anyway. Back to the serene and happy part of our tour. Without going into a whole lot of detail on the monuments, of which there were many, for a great many popes and a few other random folks (the Stuart kings of England have one, which I thought was amusing), I’ll just mention the dome and the cupola.

Now, for the most part, the trip to the dome isn’t too bad. I say this because I took the lift halfway, but then I figured I earned the Spiral Stair Climbing Merit Badge a while back. Nevertheless, most of the stairs are pretty much straight. Pretty much. The 5′ diameter spiral staircase wasn’t too bad. The 2.5′ spiral staircase, on the other hand, was a bit extreme. And the stairs where the walls curved because we were on the very uppermost part of the dome, well, that was a bit strange. And it was all frying up there, which since the lower level was pretty cool, was very unpleasant. Nevertheless, somewhere in the middle of all that, we got to walk around the interior of the dome, and see the decorations up close, and they rock. Then we climbed the rest of those stairs, and went up to the cupola, where one can see pretty much all of Rome one cares to see. It’s not quite the Eiffel Tower, but as far as Ye Olde Randome Churche goes, very nice.

And that was pretty much that. I tried to do the Vatican Museum and the Sistine Chapel, but they were closed by the time I got there. As for the rest, you’ll just have to believe me that it’s awesome until I can show the pictures.

From the Museum, I decided that, well, it was only about 3:10, and since I spent the really warm parts of the day inside the rather cool basilica, and so wasn’t dying of heat stroke at the moment, it might not be a bad idea to hit a few of those random sights I thought I was going to see the day before I left. Since if I want to do the Vatican Museum, the National Museum, and some random stuff besides, I’m going to have to run like hell to do it all.

So I set off down the road, leaped on the metro, which I might quickly note is a really crappy and unclean metro, which barely goes anywhere useful, but happens to be one of three metros I’ve seen where the doors on the carriages automatically open (but only on the A line). After a short wait, I arrived at the Spanish Steps, which was/is apparently THE hookup spot, and THE place to see beautiful people, of whom I saw basically none while there, but a few on the metro of all places. Go figure.

From the Spanish Steps it’s a short walk to the Trevi Fountain, which is basically the ultimate in saying “Yeah, well my fountain is cooler and more awesome than YOUR fountain, so nyah!” Again, wait for the pictures. From there it’s another short walk to the Column of Marcus Aurelius (or maybe just the Antonine Column, I’m not really sure), which is almost exactly like Trajan’s Column, except not quite as famous. On a building nearby, I saw a clock with SPQR on it. Like I said, it’s on EVERYTHING.

That done, I decided to go see if Augustus’ Altar of Peace was open from restoration, which it isn’t, and is surrounded by a 6′ tall metal fence besides, but the Mausoleum of Augustus is nearby, or what’s left of it. What’s left of it is bigger than some hills I’ve seen, as it happens. The Romans were into big.

After the Mausoleum, it’s a short trip up the street to the Piazza del Popolo, which I’m sure has some patriotic meaning or another, but I really have no idea. In any case, it’s pretty cool. Big churches all around, the obligatory Egyptian obelisk in the middle[1] surrounded by lion fountains spitting water, and with a big park on one side. Out back there’s some sort of monumental thing in the middle of the road, which I’m going to take as a monument to Napoleon, because it looks like one. Guidebooks are useless, so whatever.

And that done, I went back to the hotel, because it was 4:30 and I was starving. Which involved a side trip to the Termini mall for a McDonald’s run and a grocery run. The first featured a screaming little kid, who I almost throttled because he was very obviously being pretty unreasonable about the whole thing. The second featured a totally berserk checkout clerk, who screamed at this poor American girl in front of me in line about something to do with a water bottle (in Italian, which she of course didn’t speak and so had no idea what to say back), complained to the guy behind her in line, who I’m sure could totally give a shit, and then complained to who I assumed was the manager. And when I walked back by 10 minutes later, he was STILL complaining to the manager. I’m not sure what his problem was, but he was obviously not having a good day.

And on another note, Hot and Spicy Pringles are pretty good. Not quite as good as the Spanish Salsa ones, but good.

[1] – And I should note that there’s Egyptian obelisks EVERYWHERE around here. Piazza del Popolo has one. The Spanish Steps have one. There’s a big one in the middle of the Piazza San Pietro outside St. Peter’s. There’s one on the back of a marble elephant near the Pantheon. There’s a few more I haven’t seen yet, too.

Ravenna, 6/22/04-6/23/04

So I ended up going to Ravenna after all. I’m really glad I did. I haven’t quite figured out what pissed me off so much about Venice, but Ravenna’s pretty much the opposite. Instead of the hustle and bustle of Venice, Ravenna’s a small, quiet sort of place. It’s sort of like taking Corvallis, adding tons of really awesome architecture, and tossing it in the middle of Italy. It’s even got legions of mad bicyclists, and these bastards on scooters just itching to run you down. That having been said, I love the place.

Getting there took a while, though. For one, lugging one’s luggage through Venice is pretty interesting, for pretty Chinese values of interesting, since the walkways are very narrow, very crowded, and there were three bridges between my hotel and the train station, all stairs instead of ramps, and one of them was the Ponte di Scalzi, one of the three main bridges in Venice crossing the Grand Canal (which is to say that there are three bridges across said canal, period). I was pretty much exhausted by the time I got to the station. On the other hand, I had about an hour and a half to rest, being the early riser that I am, and having some need to check on train schedules. Because, while they run pretty much on time and are pretty clean and nice, Italian rail service is a mess. For one, no times on the tickets, though in my case that’s a good thing, and what let me get to Ravenna early. For two, the Italians have this bizzare obsession with stamping tickets at these little machines. The conductor still comes by and checks the things, but you have to get a stamp anyway. So far as I can tell, the only purpose of doing or not doing it is that it gives them a chance to yell at you if you don’t have it. *shrug* Also, unless you’re paying VERY close attention as you pull into stations, you pretty much get to guess which station you’re at, which is sort of fun. In any case, I made it from Venice to Ferrara and then to Ravenna with little event, except that it took like 4 hours, during which time I read the better half of Guns of the South for the second time. Whcih means I’m down to like three books to finish off the trip with. Ruh-roh.

Anyway. So I stepped off the train in Ravenna, and for all that small town goodness I mentioned earlier, immediately loved it. This was immediately reinforced by the 40 euro room I got at a very convenient hotel, which beats all hell out of the 150 euro going rate in Venice. Small thing, but what the hell. It gets even better, in that half the sights don’t close until 7. So, after a quick stop at the tourist info building for a better map than the sort of asstastic one in Rick Steeves’ book (more on this later), I set off.

Rather conveniently, two of the sights are pretty much right next to each other: The Basilica of San Vitale and the Tomb of Galla Placidia. These two buildings, the first more than the second, are pretty much the whole reason why I’m in Ravenna. You may have heard of them. Both are justifiably famous for the quality of their 5th-6th century Roman/Byzantine mosaics, including a much-reproduced pair of Justinian and Theodora. If you’ve read pretty much any book on Byzantine history with pictures in it, such as John Julius Norwich’s, you’ve seen those two. I’ve seen them too, in the flesh. And it’s awe-inspiring, even in the sort of dimly-lit church of San Vitale. I can only imagine what it must look like all lit up in its full splendor, because the panels depicting the two Byzantine rulers are only a small part of a vast display of marble and mosaics covering the area around the altar. I have pictures. It rocks. In fact, I have postcards, too, and a poster. If they’d stuck the damn thing on a t-shirt, I’d have one of those, too.

The Tomb is along the same lines, except that it’s lit only by light from the enterance, is very small, and the mosaics aren’t as famous. But they’re just as well-done, which since I’m the biggest fan of mosaic since like Justinian, all the other tourists pretty much got floated out of the place by the drool puddle I left. When I become world dictator, my flunkies are going to build me a big palace, and there’s going to be mosaics. Lots of mosaics. Legions of mosaics, in much the same way that Heroes of Might and Magic II’s legions of peasants pretty much got us saying legions of stuff in the first place (slight trivia fact, for those of you who weren’t playing that obsessively like some of us were). In any case, that having been done, and my hands being full, I got myself a bit lost on purpose getting back just to wander around, and then I collapsed under a particularly handy fan in my room, because damn, Italy’s hot.

Which I think, before we talk about day 2, belatedly brings us to the subject of guidebooks. I’ve had several over the course of this trip: A DK guide to London, a Rick Steves’ guide to London, a Rick Steves’ guide to Italy, and several Lonely Planet guides – England, Stockholm, and the condensed versions of Rome, Venice, and Brussels.

Of them all, I’m the biggest fan of the Lonely Planet guides. This comes with some caveats – the condensed ones kind of suck as opposed to the full country guides, and because they’re written by different people, they can vary in quality some. Nevertheless, for sheer encyclopedic depth and map quality, they’re really good to have. On that same note, my DK London guide had awesome maps, but I didn’t use it for much else. The Rick Steves’ guides are kind of funny. I didn’t use my London one at all, and the Italy one is sort of a supplement to my Venice and Rome guides. Steves gives pretty good practical advice on a lot of things, including where the hotels are and how to catch a train (though none of them are very good at telling you how to get to and away from budget airline airports like Skavsta or Treviso). Less so on sights, because he only includes some of them, and they’re the ones HE likes, which are not necessarily the ones I like. And his maps are teh suck. Horrendously teh suck, in fact. Which means I’m generally wandering with his guide and some suppliment. In Venice, I mostly used my LP guide. Here in Ravenna, I’m using it and the tourist info map, because I didn’t get the LP Italy guide (oops). So I think the moral of the story is, pretty much, buy Lonely Planet country guides. Don’t get city guides, and maybe pick up a Steves’ guide just for the good hotel advice. And somewhere in the middle of things, you’ll realize there’s something the guide doesn’t cover. But as the Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy tells us, don’t panic.

—————-

And here we are on day 2. It’s actually only like 3:00, but I’m taking a break, because it’s freaking hot outside, and retreating to our nice cool rooms is the Italian thing to do. That and smoking, because as I was walking down the street, pretty much everyone simultaneously pulled out a smoke of some sort, which is sort of strange because I haven’t really seen a lot of Italians smoke. But whatever.

I start by quoting myself: “…but Ravenna isn’t exactly worth two days EITHER.” I said that originally based on Rick Steves’ descriptions of Ravenna, in which he lists like 4 places and then leaves. Let me be the first to tell you he’s a liar. I mean that in the nicest possible way, but still. There’s something more like 30 places listed on the tourist map, and a lot of them are really cool – I’ve been to a decent chunk of them now.

I started the day by walking up to the Mausoleum of Theodoric, which is another one of those places you’ve heard about if you know anything about late Roman history. Ostrogothic fellow. Ruled here for a while. Built a big white place for his body to camp out. Impressive sort of place, really, even though there’s essentially nothing in it anymore. Still. Still.

I’m actually ahead of myself, because the very first place I went was the Rocca Brancaleone, the old Venetian castle, from back in 1450 or so when they ruled the place. It’s a park now, and you can wander around and camp out under trees and do fun things like that. Just another one of those European sorts of things to do.

From there, I headed over to the tourist info booth to figure out how to get to the Basilica of S. Apollinare in Classe, which it turns out requires a short bus ride. That having been figured out, and me not wanting to take the bus just yet (probably will later), I popped over to the Basilica of S. Apollinare Nuovo a bit down the street (confused yet?), which is a pretty small church that just sort of sits there saying “Yeah. Northern Europe? You know those cathedrals you’re so proud of? Yeah. We have little crappy churches here cooler than that. We’re just that cool.” And really, it’s just one of those places, but then I’m this enormous mosaic fan, so I’m biased. But really, I ask you, what’s wrong with covering your entire church in lavish mosaics? Not to mention the assorted Rennaisance stuff that got added later. In its own special way, it’s even more fantastic than San Vitale.

That having been done, and me feeling like going to church some more, I walked on down the Via Dante Allighieri to the tomb of the man himself, which is pretty small, but nifty nonetheless. That having been done, I walked into the Franciscan church to check out the flooded crypt with mosaics and goldfish. Not much there, but it was free, so.

You’d think I’d be done with going to church for the day, but no. Ravenna’s all about going to church. I went over to the cathedral, where I checked out the baptistry, which is pretty much floor to ceiling hella cool mosaic, with the odd marble relief thrown in some contrast. Then I went over to the Archepiscopal Museum, which is small and dinky, but has a few mosaic fragments and an awesome ivory chair nonetheless.

And then I needed a break from church, so I went on back to San Vitale and ducked into the National Museum. It’s a pretty confused sort of place, stuffed into various corners around the San Vitale cloisters, and it’s really hard to navigate. But it’s full of nifty old stuff. Unfortunately, and you get this a lot in Italy (less so in Stockholm, but moreso in Brussels), most of the signs were in Italian, so I got to nod my head a lot and say “Yup, that there thingy sure is purty, yessir.” Ah well. Worse is the language barrier between me and the staff, wherein they talk at me very rapidly in Italian, and I smile, nod, and ask them if they know English. It works something like this:

Random English Knowledge Table (1d6):
1 – They speak English. You have some clue what they were saying.
2 – Broken English. Lots of gesturing and pointing with random sentences thrown in.
3 – Broken English. Whatever it is you say, they think is something totally opposite from what you meant. Increase time spent talking by 1d4 minutes.
4 – No English. Lots of gesturing and pointing and random Italian words.
5 – No English. Lots of gesturing and pointing and random Italian words.
6 – No English. Lots of gesturing and pointing and random Italian words.

In a place like the National Museum, you get a lot of that. But I eventually got through, with the help of one of the guards who DID speak English, and was very intent that I saw everything – so much so that he came through half the museum and directed me when I looked lost at one point. Was also very polite, shook my hand, and generally went out of his way to make me feel pretty good about life and Italy. Whereupon, roasting and dying of thirst, I went to McDonald’s (hella handy in the central piazza), wherein ordering a coke is easy enough, but the ordering of fries involves efforts not unlike the proverbial monkeys with typewriters producing Shakespeare. But I finally got my food, and life was good. And then I came back here. I still have a few hours to do stuff, because everything’s open until 7ish these days, but it already feels like a full day. Went all over town. Saw a bunch of awesome stuff. Took like 50 pictures. I can definitely say I went there and bought the t-shirt. Not the t-shirt I wanted, with Justinian or Theodora on the front, but a t-shirt nonetheless. I also bought the poster, as it happens, which actually IS Justinian. I also discovered the handy zipper on my suitcase which gives me like a whole two inches more depth. Bonus.

Rather later, after my break, I went back out with the goal of going over to Basilica of S. Apollinare in Classe finally. As it happens, I almost immediately got sidetracked by the Arian Baptistry (”Wait. This is right next to my hotel. How did I possibly miss it?”), which so happens to be almost completely bare except for this hella cool mosaic dome (you may at this point have noticed something of a trend in the sights here). Distracted by the pretty pictures, I then ran up to the Domus of the Stone Floors or something to that effect, which has…crap mosaics. Well, not so much crap mosaics as Roman mosaics, which are nice, but unlike some other Robin Hoo…mosaics, Byzantine mosaics use gold and shiny stuff, and look cooler than plain old Roman stone. Still, this one house basically makes the Fishbourne mosaics look like a bunch of amateurs did them (which in some cases isn’t too far from the truth, but still). In amongst assorted other parenthetical digressions, me and my domus combo ticket then went over to the Domus of the Triclinium, which is pretty small and has REALLY bad mosaics, but has the unique feature of being smack in the middle of an old medieval church, the decoration of which partially survives. So you get mosaics and Rennaisance frescos, which doesn’t clash nearly as bad as you might think. Still, black and white mosaics are kind of teh suck after you’ve seen San Vitale or S. Apollinare.

That having been done, I desperately needed a drink, and guess what was the handiest place? Yup. McDonalds’ again. Not its fault it’s in the central piazza, is it? Well, I guess it is, but still. So I got some Coke and a McFlurry, which was so cold it made my teeth hurt, but that just makes it better when you’ve been a human BBQ all day. And I should at this point mention the McDonalds’ radio station playing in there (who knew there was one?), which varied between Bruce Springsteen, random Italian rock music, and what sounded for all the world like an Italian cover of Total Eclipse of the Heart, which struck me as so bizzare that I got the hell out of there, came back here, and started listening to Californication, which is much much more not strange.

Though, unfortunately, it makes me want to play Sim City. While you all sit at your computers saying “What the hell?” I’ll explain that at one point while playing SC2k or 3k, I started playing that song on repeat over and over. So now I associate the song with the game. *shrug* Lot of songs like that, really, that you associate with games, other songs, whatever. In fact, I’m listening to what’s essentially a remake of one of my mix tapes, because I remembered all the songs on it. *shrug*

In any case, there’s Ravenna. It’s been fun, and I wish I had a bit more time and energy, but tomorrow it’s on to Rome. Ciao.

Venice, 6/21/04

As it turns out, the rain was a freak thing, and it was a really nice day in Venice today, which more or less enabled me to go see a whole lot of stuff, which, actually, is a problem, because my ticket to Ravenna is for the 23rd, which means the 22nd may or may not be exceedingly boring. We’ll see.

The morning started by a trip down to the hotel desk, where I asked the clerk if, incidentally, I was going to get my passport back at some point. No, he says, only if you check out. Ok, whatever, Italy’s kind of screwy like that I guess, but whatever.

So I went out, wandered, and took some pictures. I also got hella lost, because Venice streets are…bad. They’re exceedinly narrow, for one thing, since you can’t drive or bike on the island. They’re also exceedingly complex, twisting and turning and doing strange, strange stuff, like maybe following the canal for a bit, or crossing the canal only to end at the door to somebody’s house. There are, fortunately, signposts that lead one to the main parts of town, which sort of get you there after a fashion. I could, of course, have taken the vaporetto water bus service, but no. I’m stubborn, and I couldn’t make the damn ticket machine work. So I walked.

Eventually, I wandered into St. Mark’s Square, too. The top bit of it, where you can’t really see much. So I’m sitting there at this fountain eating a couple of croissants I picked up that were filled with some orange stuff, wondering where I am. It dawns on me eventually that the big place next to me, the one with the scaffolding and some big signs, is probably St. Mark’s Basilica. Sure enough, there I was in the place I had set out to go. Fabulous sort of place, too. St. Mark’s is on one side, along with the Doge’s Palace, which is way, way less cool than anything in the entire square, including the Campanile bell tower, which is a hella ugly brick thing. Opposite all that, on the other three sides of the square, are big long collonaded buildings, mostly shops and the like, though one has a couple of museums.

I went to the hella ugly brick thing first, because it’s one of the highest things in the city, and I wanted some skyline shots. And I got them, after waiting in a few lines. That done, I went over to the Correr Museum, which has a whole bunch of really old Venetian stuff. Funny how that works. It also has a lot of really old Rennaisance artwork, which raises a problem I’ll talk about later.

The Correr having been done, and that ticket giving me admission to the Doge’s Palace as well, we can all guess where I went next. Another fabulous place, the Doge’s Palace, though it doesn’t look it from the outside. Inside, though, is another story. Whole damn thing is just carpeted in Rennaisance art. Almost literally – the walls and ceilings are essentially solid in it, including a single room that holds something like 2,000 people and looks like it could comfortably hold most of, say, Monroe High School. There’s also a nice big prison out back, complete with dark, damp cells with three and a half feet high doors.

So that was the Doge’s Palace. Next up, I pondered St. Mark’s, but the lines to get in are exceedingly long, and you can’t take backpacks in, which is one of those oddities of Venice tourism – you must check your bag somewhere before going in. The problem, of course, is that the bag check for St. Mark’s is on some street around the corner, and it’s really really really hard to find. So hard to find, in fact, that I got lost again, and went back and had a drink before trying again. I finally found it, and went in.

And, uh, wow. Words pretty much fail to describe the place. I’ve seen a lot of places on this trip, but for sheer spectacular splendor, nothing beats St. Mark’s so far. Marble floors in an array of geometric designs, with marble columns holding up massive domed ceilings in the Byzantine style. Speaking of the Byzantine style, the ceiling, domes, you name it, are all covered in either Byzantine or Byzantine style mosaics. Big gold ones. And I’m thinking unless I go see the Hagia Sophia, or unless Ravenna is way cooler than I thought it was, that’s pretty much the final word on Byzantine mosaics. Some of them actually ARE Byzantine, incidentally, along with a certain four horses on the front enterance and a certain statue of four tetrachs built into the wall, not to mention a very big chunk of the church treasury. It’s what comes of launching the 4th Crusade, not on heretics, but on the richest city in all Christendom – Constantinople. Looted glory it may be, but still. Still.

So, having gaped in awe, I went to get my bag back. And got lost finding the bag check again. Yes, it really IS that hard to find. The lesson here is to not take your bag anywhere. Carry your map. Or don’t, since you’ll pretty much be ok anyway. After finally finding the place again, I decided some ice cream was in order, so I got some, and life was good.

And then, having taken a much needed rest at the same fountain I originally sat down on, because it was about 3 when I sat down and I had been going since like 10, I got up at 4 and decided to go home, because I couldn’t think of much to do in an hour that I could find. So I got myself lost again, which meant I got back to the hotel about 5. Exhausted, I opened the door to find…an empty room. It’s situations like this why the word fuck was invented, among others. Fearing the worst, I went down to the office to find out what was up.

You will, at this point, remember the conversation I had with the clerk that morning. Yeah, I didn’t either. As it turns out, he thought I was checking out, and so, well, checked me out. Fortunately, the other clerk sorted things out, got me my luggage back, and got me my room again. He also gave me back my passport, so, like, what the fuck was up with the other clerk? I have no idea.

All of this having been said, I’m having a bit of trouble with Venice. I mean, it’s a really cool place, once you get past the prices. Unfortunately, it’s cool in a totally unfortunate way – lots of Rennaisance art and things, which is cool to look at for about an hour before your brain explodes as you go into overload. And pretty much I’ve done everything I can find in the guidebooks than didn’t involve Rennaisance art, and some of the things that did. I got lost for like 2 hours, just like they said to. About the only thing I haven’t done is go down the Grand Canal in a boat, and that only takes about an hour. And I’m sort of here for another day. We all sense the problem, here, I hope. Yeah. We’ll see what comes of that. I MIGHT go see Ravenna a bit early and spend 2 days, but Ravenna isn’t exactly worth two days EITHER. So we’ll see.

Stockholm 6/17/04 – 6/20/04

Written live from Venice on the 20th. But more on Venice later.

So my arrival in Stockholm was something like this: Got off the plane at Skavsta[1] airport, which is like an hour away from town by bus, during which I got my first taste of Swedish hospitality – This lady with her infant who was taking up two seats denied everyone else who wanted the last seat, but moved over for me. Cool. Of course the baby developed a fascination with my flannel and kept playing with it, but that’s ok, because he was a really cute baby. Not that you really see ugly babies. In any case, an hour and a half later I’m in the city bus station, wondering where Toast is. So I wander around for an hour, dodging the friendly Nigerian scam artist who wants my money, though strangely not to launder it from rebels or anything – he just wanted a cup of coffee, he said. Still. The phone, meanwhile, gives me some random dude’s machine. Spending my last 2 euro coin gets me on the ‘net, but of course MSN won’t work. Getting desperate (it’s like 8:30), I suddenly realize the Info desk is open, whereupon I get my second taste of how helpful Swedes can be, as the nice lady deciphers Toast’s phone number for me, in a very pleasant fashion, and in the essentially perfect English everyone in Stockholm has. So I call Toast.

Me: Uh, yeah. Toast. So I’m stuck in the city bus station, and where are you, anyway?

Toast: You’re in Sweeden?

Me: I appear to be, yep.

Toast: Oh dear. I thought it was tomorrow. Anyway, go over to this hotel, and I’ll meet you there.

Whereupon I got hospitality visit #3 – the nice, young, and very cute girl at the info desk (who replaced the nice, but old, lady) telling me in some detail where exactly said hotel is, which is more or less right outside, but not to hear her talk. In short order, Toast and his dad pick me up and take me to their place, give me a guest room of enormous goodness, and cook me dinner. Lavish hospitality note #4. I think we watched some soccer, but I more or less fell asleep, so.

The next day, I dragged Toast all over the city, including some places that were new to both of us. The city itself, situated on a few islands, is really cool to walk, both for the sights and because Stockholm is both chilly and light out pretty much 24/7/365. The suburbs, I should add at this point, feel almost exactly like some bizzare European Junction City, for those of us who’ve been there. Wood houses again, finally, plus actual evergreen trees. Felt like home, actually.

First stop in the city was the Vasa Museum, home of the ship of the same name, which sank in 1628 and was raised more than 300 years later. So we saw the ship and the exhibits on 17th century naval life, and it was cool.

After a stop at the most scenic McDonald’s I’ve ever seen (overlooking the waterfront, not to mention this really strange boat cover in HP and Harley-Davidson logos), we went over to the Royal Palace, which is huge. We then proceeded to spend 3-4 hours there touring the place, seeing the state rooms and treasury, then hitting 3 assorted museums inside – the armory, the antiquities museum, and the castle museum. That having been exhausted (and exhausting us), we went over to the cathedral and saw that. Then we went home, beat Super Mario Brothers 3 up to world 7, and watched some soccer, wherein one of the Swedish guys scored a most amazing goal that Toast can probably tell you all about, as he’s memorized it.

Day 2 got off to a slow start, with us not starting until 11 or so. We went down to the Army Museum, which, being cooler than you might expect for a generally non-belligerant country like Sweeden, occupied some hours with nifty displays and a bunch of real weapons to check out. Then we went to the Historical Museum, which was very cool when it came to the Vikings and gold, but less cool on the Middle Ages exhibit, which was mostly a TON of church objects. That done, we bought some stuff, went home, and Toast saw the true horrors of my picture collection. Sorry if I was a tad boring, Toast.

Too, we saw Gangs of New York, which is a much better movie than people say it is. *shrug*

And then came the travelling day from hell. After like 3 hours of sleep, I took a 7:35 bus to Vasateras airport, got on a 10:10 flight to London Stanstead where I sat next to two Swedish ladies who obviously had never flown before, and finally arrived in Stanstead some 3 hours later, where after intense rushing to make my next flight, I stood in lines for an hour, during which time I finished the second of two Sharpe books I started that day. When the Venice flight finally boarded, I took a nap, made slightly unbearable by the freezing aircraft.

Not to worry, I said. I’ll be in Venice soon, and Venice will be warm. Ha. It was pouring, so my first glimpse of Italy was in the rain. Still, it’s nice.

I was, however, too tired and annoyed and wet to go sightseeing, so I settled for a hotel and this entry instead. We’ll see what tomorrow brings.

[1] – Toast will forgive my total lack of usage of the extra letters that Swedish uses, because, well, my American keyboard is pretty simple, and doesn’t go in for all that Ctrl+Alt action that Swedish keyboards are all up into these days. Scary things, Swedish keyboards. Just when I was getting over the trauma of English keyboards, too. Oh, the horror.

Well, looks like everything is back up. Probably be a while until I get anything from the trip up, though – Whir’s place, probably. We’ll see how that works out. I’m at Toast’s right now, enjoying some generous hospitality. Tomorrow it’s off to Venice, and in a little over a week, I’ll be in MI. So I’ll see you all when I see you.

Or so says a certain ad on the London tube, which considering this is about Brussels is a bit odd, but whatever. The circumstances sort of merit it, as it happens.

Brussels, 6/13/04

Left London this morning, which felt a bit odd, since I sort of felt like I lived there. Packing, saying goodbye to Paul and Jan – all a bit surreal. Getting 6 hours of sleep to get up at 6 and catch a 6:30 tube to Waterloo for my 8:30 train, more painful than surreal. Since the first Picadilly ran at 7, well…yeah. Only to get to Waterloo and stand in a few lines to get my supposedly self-collectable ticket, and to get on the Eurostar.

Which is a fabulous train. Fast, and so quiet I forgot I was on a train, until I arrived 3 hours later in Brussels, and stepped off the train only to realize that everyone but me sort of speaks French and Dutch. But more on that later. Fortunately, Stephanie fairly quickly found me, and she DOES speak both languages. Funny considering she’s a resident, but there you go.

The conversation turned fairly quickly to my rather acute lack of a hotel reservation, which led us to a tourist info desk and a nice helpful lady who informed us that, oh, by the way, we can get you 4 nights in the Jolly Hotel du Grand Sablon for 65 euro a night. By the way, it’s a 4 star hotel and you get a bunch of stuff with that. Oh, and it’s in a really nice part of town. Not being a total fool, I took them up on the offer, and so arrived at a room which, if it’s not big, has nice stuff, and looks out over some really nice buildings.

Speaking of which, we then embarked on a walking tour of central Brussels, which mostly looks as if a bunch of guys were sitting around in like 1810 and were like “yknow, we need some great big palaces. So let’s build a few. And while we’re at it, let’s build some really wide roads, too.” So they did, and it looks cool. I won’t attempt to list where all we went, but it was a lot, and all very cool. And if it wasn’t 19th century, it was Gothic, which is even better. Nice place, central Brussels.

However, it is completely devoid of ATMs. The ones there are decided to not work, either, which may or may not mean that Skynet is taking over and that I’ll be in T4. In any case, I have like 17 pounds and no euros to my name just now.

As a final observation before I collapse from exhaustion, I note that the Belgians A) have real honest to God stop signs, which is amazing after London; B) Are not maniac drivers like the English; and C) have a habit of doing signs in whatever language they feel like at the time, be it French, Dutch, English, or the odd German sign. Plus everyone speaks multiple languages. Very strange, but kind of cool once you get used to it.

Addendum:

Apparently, according to my handy Lonely Planet guide, one of the largest ISPs in Belgium is called Skynet. Hrm.

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Brussels, 6/14/04

I’m beginning to think that 19th century Europeans got it about right, at least in the architecture department. I say this writing from the Parc Royal (I think), where I’ve just enjoyed some ice cream and sat down under some nice shady trees to watch this highly impressive fountain. It’s one of those sorts of days, in one of those sorts of places.

I’ve spent the day wandering around, which means I only get lost sometimes. It’s not that hard, since half the cool places I’ve been are on one street, including the forementioned Parc, plus the Palais de Justice (they have nice courthouses in Europe, and this one has a great view of the city, too) and the Eglise du Sablon, a nice Gothic church I can see from my window. My hotel rocks like that. Around the Parc, there’s more palaces, the names of which I still haven’t learned because Brussels is fun like that, and a short walk takes one to the Cathedral, which is…quite a sight. Down the hill a bit is the Grand Place (which I can’t pronounce in French AT ALL), which is, well, appropriately grand, and the only place I’ve really been lost trying to find.

On another note, I have no idea why I’m such a good target for this, but twice today random people have come up to ask me stuff, except I don’t speak French, and they don’t speak English, so. Do I look Belgian or something? Dunno.

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Rather later:

So, as it happened, I ended up hanging out in the Parc Royal for like 3 hours reading one of my large supply of books. Nice, sunny, and there’s this gigantic fountain and nice green trees for atmosphere. Almost fell asleep on a bench, even. Also almost got run down by two little kids on bikes, but.

Also went over to Stephanie’s and had dinner with her and her family. Quite an enjoyable time. Her family are nice people, and her mom cooks a great meal. :) Had mushrooms for the first time since March, which was great. Also got to use a spoon, which is one of those things the English haven’t quite gotten around to yet. One gets to notice lots of little things like that. Stop signs. Spoons. The odd-sized Coke bottles the Belgians use. The need to manually open the carriage doors on the metro. Random little things.

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Brussels, 6/15/04

Oh my, what a day. Started out in the cathedral, which is sort of just above church status, but is nevertheless nifty. Too, you can walk right in, which is quite refreshing after English cathedrals where you have to pay an arm and a leg. Add some nice stained glass and Gothic architecture, and I liked the place.

After that, I sat around enjoying the rather commanding view from the steps, and waited for Stephanie to get out of her last exam (yes, she sacrificed study time for me. Lucky, aren’t I?), whereupon we both hung out at the cathedral, and she picked up a friend – an exceedingly docile and friendly bumblebee who decided to hang out with and hitch a ride on her shoe for a couple of blocks. Never seen anything like it.

From the cathedral, we went down to the museums, me being me, and hung out (you’ll notice there was a lot of hanging out – the rope called it a day after a while, though) there for a few hours. Saw a lot of great Roman stuff, including a great big model of Rome (sweet!), a great big collonade, and a bunch of Romano-Syrian mosaics (trivia – they’re different in style than Romano-British mosaics. Those have lots of geometric shapes and knotwork, where the Syrian ones have hunting scenes and different geometric shapes. Interesting stuff.) (Also, let’s hear it for huge parenthetical digressions). Then we saw your usual happy Egyptian stuff, and some assorted Asian and Merovingian stuff.

And then, well, we went to see Troy. The movie, that is, as the plane trip is prohibative, even for me. And…it wasn’t bad, for what it tried to be. You can’t really do the story justice without LOTRing the thing, but Troy did what it could for Achilles, and sort of managed[2].

In any case, we then went for a drink, and had one of those random encounters where you run into, not 2d6 orcs, but a 5th level American tourist. From San Francisco of all places. Turned out to be a brewing major, here for (of course) the beer. So we talked to our new and inebriated[1] friend for a while, and then went off to sleep, because, well, it’s off to Paris in the morning. But that’s another story.

[1] – So he’s telling us this story about how he’s in the same bar we’re in now yesterday, and he’s been drinking a fair bit, and he wakes up in the morning, and the last thing he remembers is midafternoon drinking at the bar. Doesn’t know if he paid, made an ass out of himself, what. So he goes to the next bar, where he sees the waiter of the other bar glance at him, squint for a sec, and he’s thinking “oh shit, I did something REALLY bad” and the waiter waves at him, and he’s thinking “saved! Saved!” Yeah. That’s about what I mean by inebriated. And then Stephanie pointed him towards a place with an even bigger beer selection. Heh.

[2] – And since I’m here, I should note that I read Colleen McCullough’s The Song of Troy when I was in England, and never talked about it. It’s a totally different sort of take on the Trojan War epic, and I really liked it. So all you McCullough fans should go read it.

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Paris, 6/16/04

It’s one of those nights where you stagger into your room, feet sore, legs barely working, sweat running off of you, sunburnt, and bloody holes in your hand where the skin peeled off because you stuck your hand in your pocket too many times (!). And it’s like the most satisfying feeling you’ve ever had, because damn, what a day.

As the words to the song go, and we heard this one at the last karaoke night and it was awesome:

Take me down to the paradise city
where the grass is green
and the girls are pretty
oh won’t you please take me home

Had that one in my head all day, and it’s sort of appropriate. Grass, buildings, girls, it’s all good. In fact, everything in Paris is good except the Parisians, who live up to their fame as being the biggest dicks in the world. Except that one guy at the Eiffel Tower. He was nice. Must’ve been from the country or something. All the others were evil bastards, and give you a whole new appreciation for Chirac.

And the buildings, well, yeah. Let’s talk about those for a big long while, because there were sort of a lot of them. And like in Brussels, it’s like everyone was kicking around a century or two ago, and they’re like “Yeah, that whole thing with gigantic palaces, big parks, and big roads sounds like a pretty good idea. Let’s go bleed some peasants dry and get to it.” The peasants, showing good taste, guillotined the nobles and kept the buildings. Good plan.

First on the tour was Sacre Coeur (that bit rhymes, you’ll note. Oh baby I’m good), which is actually of 1870s vintage, but still. It’s up on this pretty fair hill on the north end of the city. Inside there’s some fabulous, fabulous artwork which of course I have no pictures of because they’re not all up into photography in the house of God. They do let you in for free, however, which is really cool. What I DO have pictures of is the view from the dome, which is bloody well impressive, I must say.

From there, we walked down through the Montmarte part of Paris, which is a bunch of dinky streets with lots of little restauraunts and painters and such, to the nearest metro station. And believe me when I tell you that the Paris metro is totally shittastic. The Brussels one isn’t quite the London Underground, but it’s got some life and attempts to speed up your journey. The Paris metro not only attempts to impede you, but it’s a totally soulless sort of place. And you have to open the carriages by hand, which makes me wonder why London is the only place on earth where you don’t have to do that. Also, the carriages have this picture of a poor little pink rabbit getting his fingers smashed in the door, which leads one to imaginings of horrific fates involving being dragged along with the train, into random aluminum things on the sides of tunnels and into mirrors and things.

But anyway. So we come out of the metro near the Arc de Triomphe, and I mean near as in we’re riding the escalator and the Arc comes into view slowly as we’re coming up. Awesome. Hard to get a really good view of because of the cars, but awesome. The Champs-Elysees isn’t bad either, as it happens, being one of Those Sorts of Streets. It ends up in the Place de la Concorde, which among other things has the US Embassy and this big Egyptian obelisk in the center of the thing, because looting big Egyptian obelisks is the thing we did back in the day.

From there we walked up the Rue Royale, and after a particularly harrowing stunt involving jaywalking about 5 lanes of cars in the Place de la Madeleine, found ourselves in the Eglise de la Madeleine itself, which is a fairly impressive sort of church. Then we went over to the Place Vendome, which apart from housing the Ritz and some hella expensive shops, has a big replica of Trajan’s Column, topped by a statue of…Napoleon. Trajpoleon’s Column, as we called it, was only the first mark that Paris is truly the home of that short dead dude, Napoleon.

That having been done, we wandered down to the Jardin des Tuileries for lunch, fed the ducks, and took some pictures. The Jardin is one of those places where if some guy in 17th century costume walked by, you wouldn’t even pay attention. It’s also right next to the Louvre, which we didn’t go in, but the outside is, uh. Yeah. Damn. They sure did build nice stuff, back in the day. Outside the Louvre is the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, which looks sort of like the Arch of Constantine, except it’s got (get this) Napoleon on the top. So the Arch of Conpoleon, or the Arch of Naptantine the Great, if you will. You’d think the guy could find his own style monument to erect at some point.

Or maybe he did. Apart from this bridge over the Seine with big wreathed “N” symbols on them, there’s the Palais de Justice, which has all sorts of Napoleonic stuff on it, and isn’t even a Roman ripoff, being sort of Englightenment looking.

Nearby that is Notre Dame, which one of those places that gets hyped a whole lot, and you’re standing outside going “Wow. Nice cathedral.” and then you get inside and it’s really dark and there’s not really anything in there, and you’re like “Oh.” And so we left. And found a metro station and immediately got going in the opposite direction, because even if you speak French it’s totally impossible to understand the system. Once we actually DID get in the right direction, we down to the Hotel des Invalides, which apart from being a great big hospital for soldiers, now a museum, is I believe where Nappy got himself buried. Of course they shut the place five minutes before we got there, so I’ll never know.

So instead we ditched that Napoleon loser and went off to the Ecole Militaire, France’s military college, which is a rather impressive place in it’s Englightenmentness. Behind it is the Parc du Champs de Mars, which apart from having trees and shade and water which are all important when you’re frying to death after walking all day, looks straight at the Eiffel Tower.

The Eiffel Tower, incidentally, is one of those things you see pictures of, and you’re like “Oh, that must be kind of big.” but of course it does no justice to the thing in real life. Because believe you me, that thing is TALL. And has some long lines, and costs 10.40 euro to get in, but it’s totally worth it. View from the 2nd floor halfway up is pretty good, but from the top? Incredible. Absolutely incredible. Gotta see the pictures to do it justice, because I really can’t with words. Stephanie, who incidentally has a bit of a problem with heights, went up to the top with me. All thousand feet or whatever it is. And enjoyed the view of the world. So yay for her. And then we had ice cream, and it was good. Paris does vanilla differently from everyone else, and it’s kind of good.

That having been done, we walked up to the nearest metro station, skillfully switched between two lines to get back to the station our train left from, passed through the ticket gate there, and ran for our train which was due to leave in 8 minutes. Fortunately for us, there was another ticket gate randomly stuck in our way, and of course we’re out of tickets. So we try for the wheelchair gate, and almost get trapped, only to be freed by some quick thinking on Stephanie’s part. Then we kept feeding tickets to a regular gate until one worked, and we both ran through at the same time. Then we ran to the very freaking last platform of like 8, then ran all the way to the very end of the train, and jumped on like 2 minutes before it was due to leave.

And that was Paris in a day. Left at 10:10 in the morning, got back about the same time that night. A full day, as these things go. And that having been said, it’s bedtime.

Being an account of the momentous bits of my last week in the UK. Because as we all know, Sunday I’m for Brussels.

Monday, in addition to the theater final, we all went out for something of a final group dinner at La Porchetta (”the pig” apparently), which is a fairly decent Italian restauraunt near school. Apart from it being hot enough to do things like, say, forge iron, much food was eaten, and much merriment was had. And by much food, I mean much. The pizzas in particular were spectacularly huge – mediums at least. I, of course, got the one tiny dish on the menu, not that I knew it at the time. But it was good, so whatever.

Tuesday was the second of the finals, the dreaded Ancient Near East exam. Or rather it was sort of the Diet Coke of dreaded, since what everybody REALLY feared was the real, 100% pure always Coca-Cola evil of the Rome exam and Darth the Green Book. So we took the final and went home, whereupon I was going to go see the last Reduced Shakespeare play, but decided not to, since, while we weren’t forging iron outside, we were thinking pretty hard about things like bronze. This was all just as well, because Wednesday was a looooong day.

We started bright and early with the evil, evil Rome exam. Three full-length essays, with questions like “So, tell me about the economy of the Roman Empire” and “So, let’s talk some about the importance of Roman Britain.” Using information from the Greek Book, which is one of those books that likes to use really big words to make itself sound intelligent. It IS intelligent, actually, just you need a dictionary to read it. But that having been done, it was all about celebrating the fact that I’m totally out of school. But you’ve all heard about that. So instead of telling you about that, I’ll simply mention that we made it to St. Albans finally, and St. Albans was good. The museum was chock full of the expected nifty Roman stuff, and we got to see the remains of the theater, which was likewise good. This was made all the better since Dr. Garfinkle actually has a degree in archaeology, and so told us some of how things go on. Happy days. That having been done, we all went back to London, whereupon we all, uh, flew British Airways. The British Airways London Eye, that is. Which, to describe it, is sort of like the biggest Ferris wheel you’ve ever seen, with capsules that seat 25-30 people. And the people running it were exceedingly nice, making sure our group all got in the same capsule, when booking one usually costs like 300 pounds. Too, we actually got stopped on top of the Eye for a while. Many photographs were taken, and life was good.

And then we went out drinking. Three of us graduated, including me, so we of course had to take some shots to celebrate. So I tried out tequila. But didn’t get especially drunk. That, we saved for Thursday.

Thursday, well, the main bit was the Last of the Karaokehicans. I mailed a package back to Oregon for 45 pounds, which is a lot of money, but mainly it was about the drinking and the singing. And there was a lot of both, as it happens. Everyone showed up, and I mean EVERYONE, including Dr. Garfinkle and his wife. And how many schools have you gone to where your prof buys everyone tequila shots, and his wife gets up with the kids and sings and dances? Yeah. And then Dustin went into Garth mode again, and assorted other songs got sang. And, well, we drank a lot. I have no idea what everyone else did, but I’ve figured out that a tequila shot and 5 Smirinoff Black Ices (helpfully supplied by the bartender, who saw me coming and was like “SBI, right?”) will, in fact, make me drunk. Improves my singing, too, sort of. Not to mention my dancing, not that I usually dance, but when random English girls want me to get up there with them, who am I to refuse? It’s not quite so comforting when they steal my glasses and caper around with them, but hey. How she actually SAW while capering around, I have no idea, but she managed somehow. But, yeah. Apart from that, I got to be drunk a lot. And do things like jump up and down in front of Laura going “Move! Get up and move around!” Too, I got to sit at home and laugh at exactly nothing for about 5 minutes, whereupon Mike helpfully noted that “You’re DRUNK.” So was he, but yknow.

All of this revelry meant that Friday I was, um, a little hung over. Just a bit. As in the headache didn’t go away all day, but since part of that was a caffiene withdrawal headache, sort of understandable. And I didn’t eat a whole hell of a lot. I’m like that sometimes. Especially when I’m rampaging around London sightseeing. Went into Waterstone’s and bought like 60 pounds worth of books, then went into the British Museum, took a lot of pictures, and discovered this big Medieval gallery full of cool stuff I never knew about before. Then I ended up at Tottenham Court Road station to take the Central Line over to St. Paul’s and do that. Fortunately, I arrived in the station about the time they were announcing that “There will be no westbound service on gigantic chunks of the Central Line today.” But hey, I’m going east. No problem. This feeling of good will lasts until I’m on the platform, whereupon they come on to announce that no, there’s not going to be any eastbound service either, and since the only line serving St. Paul’s is the Central Line, you’re sort of screwed.

But, unlike some demented vampire rabbits, _I_ have mad tube skillz. So I leaped the Northern Line down to my next stop at Temple, browsed around by the Royal Courts of Justice for a bit, which is cooler than it sounds, whereupon I went to church.

We pause momentarily for Marechal to recover his exploded brain.

More to the point, I went to St. Paul’s, and paid their rather painful 9 pound enterance fee, whereupon I proceeded to milk every bit of it I could out of the place, doing such things as listening to the entire audioguide and climbing all the way to the top of the dome, whereupon I took the obligatory spectacular London skyline shots. That having been done, I obliged Marechal by checking out the tombs and memorials to Nelson and Wellington, which are, as one might expect, rather impressive.

Hours having passed, I finally got out of church, and went on my way down to St. James Park, where apart from hanging out in the most beautiful spot in the city, I finally got my good pictures of Buckingham Palace and the whole Whitehall cluster of buildings. Then I walked over to Whitehall (which, I note, is a street, but has half the government on it), and ducked into the Cabinet War Rooms from WWII, and browsed around for a bit. Tad expensive at 6 pounds, but oh well.

And then I took some random pictures of tube stations, and went home, but not before getting my earphones randomly destroyed by the gate at Charing Cross. Doh. But for my last eventful day in London, not bad, I think. Not bad at all.

And now it’s on to Brussels and a whole ‘nother round of entertainment.